your karaoke set list

But is it functioning?

Después.

Ahora si.

Had to miss last night but maybe tomorrow.

Maybe someday.

There was some relevant discussion in the Dean Wareham tribute to Tom Verlaine.

Any grindcore song

*bump*

May go over my limit and sing a fourth one

Might even go to five. I feel unclean.

The only way to shrive is to change my screenname

“Valerie” by Mark Ronson-Amy Winehouse seems to be very popular

“Valerie” by Mark Ronson-Amy Winehouse seems to be very popular

“MacArthur Park” or bust

Ha. Have never heard that one or thought of attempting myself.

I did that as a duet, my first and last time doing karaoke. I thought it was terrible. People told me our harmonies were great. Won’t do it again. Will never have that recipe again.

Just seems too long, to name one obvious difficulty.

In recent weeks and months, I've hit a bunch of classic rock staples, such as The Beatles, Dylan, Springsteen, Simon and Garfunkel (along with some I am probably forgetting) and have branched out to some Spanish language material as well. Wondering if I am going to hit some kind of wall or burnout or just oversing one day and get hoarse.

Sometimes I try to do some New Wave stuff but it can be challenging to actually find the relevant videos.

Rosanna

“All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is compromise…”

Haven’t tried any Candlemass yet. (xpost)

My local host sometimes records sound bytes on the machine he also uses for karaoke, and he got me saying "I farted" and played it on loop for a few.

I did fart during a duet and my partner couldn't sing so well after

No shame. Maria Callas farted in many of her best performances. Yr partner needs to learn a little thing called professionalism.

I just can’t stomach karaoke videos which are just the original track with the vocal vaguely filtered.

might not be legal for a KJ to use those tracks either, depending on their source.

I didn't realize until a few of my KJ friends told me that KJs are expected to have 100% licensed tracks, and that enforcers for various copyright organizations often do inspections and that the KJs could be sued. my KJ friend got sued, for tracks she had legally purchased, but I guess the company that owned the license got acquired and the new company wanted her to repurchase them, so she tried to just remove them from her catalog, but they actually still sued her for a ridiculous amount of money (six figures), and she had to take a settlement that crippled her financially (this is the same KJ friend who passed away last year).

playing youtube karaoke videos that are clearly just someone who used one of those vocal remove devices on a track may not be legal, though apparently all tracks from Karafun are fair game.

one of the karaoke bars my KJ friend Di worked that, that fired her, her replacement KJs had tracks that were literal MIDI files. i was mortified singing Judas Priest over that.

the practical problem with singing over the remnants of a vocal is that you can be easily influenced by that vocal, esp if you're trying to do your own thing and make the song your own, but you hear that muffled vocal and feel like you have to match it.

It even makes it bad if you are trying your best to match the original!

For similar reasons actually

Lots of KaraFun’s seem to have guide vocals but they are very low so are kind of easy to ignore.

Okay I think I understand how the YouTube karoake works legally, when it is legit and when it isn’t. Will type more later.

So it looks like the big karaoke YouTube providers like KaraFun, Sing King and Party Tyme all have their stuff properly licensed but then the establishment also has to have its own licensing covered with ASCAP etc. as it would for other uses of copyrighted music, then it’s all hunky dory, I think.

“Can I Kick It?” was a huge hit, although it was pretty hard for me to do both parts cleanly and not run out of breath so I made some slight stumbles.

I’ve slowly been expanding my list of Beatles songs, almost always John’s. Somebody asked me to do “If I Fell” this week. I decided to accept this suicide mission, but it is very difficult to sing a famous harmony duet, maybe the most famous, with one voice. I finally ended up singing the Paul melody parts in the John register, which in retrospect was not such a bad idea.

Lol rap is hard if you do multiple parts. I used to bring a friend to do choruses to give me a break

Word.

It is often fun to do two different voices on a song, just as long as there are not too many syllables and the parts are not concurrent.

I used to do Slow Jamz and do both Kanye and Twista but then had the friend just do Ye so I could rest up

Not doing that song anymore for obv reasons

recently had a go at 'Starman' (too much la-la'ing by half at the end so skipped the last 30 seconds plus there were ten of us in the room with lots to get thru) and 'Enter: Sandman' (relatively straightforward)

Lol the repetitious end of songs.

"Shut it down!"

Ha, the Hey Jude rule! Sometimes the thing ends with a non-vocal interlude of one of two varieties. In the case of the first type you have to stick around to sing one more thing at the very end, in the second, you can safely leave your position at the mic to wander amongst your adoring public.

I did “Starman” once. Got no reaction and, more importantly, didn’t enjoy singing it that much. Too repetitive as you say, and I didn’t get anywhere close to nailing some of the other moments as well as I would have liked. Would still consider doing it again, but want to try some other Bowie first. Thinking about “Ziggy Stardust,” “Jean Genie” and “Rebel Rebel.”

Another one with a repetitive ending is “Suspicious Minds.”

Which is kind of fun to sing except how many times can you sing “caught in a trap” to a karaoke track instead of the TCB Band?

Last time I tried the live version, next time I will try the studio version which presents another challenge.

Almost feel guilty or nervous about enjoying my current karaoke jag so much and am afraid it will all dry up and I will turn back into Michigan J. Frog once again.

The challenge of the studio version of “Suspicious Minds” being that it is slower which prolongs the agony of trying to do justice to the chorus and breakdown. Elvis’s high notes have still got some amazing bottom going on like nobody else’s. It’s like chocolate or … velvet even.

Anyway, here’s another semi-pro tip: “Hey Jude” aside, you can pretty much sing any Beatles song you want to that you can find a track to and if you do even a half decent job people will respond since most know and love every single one of their tunes. I sometimes get sick of the phenomenon of The Beatles and their monolithic presence in the monoculture but I still can enjoy their music in isolation tracks, in limited doses. But they don’t really need me anymore, Rob Sheffield is taking good care of them.

Just now hearing Death Cab for Cutie singing “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” and reminded that I was thinking about singing that last year like I was Darlene Love on David Letterman or something but ran out of time and couldn’t get over there. Maybe I can do it this year if we make it to December.

Which reminds me that I did two Merle Haggard tunes, “Mama Tried” and “Pancho and Lefty.” The first got a good response, the second crickets but I felt really good about it, it was really fun to do both Willie and Merle, and I may try it again. Also checking out some more Merle material for future use.

See some good candidates but don’t want to jinx myself and post ahead of time.

Just posting that much makes my vocal chords want to close up shop.