New Machines Can Video Your Karaoke Performance

by Carolyn Hawks

Would you like to know how you REALLY look standing up there singing your heart out on stage? Would you like to practice more effectively and lose a lot of your stage fright? When you are truly confident about your appearance and demeanor on stage, much of the fear goes away. How can you do this without fancy video cameras, rigging up mics, bright lights and recording equipment? There are two products on the market this Christmas that, although still in the beginning stages, offer an easy solution to all the hassle. They also are a portent of things to come.

Singing Starz (K-mart) is a low-end camera and music box designed to hook into your TV-VCR and allow you to see yourself on the screen as you sing. The ad I found on the internet simply mentioned it using tape cassettes, offering one mic with a volume control, one music tape, a pitch/speed control and echo. It is on sale now for $79.99

The better model, and the one more suited to the high-end karaoke performer, is a machine offered by the Singing Machine company, the SMVG-600. This one comes with a pop-up camera. 5.5 black and white monitor for karaoke graphics or to view your own camera image. It can also be hooked up to your TV-VCR so that you can use the built in monitor for the CD graphics and your TV for your image. It comes with two mics, a built-in speaker, echo, but does not mention having a pitch control of any kind. I found it at the Singing Machine site www.singingmachine.com/ however there was no price given. You can download the Owner's Manual on site for this machine and look over the specs before you decide to purchase.

With either of these machines you can record your performance on your VCR. You could, of course, do so with your own video camera but those built in mics just don't do justice to the human voice. The Singing Machine model will give a more realistic representation of your sound. Then you can sit back and critique your efforts. It's hard to be objective about your own image and sound when you first see yourself. Look for the good things first and then allow yourself to open up to the areas where you need improvement.

In my studio my voice students are not only coached on singing and the tools of improving their voice, but they are shown how to "sell" a song and how to get the song's meaning across to the audience with vocal expression and body language.

If you find that, once you have made the VCR tape of your performance, that you just can't quite figure out what is wrong, or you want some suggestions of what to do to make it better, email or call me: Melohawk@aol.com or 619-442-1880 and we can make arrangements for you to mail or drop off your VCR tape to my studio and I will write up an evaluation for you. There is a fee for this consultation, but maybe I can save you some time and
frustration trying to figure some of these things out on your own.

One short Post Script: Many people have called me about the site I mentioned in a previous article that allows you to download a free audio program which has the capability of "stripping" vocals off of prerecorded tracks. I misspelled the site's name and people were having trouble finding it, here is the correct listing. www.goldwave.com

You must call up your recording into GoldWave and make a track of it. Read the instructions as this usually means calling up your media player to play the recording and making a recording of it into GoldWave. Once you have a track made in GoldWave, you can make whatever adjustments you wish.

To "strip" the vocals off of your recording, click on "Effects" on the menu bar and then go down to "Stereo". When you mouse-over "Stereo", a side menu comes up that has the option to "Remove Vocals". Please keep in mind that it will only strip vocals cleanly off of some recordings depending on where the vocal was mixed in to begin with. If the vocal leans more to one stereo channel than another, you will get a fairly clean strip. If the vocal was mixed right "down the middle", you will be left with an echo of the vocal in the background once you use the stripper. If you really get into the program you will find that it has much more to offer than this one feature and if you understand audio and how sound works, this program will let you do anything you need to to fix problems in your recordings.