Karaoke Active

Why Sing?

Singing for most is a source of Joy and Fun. Singing has been part of Most cultures throughout time.  We sing for many reasons and have vocal ranges that can master most tunes (at least to ourselves .)

Karaoke is a popular form of singing with friends and family and recently this has exploded into the gaming world. With the birth of many singing games this gives us a range of materials and sources for our Karaoke endeavours.

Karaoke Revolution, created for the Ps2, released in North America in 2003, is a console game in which a single player sings along with on-screen guidance and receives a score based on his or her pitch, timing, and rhythm. The game soon spawned several follow-ups including Karaoke Revolution Vol. 2, Karaoke Revolution Vol. 3, Karaoke Revolution Party Edition, CMT Presents Karaoke Revolution: Country and Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol. While the original Karaoke Revolution was also eventually released for the Microsoft Xbox console in late 2004, the new online-enabled version included the ability to download additional song packs through the console’s exclusive Xbox Live.

A similar series, Singstar by Sony, is particularly popular in the European and Australasian markets. Other Karaoke/Singing titles that involve singing by the player include Boogie and Boogie Superstar, High School Musical Sing it, Guitar World Hero, Rockband Series and recently Popular Glee Karaoke Titles.

Karaoke is a form of interactive entertainment/Video Game in which Singers/Players sing along with recorded music and Video using a Microphone. The music is typically a well-known popular song minus the lead vocal. The lyrics are usually displayed on the screen, along with a moving symbol or changing color and/or music video images, to guide the singer. Due to its English pronunciation, it is sometimes incorrectly spelled “kareoke”. It is also a term used by recording engineers translated as “empty track” meaning there is no vocal track.

A basic karaoke machine consists of a music player, microphone  and an audio output. Some low-end machines attempt to provide vocal suppression so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and suppress the voice of the original singer; however, this is rarely effective. Most common machines are CD+G, LASER DISC, VCD or DVD players with microphone inputs and an audio mixer built in. Most formats natively display both audio and video.

Most karaoke machines have technology that electronically changes the pitch of the music so that amateur singers can sing along to any music source by choosing a key that is appropriate for their vocal range, while maintaining the original tempo of the song. (There were some very old systems that used cassettes, and these changed the pitch by altering playback speed, but none are still on the market, and their commercial use is virtually nonexistent.)

A popular game using karaoke is to type in a random number and call up a song, of which participants take turns to try to sing as much as they can. In some machines, this game is pre-programmed and may be limited to a genre so that they cannot call up an obscure national anthem that none of the participants can sing. This game has come to be called “Kamikaze Karaoke” or “Karaoke Roulette”

Which is your Favourite Version????