So does no one play Harmonies or what?

**Shashakiro** · Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Posts: 1931 Location: Providence, RI

My girlfriend and I got 5th place on Beast and the Harlot harmonies without even hitting all the double awesomes (hit all the verse ones, but not that many of the chorus ones and none of the chorus ones at the end), let alone thinking about the path or squeezing or anything. That seems REALLY high, on solo vocals if I don't look up a path and FC with squeezes, I'm not even top 100.

Is harmonies mode just not very competitive for some reason or what?
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**JOE2210** · Joined: 19 Apr 2009 Posts: 2480 Location: In the Gagasphere

It's not competitive at all, which is a shame.
It's mainly because there's very few people who have 2 expert level vocalists in the vicinity, let alone 3.
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**DarthFizz** · Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:28 pm Post subject:

There are 2 other expert vocalists where I live. I have 2 mics and one of them has a third, but we have yet to actually sing 3 part harmonies, although I have sang 2 part and it is FUN AS HELL.

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**GanonMetroid** · Joined: 10 Feb 2007 Posts: 1460

I live pretty close to Tobias911 and his wife, who is also a capable expert vocalist. We've done a few things as far as harmonies goes, but not a whole lot. I guess it's just that not a lot of people who are capable are even willing to go out of their way to do it.
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**HyadesD4** · Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:36 pm Post subject:

**CaptCalamity** · Joined: 11 Jan 2009 Posts: 43 Location: Louisville, KY

I think it would be much more competitive if we had the ability to do harmonies online. I always heard the bandwidth excuse as a reason, but if we just had the ability to do it even without other instruments, that would still be better than it currently is imo.

**TalonHawk** · Joined: 15 Dec 2010 Posts: 11

There is definitely competition, there are just not nearly as many people competing as in solo vocals for the reasons people have already said.

Think of it this way, if every vocalist paired with 2 others, you'd still only have 1/3rd the number of scores, and obviously that isn't happening, so you end up with a much smaller fraction.

Pathing harmonies can be much harder as well if you're trying to squeeze out every bit of score. I won't go into why, but trust me on it ;-)

**TimEbaysball** · Joined: 09 Dec 2008 Posts: 2188 Location: Virginia

I play harmonies for every song. I just sing all the parts myself on separate runs.
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**MasterNobody** · Joined: 11 Jul 2008 Posts: 2791 Location: Duxbury, MA

**RipleyLV426** · Joined: 04 Mar 2008 Posts: 109

Harms are amazingly fun and I'm still surprised more people haven't tried 'em, even just with 1 singer holding 1-3 mics. Beez and I pathed and ran a handful of on-disc songs together a while back, but nothing lately.

If you're going for score, the solo path is a decent place to start, but the harms chart is worth a look for better places to ES, especially with a good vibratist. You can alter your path based on the number of singers on your team, and there's also harmony part priority scoring (including intentionally missed parts) to consider.

Ending with a few fun facts... the on-disc career score is far from maxed. Based on shared SH paths and x-plat leaderboard data:

- 7 songs aren't maxed yet and probably several more
- 10,000+ points are unclaimed from just those 7 songs combined
- 13.2 mil is a conservative career max

Looks like we've all got a bit o' work to do!

**Billtvshow** · Joined: 20 Dec 2007 Posts: 832 Location: NC, USA

My friends and I did that Killing Loneliness harmonies video awhile back and we also legit FC'ed a few other songs over time, including Misery Business. As good as the two of them are at solo mode, it's very hard for them to do harmony parts when we are all singing together side by side because trying to separate the voices in your head is not the easiest thing to do if you're not used to it. Which is why legit FC's are much harder than individual line runs / recordings. And that factor is one reason I haven't made much of a push to pursue it competitively, because there's a number of people out there (see Youtube) that must have missed the memo that it's a dick move to try to get first place using your recorded voice runs (Not you Tim, but the people playing their recordings back into other mics during a single run). That's way, way, way easier than doing it with three people who all have to get it right all on the same run while hearing the other parts at point blank range. They may not have other people to play with nearby, but that's still no excuse to do it, despite that circumstance. The way MrsJadePhoenix does her harmonies recordings is technically the way it should be done for video purposes. HMX could take care of this by making it possible to do the harmonies online. I stand by my reasoning that if they could do vocal score duels the way they did them in RB1 and RB2, online harmonies could have been made to work. Also, the bonuses for harmonies (since it's more or less considered to be the "Pro" mode for vocals) are absolutely absurd; they should be much higher, comparable to the percentage increases made by playing a song on Pro Drums vs. regular drums. That would definitely make them a much more vital element in full band competition.
/end harmonies rant
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**xtreme2252** · Joined: 16 Jun 2008 Posts: 580 Location: Surrey

I played through on-disc solo harmonies by myself. Only plausible FC with one mic is I Need To Know, which surprisingly very few people have a high score on that song

**Icemage** · Joined: 11 May 2008 Posts: 3200

**HyadesD4** · Posted: Wed Jun 08, 2011 3:00 pm Post subject:

**twistedoak** · Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 1152

I would have to disagree with the comparison. Figuring out a trick with timing to make a talky work in rockband 1 does not compare to the talent of singing a harmony. With a little bit of practice, I could hit any harmony out there in rockband 3, but will never be able to make that stupid talky work in rockband 1. It would be like comparing that horrible screeching noise to get cherry bomb to work in rockband 2 is comparable to triple fcing bohemian rhapsody in harmonies.

I still don't understand why online harmonies can't work. We have bonuses for band play, yes? Doesn't that require split second timing to get the scoring right? If the 8x multiplier is different for each player due to lag, then why don't we all have different scores? Why in the world can't vocals be looked at in the same way? I'm not the programming genius, but I would think that harmonies could be implemented in the same way as playing different instruments.

Back to the op, there are two problems I have with harmonies. First is that only my son likes to sing so harmonies are shared with him when I sing. I don't have expert singers out there to play with to make it competitive. Also, I hate the "voice snapping" the game does. If I'm trying to find a pitch, sometimes it will snap to a lower octave, then go to the higher one the next phrase even though I'm singing the same note. I've missed too many phrases that way in harmonies.
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