The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #76499   Message #1359364
Posted By: flattop
17-Dec-04 - 12:43 AM
Thread Name: BS: Karaoke,isnt this music?
Subject: RE: BS: Karaoke,isnt this music?
Welcome to you, brucie.

Ron, at the top, asked a couple of questions. Now that we've established Karaoke as the music of the gods and that many mudcaters secretly envy Karaoke singers making their exquisite music, we should look at the second issue.

If you have a PC, can download a Karaoke player (and become a closet Karaoke singer) at:

http://www.vanbasco.com

The site has links to sites with karaoke file that the player can play but many files off the link are midi files, not Karaoke. Hymn & Christmas carol collections seem to work better than most – they don't have copyright issues.

I tried this player last week. My brother sings regularly at a Salvation Army drop-in center for seniors and he often wants me to accompany him. We've usually use guitars but they wanted Christmas carols last Friday. Carols tend to have too many chord changes, some of them change every quarter note. Neither of us wanted to practice extensively. We spent three practice sessions with the vanbasco player then performed Friday afternoon. The seniors sang along and enjoyed it.   

Some midi programs, like PG Music's PowerTracks, allow you to create your own Karaoke files. I haven't tried it but it looks like you could load midi files, add lyrics and save them as Karaoke files. You can find many great midi files out on the web. (One of my favorites is a midi of Brian Wilson's song Love and Mercy.)