Yesterday we had a Christmas party at work. It was decently fun; beer and wine, games and fun, food and discussion. Everything got into a little lull after a while, though, and that’s when we decided to unpack Singstar and the projection thingie, and let people make fools of themselves. Of course, no one had bothered to check that the amplifier had RCA input. So we had no way of getting sound to the game. Some drunken engineering led to the temporary solution of holding the 3.5 mm plug almost pressed into the amp, and holding two male RCA plugs against each other in an ingenious way. Heh. Basically, two people had to keep the cable steady in order for two other people to be able to sing.

Thankfully, one sober person drove off to fetch a proper RCA-RCA plug. Then fun ensued!

I sung four times or so, and got totally hooked. It’s amazingly fun to try to match the little coloured dots, and receive immediate feedback on how your key matches the song. Not to mention how fun it is to do battle singing or duets! God, that rocks. In fact, I went off to buy Singstar Legends after work today, and I think I’ll bring it over to another party tonight.

But I didn’t want to rant about the joys of Singstar. I wanted to rant about the lack of obviously needed features. Or one feature, at least. Why, given the fact that they have a full bloody DVD and make millions on this franchise, can’t they record songs in different keys? Seriously. I love Smells Like Teen Spirit, but the highest notes are a bitch for me. And I don’t want to have to resort to falsetto singing. Sure, it works and I can get a good score that way, but it breaks the illusion of karaoke for me! I want to sing and get better at singing – not just learn how to get to the right frequency.

In old movies you always see how a person gets up on the stage and talks to the band. “Blue Shit on a Flagpole in G minor” and such, they say. The musicians transposed the song to fit the singer – in order to create a better experience for everyone. Why doesn’t that happen anymore? Nowadays it’s all about trying to find the songs that fit your voice, instead of transposing the songs you’d really like to sing.

Lazy bastards. All it would take is a few extra recordings from professional cover musicians who probably would be able to produce the stuff in just a few re-takes.

Oh well. Time to find some clothes and head off to that party.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2006 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Games, Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.