Karaoke is alive and well on the Web!
by Suzanne Lanoue

We all love going out to karaoke with our friends or spouses and
singing our hearts out. But for when you can't go out to karaoke or
if you LIVE for karaoke above all else, like many of us do, then you
have several choices on the web for karaoke fun.

My favorite place to talk about karaoke is at the JOLT Forum at
joltforum.com This is a message board hosted by karaoke.com (a
place to buy karaoke supplies). There are many nice and fun
people there who just love karaoke the way you do. Besides
karaoke, we talk about many topicis including singing techniques,
stage fright, and many non-musical subjects, such as what's going
on in our lives, work, movies, etc. Just about all subjects are
covered.

Besides talking about karaoke, the JOLTers, as they call
themselves, like to sing together whenever possible. JOLTers live
all over the world, so it's tough to get everyone together at once.
We have regional get-togethers, called "Summits", where someone
hosts a karaoke weekend, and others who can afford it or have the
time off travel there to the party. This year alone we had JOLT
Summits in California, Texas, and Rhode Island. There are more
planned for San Diego and Virginia.

Another favorite activity is making JOLT cd's and tapes. One
person volunteers to make a CD or tape and declares what the
type of song should be, such as "country", or "love songs". Then
everyone who's interested sends that person 3-4 songs and the
person puts them all together on a cd or tape, then makes copies
for everyone who participated and anyone else on JOLT who wants
a copy. This is recorded karaoke, as opposed to live karaoke.
Everyone has different types of recording machines; it's not like
they're all professional-sounding. Most of us just have regular
home karaoke machines. But the voices and the singing are great,
and it's really a thrill to hear yourself alongside the other great
singers on JOLT. This year the JOLT cd's or tapes have had these themes: country, love songs, Beatles, "Wild", showtunes, songs
with a traveling word, twenty years of music (70's and 80's), your
worst and best songs, and just general songs. We have upcoming ones planned for disco and songs with the word "angel" in them.

There are other karaoke message boards out there. Soundchoice.com has a popular one.

Many KJ's and singers have web pages about karaoke. You can
find these at Yahoo, Google, etc. They tell you where you can
sing at various places around the world, give singing tips, have
karaoke history, and much more. You can learn more about
karaoke than you may even think is possible!

Many of these pages have Computer or MIDI Karaoke. This is where you can play karaoke songs on your computer and sing
along there just for fun. It's good for learning songs, too. There are
many software programs for playing MIDI Karaoke. Some are free
and some aren't. My favorite is Van Basco's Karaoke at
www.vanbasco.com It not only is a great free player (with a built-in
key changer!), but their site has a great search engine for finding
karaoke songs. There are many many places to download songs
for free. MIDI karaoke is home-made by people who can play the
music into their computer and then put it together with the words
for a karaoke or .kar file. It does not sound like a real band or
orchestra but it's a fun substitute.

Eatsleepmusic.com is a fun place to visit. They have a karaoke
player that is not MIDI but plays real CD+G type of music. There
are tons of Sound Choice songs for you to sing along with (you do
have to be connected to the net, unlike MIDI karaoke). They have
a free trial period and if you want to continue with it, you pay a
monthly fee.

If you like to listen to other karaoke singers on the web, two great places are KaraokeCam and live365.com Karaokecam is in the
Cat's Meow in New Orleans. You can see it at
http://nola.com/karaokecam/ and watch the karaoke there every
night from their live webcam. Live365.com is a streaming music
player which you can download for free. Different people have
"channels" where they pick the music and you can hear what
they've chosen, like a radio in your computer. They have a few
karaoke channels there where they have recorded live karaoke at
various shows. For a small
montly fee, you can set up your own channel.

Finally, there is a place where you can actually participate in
karaoke while at your computer-others can hear you and you can
hear them. There is a program called Paltalk which you can
download at paltalk.com If you want to participate, you must either have a microphone, videocamera, or webcam connected to your computer. Computer microphones are very cheap and you just plug it into the correct plug in the back of your computer. Paltalk is for all sorts of chatting, but they have music rooms and some are for karaoke. The host of the room gives you the virtual
microphone when it's your turn to sing. You click on a button on
the screen to tell him/her you want to sing, and that puts you in the
queue. The instructions are very easy.

The variety of singers and their abilities is very wide on Paltalk;
more so than at regular karaoke. This is because you get people
who might be too shy to go to karaoke in person but don't mind
sitting at their computer and singing, where no one knows them or can see them. Some people use karaoke tapes/cd's, but you also find people just singing along to their records or singing a capella. Make sure that the background music is turned WAY up, however, because that little computer microphone will have a hard time hearing it otherwise. It's very addictive and a lot of fun. Unlike karaoke in a bar, you usually don't have to wait an hour between songs.

There you have it-the best karaoke spots on the web. For more karaoke pages, try my page at: http://suzann.com/music/karaoke2.htm You can also hear me
sing there at: http://suzann.com/suzmusic/ (email me at
me@suzann.com to get the free username and password)
Have fun surfing!

Suzanne Lanoue
http://suzann.com

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Suzanne is an occasional
contributor to this magazine. She is from San Diego but lives in Alabama now.