Karaoke Forums

OK, my husbands company moved us temp out to CA. We have found several places out here that have karaoke. Went to one that eveyone raved about but when we got there it was advertised as starting at 7 but the waitress said it started at 8 but the guy running it said they started at about 8:30. That was problem #1. The next was he did not even wait for anyone to turn in slips he automatically set up his regulars to a rotation no matter who else was there. Then almost every song he put a massive reverb on it. Some so bad it sounded as if they were down a tunnel. Then all 3 hosts had to have their turn in the rotation too and usually a duet with 2 of them also.

So questions are these:
Do you automatically put the regulars in a rotation with reguard for anyone else that is also wanting to sing?
Do you automatically put reverb on every song and get surprised when someone asks you turn it off?
If you have a full rotation to you as a host put you and all your other hosts in the rotation to sing too?

Based on this not sure if I want to go back there no matter how "good" they are supposed to be.

Lonman, I searched online to see if any places were advertising if they were doing karaoke. Some were. I called alot of bars and clubs to double check to see if they were or not. Most of those were touting that place as having karaoke and all that they had heard was that it was good. There are other places that offer karaoke that we will check out in the area but not sure if we will go back to that one. My husbands company has us out here for 6 months so we are trying to find several places that have karaoke to go to. He's a performer at heart and this helps him get some of that out of his system since he, at the moment, can't do shows himself.
I can understand some reverb on some songs, there are some that almost require it, but to have it on every singer and every song down to where most sounded they were singing from down a tunnel or a well is just not good in my opinion. They may be under the assumption that it "hides" bad singing but to me it just made it worse.

Yeah i'd keep searching. Some of the best karaoke shows are the ones that do not advertist themselves as the best. Also I don't take web reviews (like Yelp) into account as a reliable source, pretty easy to manipulate.

Well again every singer should have some effect on every song, it just helps smooth out the voice, how much is the key - again you should not be able to 'hear' the effect, unless it is supposed to be there.

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

We have two regulars that want the host to choose their songs so when they come in, they are automatically added to the line-up. But they are put in according to when they arrive. We do have one fellow who traditionally opens the show so if alot of people are there at the same time, he will be first but the others give him that honor as he is 83. If he arrives after others have put in their slips then he gets put in line after them.

Reverb seems to be a hot subject in one town. We have the competition spreading that we don't have any and will make people sound bad. We thought that was a werid thing to come up with. We always use a bit. Sometimes people want more or less and that is easily accomodated.

The hosts sing if the rotation is sparse and drop out as it fills. Sometimes the host will jump in with a fast song or request but not routinely sing each round if there is a long list.

we do use reverb, just enough to hear it then back a touch, unless it is needed for effect.
put regulars in, yup. they like us to pick songs for them so we just put them in if they are present.
other singers go to the 6th position form the current singer (our program shows the next 5 singers on a scrolling marquee at the top of the screen) so i dont have anybody pop in immediately, or have to wait through 25 singers for one song. from that spot it's old singer new singer, etc.

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

My regs usually need to drink and socialize first before singing so i wait until they put a slip in.

My mixer is a mackie pro-fx 12 and for songs like Purple Rain or Black Hole Sun like that i use #16 reverb plus delay.

For regular type songs i use small auditorium or warm concert hall. I can't really tell the difference from my vantage point.

Stronger voiced seasoned singers prefer lots more reverb and always ask for it.

Regular karaoke singers don't seem to care what i do, so while running multiple mics at once, i usually turn the reverb down a lot for songs like Love Shack or any rap songs. I do this to cut down on the possibility of feedback when they cup the mic head. It seems to work for me.

For nice slow duets i usually crank the reverb up more.

My regulars take pride in being the ones who are recognized as such, and put in without asking as well as having a song chosen for them (I don’t do that unless they have at least 100 songs in their repertoire). If my regulars are present at the beginning, and I need them to get the rotation started I’ll put them in. But I always put those who’ve come to me in before I start adding my regulars.

The program I use allows several options for automatically dealing with the rotation. I set it to automatically put any new singer requests in front of whoever is singing at the time of the request. That way the current singer is always first in the rotation and you won’t have to hear a new singer until they hear you. I think that’s fair. If it’s someone who has been there all night, I might click their slip and drag them up a little closer. My regulars don’t get any extra special treatment.

I will traditionally sing the first song to “break the ice”. I don’t sing after that unless it’s a very special request. When I want to sing, I’ll go to someone else’s karaoke show. I figure if my patrons were coming to hear ME sing, then I wouldn’t be hosting a karaoke show, I’d be on a stage with a band.



I went to a show recently where the host had the effects wet to the point of bell ringing.
He even had his own mic that way and people couldn’t understand what he was saying when calling up the next singer. He’d get two or three people mistakenly coming to the stage every song thinking he called their names. I would have left right away, but it was too funny to watch so I stuck around about half an hour. No way was I going to sing.

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KNOW THYSELF

Yes just as with anything in live sound there is always a point of diminishing returns, at a certain point effects stop being an enhance to the sound and start deteriorating it. Why anyone would use effects on the mic for announcements is beyond me though.

