Thinking big about karaoke. Democratizing tools, breaking rules.
Via Wayne: amazing kid version of “Don’t Matter”. Fight for your right to repurpose.
BTW: once when I was in Trinidad I jumped in on somebody elses’s rendition of this (he was down) and did Remix to Ignition and Wyclef – Stripper Song (”Just cause she dance the go go…”). Super fun, you should try it.
One of my visions is to see somebody DJ a karaoke night off turntables, mixing and scratching with synced video. It’s possible, I looked it up! The simplest way is with Serato Scratch and a $1500 Rane mixer. Ouch. But some clubs have these, so if I ever get a karaoke night at a clubby club… hmm…
Then there’s a $100 solution that doesn’t require any special hardware… Ms. Pinky / Max MSP.
Then there’s the free software / linux route: xwax. Which you can also use with Puredata using this thing. I fully expect to be in the company of tons of linux VJ nerds when I get to brazil. Maybe they can help me set it up. Woo!
xwax
The first official karaokecrime.com show happened in Providence last Thursday at Matthewson Street. The Dance Troupe raised a ton of money for their tour, and the danceparty jam session was Awesome.
I’m posting the karaoke megamix exactly as I ran it last night. Ableton crapped out on me yesterday before the show, so I didn’t even have time to mix it. But whatever, I’m posting as is while I’m excited. My favorite part is the “Go DJ” verse over “Love is Gone”.
Makes me teary.
Still lookin for a good way to post 10 minute plus videos that are fair-use heavy. In the meantime: Karaoke Megamix 1
(almost none of this stuff is necessary) photo by…
Running a karaoke night is cheap and easy. Here’s all you need:
5 & 6 barely count. You can get clunky 17″ monitors for free on craigslist or freecycle. Most venues have a PA w/ mics. Got friends who play in a band? They can help scrounge something together.
So that leaves us with a laptop, songs, karaoke software, and songbooks. I made simple guides to cover each step. Spend a little time now, and next week you’ll have a working karaoke setup.
If anything seems confusing, just find a computery friend to help. They’ll know how to do all of this stuff.
Next up… tips on running a karaoke night!
Song books are important, but making them can be a pain in the neck. Here’s the simplest way to make a karaoke songbook on a Mac using kJams:
Cnce you’re music’s in kJams, hide all columns except the ones you want, select all your songs, copy/paste them into TextEdit, and use find and replace to turn the tabs into hyphens.
If that sounds like a mouthful, read more for step by step instructions…
For Windows, see this post: The easiest way to make a karaoke song book on Windows (or Linux).
Continue reading ‘The easiest way to make a karaoke song book on a Mac’
Mp3g is a funny combination of music file and anigif. If you want to play karaoke on your iPod / iPhone, or if you want to use DJ/VJ software to run your karaoke set (more on that later) the first step is to convert your collection to normal video files.
Here’s how–for Mac, Windows, and Linux;
Continue reading ‘How to covert karaoke files to video (Mac, Windows, Linux)’
Free Karaoke Music