Uploaded December 2008 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago
This is a special vocal video tribute for a friend who is no longer with us.
On November 12, 2008, a young man was lost to the world. His acquaintances knew him as squidy or worthadeuce. His friends and family knew him as Ben. He was 15 years old.
Ben was a wonderful person. He was also a phenomenal Rock Band guitarist, and I was blessed to have had the chance to play with him on several occasions.
This video tribute is a modified version of one of his favorite Rock Band 2 songs, Pinball Wizard.
This one's for you, Ben. Rest in peace.
This is a special vocal video tribute for a friend who is no longer with us.
On November 12, 2008, a young man was lost to the world. His acquaintances knew him as squidy or worthadeuce. His friends and family knew him as Ben. He was 15 years old.
Ben was a wonderful person. He was also a phenomenal Rock Band guitarist, and I was blessed to have had the chance to play with him on several occasions.
This video tribute is a modified version of one of his favorite Rock Band 2 songs, Pinball Wizard.
This one's for you, Ben. Rest in peace.
![Battery [Rock Band 2] 100% Expert Vocals (vocal squeezing tutorial)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zSC49Q-Lb8g/mqdefault.jpg "Battery [Rock Band 2] 100% Expert Vocals (vocal squeezing tutorial)
This video posted by request from YouTube user ANOTHERFAN.
100% Gold Star Expert Vocals performance on Battery by Metallica, as it appears in Rock Band 2 for PlayStation 3.
This song is dead simple to sing - I seriously doubt anyone needs much help on actually scoring the pitches in this song (but if you do, here they are).
What I find interesting about Battery (and the reason I agreed to do this video) is that its one of the very few songs that showcases all three types of vocal overdrive squeezing (explained below). If youre interested in climbing the leaderboards on vocals in Rock Band, these three tricks are the reason why other people have higher scores than you do, even though youre using overdrive in all the right places and scoring 100%. Follow along as I explain how to score the most possible points on this song - and the techniques used to make that happen.
SQUEEZING:
A lot of people dont understand what squeezing is - its the art of getting the most points possible in a rhythm game. For vocals in Rock Band, the way to get more points is to use the make the best possible use of your available Overdrive (which doubles your points while its active).
There are three tricks to squeezing, and the best (optimal) overdrive path for Battery just so happens to use all three, presented in exactly the right order for teaching.
Normal squeeze:
The gold activation window can be activated pretty much at any time while the scoring line is inside the window (aside from some pesky songs where the window is mysteriously unresponsive toward the end), so a normal squeeze activation is simply to activate overdrive as late as possible so that your overdrive lasts just a split second longer. Of course you want to sing accurately as your overdrive is running out so that you accumulate as many bonus points as possible. The first and fourth activations in Battery are normal squeezes.
Activation squeeze (abbreviated AS):
An activation squeeze is like a normal squeeze - you still activate as late as possible, but its even more important to activate late without missing the window. In some cases, you can make the overdrive last long enough so that you can complete another overdrive phrase right before it stops - this is called an activation squeeze. Activation squeezes allow you to extend the overdrive activation (the extra overdrive is added to your bar and continues your overdrive burn), and is often a desirable result when your overdrive is otherwise going to end in a section with lots of lyrics. The second activation in Battery is an activation squeeze.
Reverse squeeze (abbreviated as RS or FRS):
Also called a Finesse Reverse Squeeze - the two terms mean the same thing. A reverse squeeze does the exact opposite of what an activation squeeze does. You want to activate EARLY so that you AVOID picking up an extra overdrive bar. This is the rarest type of overdrive trick, but its used when youve got overdrive bars at the end of sections of lyrics where theres few to no lyrics behind. This lets you save that overdrive you just avoided for another section later where it can yield more points. The third overdrive activation in Battery is a reverse squeeze.
I will add some annotations to this video after its posted to help illustrate how all three of these squeezing methods function.
NOTE: This is not a video where Im trying to sound especially good. Ive degraded the audio quality on instrumental sections to avoid having YouTube cough up a hairball on the upload. This is strictly a teaching tutorial, and if youre going to post something asinine about how I dont sound like James Hetfield or how the audio quality sucks, please dont bother.")
![Panic Switch [Rock Band 2] 100% Expert Vocals](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zSY-bkhGhV8/mqdefault.jpg "Panic Switch [Rock Band 2] 100% Expert Vocals
100% Gold Star Expert Vocals performance on Panic Switch by Silversun Pickups, as it appears in Rock Band 2 for PlayStation 3.
This song is downloadable content for the PS3 ($1.99), Xbox 360 (160MSP), and Wii (200WP) versions of Rock Band 2.
As is typical for my videos, the original vocals by Brian Aubert are minimized so you can hear what Im singing.
Given that yesterday was Tax Day in the USA, I thought this would be a fun video to do for my fellow Americans. :)
Panic Switch is a really popular song thats getting a lot of airplay, but the radio edit conveniently drops the key-changed bridge at 3:52, so that part made me sort of scratch my head for a bit.
Otherwise, it was a lot of fun making this video while doing my best impression of Auberts almost androgynous vocal tone. Helps that I like the song quite a lot. I almost broke my personal rule about not buying Guitar Hero downloadable songs because of Panic Switch, but then it released for Rock Band and everything became right with the world.")
![Wave of Mutilation [Rock Band 2] 100% Expert Vocals](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zu5YGR_Q0dQ/mqdefault.jpg "Wave of Mutilation [Rock Band 2] 100% Expert Vocals
This is another of my video entries into the ScoreHero How Good Can You Sound Video Challenge, found here:
http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11205
100% Gold Star Expert Vocals performance on Wave of Mutilation by Pixies as it appears in Rock Band 2 for PlayStation 3.
As per the rules of the challenge, the original vocals by Francis Black are muted, and my microphone is turned up so the only vocals you hear are my own.
Id forgotten how much fun this song is to sing until yesterday when it came up in a random setlist.
This is a tricky song for anyone whos not used to octave shifting. I actually used to shift around mid-phrase to hit all the notes (high and low) when I first started playing, but after over a year of singing in Rock Band it seems Ive got enough confidence and pitch control to sing the entire song in its original pitches.
Pro-tip for anyone who still struggles with the waves: they start and end on the same note, so if you cant sing the entire scale, just jump back up to where you started on the word and youll score it just fine.")
