The hard mode.

[Alex_M]

Hello guys!
First of all – i'd like to thank all of you who worked on this game.
It really is great. Thank you very much!

Now the other thing i wanted to ask – is there any demos of someone hitting good score on the "hard" level?
I don't know how exactly it works, correct me if i'm wrong, but the difference between levels seems to be in accuracy with which one should hit notes of a song, right?
I'm not a good singer myself, so i'd like to hear from those, who got more experience with singing, or with the game. Is it even possible to hit right notes on hard level, and if it is, how is it related to real singing, wouldn't there be a conflict in intonation of a singer and equal temperation of midi (does midi use equal temperation? does game compare player's intonation to midi?)? Is there any chance, that medium level is more optimal to practice singing?
I'm just asking it to make sure, because, again, i'm not a singer.
Thanks in advance!

[PsychicWalnut]

Yeah, the difficulty just seems to be how strict it is on finding your singing pitch.

I know the game has made me sing better.  I started on easy until I could reliably break 9000 on my favorite songs.  Then I switched to medium.  This dropped me down to the 6000-7000 range.  After a while at medium I'm now getting between 7500-9000 depending on the song.  Soon I will try hard mode again.

Just using this standard progression, I can tell that my pitch is becoming more accurate.


Yeah... for now, I always play at medium.

[Alex_M]

I didn't try medium yet, only easy and hard. On easy i can go above 9000, and on hard- bit more than 5000. Of course, it can be improved. Only thing, that worries me about it is, as i said, intonation. That is, real singers may sing some notes sharper or lower, on purpose, because the overall harmony going to be better this way, and midi, if it uses equal temperation, doesn't do so. So trying to sing with music and singer can go against with what is written in midi. It's just a guess, i don't know really, but if it's really so, then trying to adjust your intonation to pitch bars in game and not to actual singer from the song will not be too good for your singing. Or not. I'm a bit confused.

[PsychicWalnut]

Yeah, I kinda understand what you are saying there...

I have two basic modes that I sing in:

First, is my personal 'practice' mode, where i concentrate on pitch, just to get myself used to hitting the right notes.
This mode gives me the best scores when playing the game.

Second is my 'performance' mode, where i sacrifice pitch accuracy to add more emotion to the song.
People find this mode the most entertaining, and I use it when I go out for karaoke.

[Smilley]

I try to add every waver of the singers' voices into the karaoke, but at some point you have to sacrifice pitch-perfect accuracy for playability - and sanity of the coder.
If you want a good song to practice fast-paced pitch-changes and long sustains, try (and I kid you not) Eduard Khil's "I am very glad because I'm finally returning back home", better known as the Trololo Song. There is a good Ultrastar version of it if you Google.

[Alex_M]

PsychicWalnut Thanks, gotta try to practice your way)

Smilley, Thanks for answer! It looks like making those songs for the game is a hell of a work! I think i should try it myself to understand how it all works. Now reading your article on the subject=)

[Marioland1]

If you're too lazy to look up more songs, just try to sing KnifeH's "A Day with Prince".  It's chaos enough to try and practice it.

[Smilley]

No. Just...no.

[Alex_M]

Heh, i'm not looking for difficult songs actually. The ones from the show are good enough for me) I was just wandering, does it worth it to practice in hard mode, as the singer in original version can sing some notes to say 15 cents flat or something (intonation theory isn't really my thing), and the game on easy or medium mode will not mind if you follow the singer, but in hard mode you gonna have to choose, whether you sing the same note as the singer, or trying to reach 15 cents higher, to the note shown by pitch bar. It's kind of an advanced musical theory question, and may be i'm just overanalizing it, but if i'm not, then it's really might be not a good idea to use the hard mode.

[Marioland1]

As a general rule, the bars are so close to the actual sung note that any variances are only detectable by a pitch perfect ear.  Of course, this assumes the song was programmed correctly (and it's clear a few haven't), but you should be fine for most songs in Hard Mode.

[Renard]

I usually only go for medium, for these times you want to sing the song to you heart's content but don't want to mimic exactly the original singer's voice.

[Smilley]

As a general rule, the bars are so close to the actual sung note that any variances are only detectable by a pitch perfect ear.  Of course, this assumes the song was programmed correctly (and it's clear a few haven't), but you should be fine for most songs in Hard Mode.

Any instance of MLK you would like to name, or are you just speaking in general? We can and will take criticism, if we can improve the project as a whole with it. I'm aware that there are a lot of mediocre to bad quality Ultrastar songs out there, but that's the downside of user created content.

[Marioland1]

I said it particularly because of my experience with Eurobeat Brony's "Luna (Dream Mode)", where it has overlapping notes (I don't care how good you are, singing 2 different pitches at once is pretty much impossible) and changes lines before you get the chance to finish the one before (which seems to result in even more overlapping notes).  There are a few others that seem a bit screwy (like Sweetie Bot's Big Race, where the lines seems to be quite flat), but I'm a bit busy at the moment to find them all.  I'll probably compile a list of screw-ups at some point, or try to rectify them myself.

[Smilley]

A list is always welcome. We've tried to check every song for errors such as these, but at 150 tracks, hiccups are bound to happen.
On Sweetiebot: that's a crux with dubstep. You have much less variety and sudden jumps between pitches.

[Marioland1]

I really should have phrased that better.  By "flat", I meant the opposite of sharp (in terms of pitch), not dull and repeating (in terms of style).  I start the song matching the sung pitch (according to other software), and Singstar registers my voice 3 steps sharp (estimated, as I did try singing flatter and finally matched the pitch about that far away from where it should be).  It hurts my brain trying to transpose the entire song down like that, and it really makes the song unplayable for me.

As to the list, I'll get to work on it as soon as I can.  I'm just wondering what part of the forums such a list would belong in.

[PsychicWalnut]

My guess on the location for the list would be  "Issues and Bug Reports" in Ponyville Townhall

[Marioland1]

That's what I figured, but I wanted to make sure.

[Renard]

Actually, I'd rather keep this on a per-song basis: use the existing threads in the "Released / Feedback" subforums in the Carousel Boutique.
Thanks! :)

[Marioland1]

That sounds good as well.  I'll get them out as soon as I can.