Sometimes you’ll get a big karaoke collection with a pre-made songbook. This is definitely the easiest way to get started.

But once you start downloading more songs, you’ll need a way to make your own books. Here are two quick guides to making songbooks.

On Windows, your book will be somewhat ugly and wasteful of paper without further fiddling. But this is definitely the best way to start.

The quick and dirty way to make a karaoke song book on Windows or Linux

The easiest way to make a karaoke song book on a Mac

1. It’s slow and bulky
2. Importing a large library crashes my karaoke laptop
3. Having more than a certain number of songs in the playlist crashes it too.
4. The download store uses a proprietary format (.kfn)
5. Songs cost 3 euro ($4.50 once this funny currency crisis blows over).

The only fun thing about it is that it plays funny video effects behind the karaoke lyrics. But with winamp you can run your favorite visualizations from 1998 around the lyrics, so whatevs.

These tools are pretty old-school, and setting them up is a pain. But it’s worth the trouble to download karaoke tracks on demand. For KJs, this is a must.

MiRC is Windows only, but Mac users can run it in Parallels (that’s what I do) and this guide will cover that.

Overview

The KJ community uses a system for filesharing that, while complicated and low-tech, works well for sharing large libraries within a small community.

The basis for it all is IRC, which is the classic internet solution to the chat room problem. This all goes down on the #karaoke+mp3’s channel on the Undernet server. They even made a website for their channel here: kmp3s.com.

On top of IRC sits Omenserve, a robot that tells everybody what songs you’re sharing, and sends people songs on request.

Autoget slaps a Napster-style interface onto the whole thing. You can search everyone’s song lists, and download songs.

Step 1: Install mIRC

1. Download it here: mIRC 6.21 (I’m hosting it myself since you need a specific old version)
2. Run the mIRC installer.
3. Change the installation folder to C:\mIRC
4. Don’t start mIRC, or quit if it starts.

Step 2: Setup Port Forwarding

I you only have one computer at home, and you never connect to the internet through a router, you can skip this step. If you’re not sure, do it.

1. Download this UPnP tool: BaUPnP.exe
2. Right click on it and select “Create Shortcut”
3. Rename the shortcut to “Port Forwarding” or “Run before MIRC”.
4. Right click on the shortcut and click in the “Target” field.
5. Paste the following numbers afer “BaUPnP.exe” 10051 10052 10053 10054 10055 10056 10057 10058 10059 10060 113 5645 5646
6. Click “OK”
7. Double click on the shortcut.

A window should open that looks like this:

If it says “No UPnP router found” then you need to turn UPnP for your router, or forward all those ports manually. Google the name of your router and upnp or port forwarding for more info.

You’ll need to run this tool each time you use mIRC. You can try to put it in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup but that didn’t work for me… it always runs before I connect to the internet. You can also forward ports by hand, but if you have a laptop this is a huge pain in the ass… each time you connect to a new network you need to do it again. Often, you won’t have access to the router.

Step 3: Install Autoget

1. Download it here: Autoget 7.40b4
2. Extract the zip file
3. Run AGsetup740b4.exe
4. Change the install folder to C:\mIRC\

Step 4: Setup Omenserve / MiRC

1. Download it here: Omenserve 2.60
2. Extract the zip file.
3. Run OmenServe_Setup.exe
4. Change the install folder to C:\mIRC\
5. Click “select folder” button, find & select mIRC folder, press OK
6. Click install button
7. Check “auto load script into mIRC” and “view omenserve installation instructions”, click ‘finish’
8. mIRC will start, and give a script initializing warning message. Click “yes”
9. Click OK on mIRC option screen
10. Go to File -> Select Server
11. Find “Undernet” in the list, double click on it, and double click on “Random US server” or “Random EU server”.
12. Enter your info, pick a nickname, and click OK.
13. Go to Favorites -> Add to Favorites
14. For “channel” enter #karaoke+mp3s, check “Join on connect”, and click OK.
15. Click on “Favorites” and #karaoke+mp3s should now be in the list. Click on it.

Now you should see a Window that looks like a chatroom, with lots of ads for different users’ collections. At this point, if you get stuck, you can ask other people in the channel for help.

Step 5: Start Omenserve

1. Bring up omenserve config screen by pressing F2 or commands -> omenserve -> omenserve v2.60
2. Click “main”, ensure that ‘main nick for trigger’ is your IRC nickname
3. Cick ‘lists’, highlight ‘default’, click add folder.
4. Add all your karaoke folders (subfolders added automatically)
5. After all file directories have been added, click “generate list”
6. on QuickList screen, select “type file info”, click generate list.
7. Wait for status screen to give “list completed” message
8. Open omenserve config screen (F2), click “channel” button.
9. Select “add channels”, highlight channel #karaoke+mp3s (you must be IN the channel, or it will not appear in this screen), select channel mode, select “default list”, click “add channel”.
10. click “main”, check “Server On” box, click “close”.
11. Go to Commands -> Omenserve -> Send Channel Ads.

