Karaoke Forums

Years ago when I first got into this biz, one of the big things that bothered me about other KJ shows was the big spans of dead air as you waited for the next singer to meander up to the microphone.. so I decided even before my first show that i'd have some kind of voiceover music.

I knew a guy in the traffic department at a local UHF station who hooked me up with some tapes of just elevator music, and eventually expanded my collection to include old 70's TV show theme music, and lots of game show music.. then I recorded a collection to a MiniDisc (anyone remember those?) and set it for continuous shuffle. I'd just slide the fader up on the board for that channel when the singer was done, and slide it back down when the next singer started.

Used that for several years till the MiniDisc died.. then replaced it with a cheapo portable CD player and a custom burned CD doing pretty much the same thing.. till that died.

More recently, i'd gotten into just playing those tracks on a separate program on my laptop. Virtual DJ has two 'decks', but I like to use the second deck to cue up the next singer while the current singer is still on the mic.

I'd thought about getting an MP3 player and running that like i'd done the DiscMan and the MiniDisc before, but just haven't gotten around to it, or felt the expense was justified.

Today during my weekly pilgramage to the local thrift store I came across a Archos Jukebox Recorder.. it's basically a MP3 player/recorder with a built in 20gb laptop hard drive.

$10, has built in rechargeable batteries (so no additional wall wart to hog up space in my already taxed power strip) and has 1/8" stereo input and output so I suppose if I wanted to, I could record singers with it, too.

Think I just found my new voiceover music source.

But it got me to thinking.. how many of you use background/voiceover music? What are you using as a source? Any tracks you like?

My 'Voiceover Mix' CD has stuff like the theme from Sanford & Son, Theme from Benny Hill Show, Price Is Right Theme, Star Wars 'Canteena' Song, $25,000 Pyramid song, and of course, a smattering of porno 'baum chikka wow wow' sort of music.

That Archos unit is just a MP3 player with a few extra features. Still well worth the $10.00, though.

I play filler dance music between songs, as do most people you will find on this board. Then there's a percentage that just stick with the dead air. Depends on your venue.

I use an American Audio SDJ1, which is basically just a rack mount dual MP3 deck with basic DJ functions that takes two 4GB SD cards:

http://pro-audio.musiciansfriend.com/pr ... =147227656

Each deck gets it's own channel on the mixer, and I beatmatch and cut/fade with the karaoke music.

For what you want to do, I say just go with an MP3 player! Like you have found, you can get a decent one for $10-20.

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C Mc
KJ, FL

I use my laptop running Sam PartyDJ to run voice-over or "house music" (as many call it here). Sam PartyDJ had dual decks with all sorts of DJ capability including automatic cross fading, beat matching, pitch shift and a bunch of other stuff I never need to use. I load up a playlist and just let it run. I have PartyDJ output through a separate USB sound card that I bring into the console on a second stereo channel (the Karaoke music goes in the other stereo channel).

I've used this in one of two ways, either I manually fade the voice-over music in and out or I've also used a compressor to setup ducking where it would use the karaoke channel as the side-chain (or key-in) input and automatically "duck" out the voice-over when there was input on the Karaoke channel. The only issue is songs like "Here for the Party" that have a long pause would sometimes allow the house music to fade back in. So I've stopped doing that. Now I just have the ducking setup on my vocal channel so that when I talk on my mic, it brings down the house music (Like a radio DJ voice over).

As far as tracks, I have a pretty large selection of music. I just use regular album or DJ tracks from both my CD Library and many newer songs that I just purchase through Amazon.com as I need them. I have kind of a standard playlist that includes a mix of just about everything but then will customize it and add songs in based on the type of crowd I have.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

I just use all of my dj cd's (ripped to mp3) on random order playing through OTS DJ in auto mode, perfect fade ins/outs, sounds like a pro dj in the background, however the music isn't up for more than 30 seconds usually (if that), never full songs. Could be anything from King Diamond to Etta James to TV Themes to Rick Dees that pops up.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I just dropped MediaMonkey in the background and set it on random against my DJ library.... Normally I use a second output for that. I've also just put in a random CD of music appropriate for the crowd and venue and left it in the background on shuffle.

Although, I've thought about just limiting it to songs that I have in karaoke... There have been a few times that I've played a snippit of a song and people turn in a slip to sing it right after.... (normally I see that after I hear them saying, 'You killed it when it just started getting good!').

I know a KJ who plays video from Youtube, but sometimes there is a wait for spooling. He has asked me to show him how to use a Youtube downloader and put videos together in advance with an editor, into one big file, so that he can stop and restart it in between singers, and that seems like a good plan to me, all copyright issues aside.

-d

Actually, if you want a video source for the 'breaks' - try picking up one of the various DVD's of stuff that's out there - something like 'The Mind's Eye', 'Beyond The Mind's Eye' or something similar. Of course, there is the ever popular 'Shadow Dancers' series as well as a number of 'looping' videos available that are based on time lapse and the like.

