I’m always looking for good ways to practice my live performance. You can only sing along in the car for so long before you’re bored to death and there’s really no way to practice your stage moves while driving. It’s also not a lot of fun to do boring old Karaoke especially at home without an audience. That’s where SingStar the video game comes in extremely handy.
If you’re not familiar with SingStar it’s a singing game that you can play on your Playstation 2 or Playstation 3. It’s a step up from Karaoke and it will help you work on your live performance in several different ways. The game basically has a selection of songs along with the original artists music video for the song. SingStar is much better than Karaoke simply because it uses the original artists music rather than a cover band playing the music. To play you just plug in the microphones, select a song and start singing. The lyrics appear onscreen with a pitch indicator that shows you how well you’re singing in tune. The game will score your performance which gives you a good idea about where you need to improve your singing. SingStar also records your voice while you sing along with the song so you can play the track back and listen to your performance. It will also show your pitch tracking during playback so you can see where you get out of tune. This is extremely valuable for practicing singing in tune. You can also save these performances to play back later in case you really nail it and want to show off your extreme vocal skills. This could be a good way for a singer to record a cheap and easy singing demo to give to an agent or a band.
Another way that SingStar can really help you to practice your live performance is by doing a video capture of your performance. If you have a Playstation 3, all you have to do is attach the Playstation 3 Eye and you will be able to do a video capture while you’re singing along in SingStar. You may feel foolish doing your stage moves in the living room but I’m telling you, it’s an extremely valuable way to evaluate how you look and come across onstage. You can feel free to try some new moves on camera to see if you will look cool or stupid pulling them off during your bands live performance. If you’re really feeling good about how you look during your living room performance you can upload the video to the SingStar community. Who knows, you could become world famous!
Another great feature is the ability to download extra songs from the hundreds available at the online SingStore. This is a fantastic feature because it gives you an affordable way to expand the game and get some songs that fit what your band may be playing live. There are different play modes in the game that let you perform solo, challenge friends to a sing-off or perform harmony in duet mode. SingStar really is a great and fun way to practice your singing. You should start out with the basic SingStar bundle that includes the microphones. There are also many different versions of the game available such as SingStar 80’s so choose the one that fits your era and have fun! You can check out various versions of SingStar in the Live Musician Central Store Games Section. Check out the Playstation 3 SingStar trailer below:
SingStar Rocks Trailer