You should now be sharing your music in the #karaoke+mp3s. Soon, the channel ops will see your ad and will try to download your list. Once they verify that you are sharing, you will be “voiced”, and your name in the right sidebar will get a “+” next to it. Without this, most people won’t let you search their lists.

Again, you can ask for help in the channel if you have a problem.

Step 6: Load Autoget

1. Run mIRC
2. Click on the #karaoke+mp3s window.
3. Type /load -rs autoget.mrc
4. mIRC will give a warning message. Click “yes”.
5. If you get an error message, you may need to type /load -rs autoget/autoget.mrc or give the exact location to the autoget.mrc file.
6. Go to “Commands”. “Autoget v7.40b4″ should now show as an option, right above Omenserve.
7. Go to Commands -> Autoget -> Open

You should now see a familiar Napster-style search and download interface. Click on the “search” tab and try a search and download.

Autoget will grab peoples’ lists, and you can search those locally using “Local Search”. Then right click and select “Add to waiting” for songs you want.

Step 7: Miscellaneous Configuration

These are a bunch of options that should make everything work smoothly. If there are others missing, please let me know.

1. Commands -> Autoget -> Configuration -> Main tab -> Set “Download Method” to “Active”
2. Commands ->  Autoget -> Configuration -> Options tab -> check “Automatically Join Servers”, “Automatically close windows”
3. Commands ->  Autoget -> Configuration -> Channels tab -> click “Add” enter #karaoke+mp3s / undernet and select “Active”
4. Click Done
5. File -> Select Server -> Connect -> Options -> check “Connect on startup” and “Reconnect on disconnection”
6. In this Window, click “Advanced” check “DCC” and enter “10051″ and “10060″ under first and last. Click OK.
7. File -> Select Server -> Connect -> Identd -> make sure “Enable Identd is checked”
8. File -> Select Server -> DCC -> check “Augo-get file” and “minimize” and select “Resume” if file exists.
9. File -> Select Server -> DCC -> Options -> check “Close Window: Send & Get” and “Passive DCCs”
10. File -> Select Server -> DCC -> Ignore -> Select “Disabled” and uncheck “Turn ignore back on in:”

Options 6-10 are particularly important. If any of 1-5 are redundant, let me know.

At this point you should be able to close mIRC and restart, with all your downloads starting up again automatically.   

For Mac: running mIRC in Parallels

Its easy to run Windows applications on Intel Macs (non-G4/G5) using Parallels.

1. Download Parallels
2. Find a serial number.
3. Find a Windows XP CD
4. Insert the CD
5. Run Parallels, select “New Virtual Machine” and follow the instructions.

You can also use Bootcamp. Hit CMD-Space, type “boot” and launch “Boot Setup Assistant”. Parallels is better because you won’t be stuck in Windows whenever you want to use mIRC.

it can be done…

If you use both Mac and Windows, t’s a tough call between kJams and Winamp. If you’re going to be actively updating your library and your song books, kJams is it.

If you want to set things up once, never think about it again, and spend your karaoke night hitting on people, use Winamp.

Now, without further ado, the verdicts:

The best karaoke software for Mac OS X: kJams

The best karaoke software for Windows: Winamp

The best karaoke software for Linux: PyKaraoke

Battle tested in the dormitories of our youth, on the Pentiums of yesteryear, Winamp + CDG plugin is lightning fast and un-fuckwithable. Also, everybody knows how it works, making it easy to enlist helpers (or let singers browse on their own). Here’s how to get it running…

Setting up Winamp:

1. Download Winamp  
2. Do a full install, but uncheck everything on the “Get the Most out of Winamp” screen. Choose “Winamp Classic” skin.
3. Close the EQ, click the menu button in the top left corner and click “Media Library”
4. Close the various media library panes until you just have a search field and a list, and attach it to the side of the player (see below)
5. Unzip your music to .cdg & .mp3 (winamp)
6. Drag your karaoke music folder into your library.

Install the CDG plugin:

1. Quit Winamp
2. Download the CDG plugin
3. Run the installer

When you restart Winamp and play a karaoke track, a window should show up, like this:

If you right-click on the video window, you can make it bigger, or make it full screen.

Now, go to Menu -> Options -> Media Library and change the dropdown from “Plays Selected Item(s)” to “Enqueues Selected Item(s)”. Now you can add songs to the playlist by double-clicking or hitting enter, and it’s harder to interrupt the song that’s playing.

Bonus Trippiness: Go to Menu -> Options -> Plugins -> Visualization and under “Fullscreen Settings” choose your second monitor as the display adapter and in the bottom left check “Desktop Mode”. Then if you set the lyrics window to partially occupy the screen, Winamp trippiness will display around the borders. Eat it, Karafun!