I use Compuhost, which has a filler tunes option. I just load whatever songs I choose for that night, set the fade-in, or fade-out time and it automatically fades the end of the karaoke song, and fades in the filler tune. Works seamlessly on most songs. I've found maybe a few that it didn't fade perfectly on, because of the ending of the song. But I'm sure nobody noticed it but me, because I'm the one setting it up.
This is one of the "bells and whistles" everyone is always talking about. To me, it is well worth it.


Rosario

If you get it to work please tell me how to do it.
I have not been able to for a while now.
Not even from my cache.

EDIT: Download Youtube stuff that is.

Jerry,

Try www.downloadhelper.net it works with firefox and has a feature that will convert the file to a windows media file.

I use iTunes for music between singers, which plays through my laptop's main headphone jack. I have a USB device for my karaoke output.

An iPod would also be a low-hassle choice if you don't want to fool with the playlist.

I just quit my Saturday gig and customers/bar staff have been begging me to come back. Apparently the huge amount of dead air between singers is a big source of complaints. All their previous KJs had the same "dead air" format; I guess they didn't know what they were getting until they had to deal with someone new.

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Jeff Wheeler, moonlight DJ/KJ

i use siglos pro and it has a fill in list as well. i actually started loading it with upbeat guitar instrumentals (summer song, cliffs of dover) and it works great.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

Second the nomination for Compuhost. It's one of the best features and primarily the reason I bought it.

We are disc but my boyfriend does bring his laptop to play bumper music. He mostly has it on random but if he needs to pick a song for any reason, the laptop makes it easy to do that. For instance, a drunk guy was at the bar once saying over and over again that he was starting to feel like he was in the Twilight Zone. The bartendress whispered that to my boyfriend and he had the Twilight Zone theme cued up to play as the next filler. It scared the guy off for 6 months. Or you can stick in 2001 for your Elvis people, etc.

The boyfriend has to work his regular job tonight so I am filling in. I am going to bring my old Walkman and see if I can use if for bumper music. I am not usually the one running the equipment so don't know if I can coordinate it all but am going to give it a try. Actually, I have only run the equipment once, two weeks ago and on short notice. I didn't mess up the rotation, key changes or pick the wrong song (just once) but I did push the wrong button while switching between players a few times and blasted people out so adding a third musical source, while old hat for most of you, will be a bungee jump experience for me. And probably the audience.

I didn't use bumper muisic, but there was no dead air either. My thinking is that if sound is constant it becomes noise and gets tuned out. There is also the chance that people might want to talk with each other or order drinks. Then there is the "Look at me" factor. People don't do karaoke to hear themselves sing, they do it to get noticed. Transitioning from my "moron babbeling" to music is a bigger change than from music to music and is more inclined to focus the attention of the crowd to the singer (IMHO). Lastly, I think bumper music tends to depersonalize the host and reduces him/her/it to being part of the equipment.

In short, I want the crowd as involved as I can get them and I think bumper music has to opposite effect.

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Okay, who took my pants?

It is interesting that you say that, Weed, as when I attend our friend's show that doesn't use bumper music I never notice "dead air," In fact it IS a chance to carry on conversations without shouting, rest your ears etc. And it is not as if we are all hanging on every word or sound coming from the stage as we could be preoccupied with friends, etc.

But when I ran our show last week and didn't use our usual bumper music, the silence between songs seemed oppressive and I felt pressured to keep talking when really it wasn't necessary. I had the songs pre-cued so it wasn't really alot of space in between but from my perspective it felt like eons and I panicked that the energy was draining right out of the room. Our friend's show is much more low key while ours keeps up a certain amount of energy that seems to be lost without the bumper music. Our singers tend to dance more (we don't play whole dance songs, they dance to the karaoke) and be a bit more party like.

Those who like a laid back show where they can converse with their friends with music as the background like the Friday Show best. Those who want to let loose and dance like our show best. There is something to be said for both approaches.

If you're looking to allow people to have conversation and get a more obvious transition from music to karaoke, keep the music level noticably quieter than the karaoke music. It kills the dead air, allows people to carry on conversation, and then when a karaoke tune comes up the added volume says OK Time to pay attention.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

Think that's another plus for Compuhost.
That's how I run it.
Also there are a few seconds silence before the track starts.
At first I didn't like it.
It is like a loud voice saying the song is about to start.

Well this is just a matter of opinion, but that's actually a reason why I wouldn't use compuhost. I prefer having two separate applications, one running house music the other running karaoke tracks. That way I can have them going to separate soundcards and therefore separate channels on the mixer. I MUCH prefer using the faders on the mixer over trying to do volume control through software.

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DJ Tony
Let It Rip Karaoke

The filler tunes player has it's own volume control that you can set and forget. Then you have your player volume. I usually set both and use the volume control from the mixer. I usually have my hand on the volume knob anyhow, because of the difference in volume from one track to the next. But the fade-in and fade-out on Compuhost make the transition from karaoke track to filler music flawlessly. For the average person (non-engineer), it really earns it's keep. JMO

Rosario