I don't use any sort of echo/reverb. I do have 1 microphone hooked up to a TC Helicon hard tuner, so if the singer is doing something new (T-Pain, Ke$ha), I'll add in the hard tune.

I guess I've shied away from reverb from too many bad experiences of KJs using it improperly. The only song I use echo on is In The Air Tonight (maybe Purple Rain too, depending on the singer). I've seen too many KJs use it as a crutch and had a lot of compliments from singers because I don't use it. Lonman, I wish I could come to one of your shows to see how you do it.

I am a DJ that fell into hosting karaoke because nobody gets married on a Thursday night, so I'll admit, I have a lot to learn about how to use effects .

Thunder, I kinda do the same thing. I keep my name in rotation (even though I NEVER sing) to use as a fill in for a regular who showed up after the list was full, to bump someone when we've hit an "OMG GIVE ME A KNIFE I NEED TO SLIT MY WRIST THIS $#!T IS SO SLOW AND DEPRESSING" set, or a member of the weekend band comes in to help him promote his night.

I do have a number of regulars who have my phone number. How do you guys feel on regulars texting in their requests to save a spot? On a "normal" night, I have anywhere from 40-50 singers (don't be envious. it sucks when 35 of them are asking when they are going to sing next; waited 2 hrs, etc). As soon as I see the text, I will write their name down to save their spot. I do have a rule - if I don't see it, it doesn't get added until I do.

Echo, reverb, delays, chorus, flange, phase shifts or any combination of them all have their place, if used properly for any given song I like to put either a small amount of reverb or chorus on the singers mics because it does enhance the vocals over a straight dry mic.

On the phoning in a spot the regulars know they can phone into the bars and the barstaff will put their names on the list, however if they aren't there or don't have a song in when I get to their names they go to the bottom of the list.

Again I just run all vocals with just enough reverb to accent a vocal, not actually 'hear' the effect, if you can hear the effect to a point where that is what you notice, it is set too high - again on the majority of songs. Every recorded song in history has some bit of effect - reverb being the most common, but there are others that require other effects like delay, chorus, or the autotune type of effects (which I don't use - at least at this time).

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

I am sorry you do that to your singers.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Like I said, I've never heard it done properly. I've been out to other venues and KJs use it as a crutch - to the point everything sounds like it's being sang out of a tin can and string. The sound quality was horrible. After a while, too much gets annoying to the other customers.

That's why I said I would love to attend Lonman's show. He seems to have a solid grasp on how to successfully use echo. The philosophy around here seems to be, "crank it up to 11 and mask the singer altogether."

Like I said, I do have a hard tuner which is amazing on any song recorded with obvious effects. The only issue is you have to manually plug in the key and some brands don't include that information at the beginning of the track so it becomes guesswork at that point.

If it's done properly you won't hear it.


As do most good hosts.


That is not at all the approach of good hosts, and if you have heard it from the hosts in this thread I wonder what version of this board you are reading.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

That is not at all the approach of good hosts, and if you have heard it from the hosts in this thread I wonder what version of this board you are reading.[/quote]


"around here" as in local KJs around in this area - not on this board.

I'm really sorry if I offended you in something that I said. I didn't realize not using echo was such a hot topic. I did however come on here to learn more about it though.

You didn't offend me. I am trying to convince you that totally eschewing reverb is just about as bad as using too much. You should increase it until you just notice it, then back off a tad. That's the proper amount.

As for type, I would use a hall reverb or reverb-delay of some type for most songs. Personally, I use hall reverb for most songs, and plate for older country. For certain songs, such as "Behind Blue Eyes", I jack up the reverb a bit.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

I use a moderate amount of reverb, and adjust for the singer and the type of song. Almost anywhere I go, though, hosts use waaaaay too much. It's criminal. Also, I raraely sing more than the first song.

Birdofsong

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Birdofsong

What I've found is, mix is all a subjective subject. In the end, our own opinions as KJ's doesn't really matter. Sure, we know the constraints of our equipment compared to our singers (like, too much of something can cause feedback) but in the end, it's what they think of the mix that matters.

So to that extent, I added an onscreen tool to assist singers in asking for the effects mix that they want.


My effect/mixing is all PC based, and controlled through midi controller knobs and sliders. I use puredata to find the position of the midi knob tied to an effect, and it returns.

0-127

I like to use % instead of the velocity value, so with a little more math, I convert the number into % and display it for them.

So now the REALLY really picky singers will come up to me before a song to say,

"HEY toq, can I have 33% reverb.. and just 15% echo? Please?

The numbers show up on the screen, they're happy.

At some point I'm just going to add touch screen sliders so they can adjust stuff themselves. Like I said, my mix won't matter to the pickier ones, just let em perfect it themselves.

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Living my life as Robert Cortese, 162 E. Jackson St, San Jose CA.

It's like the difference between high and low budget toilet paper, it really doesn't matter in the end. -exweedfarmer

Which is smarter? Just sticking to making/selling karaoke, while people all over the world create software FOR FREE that helps you sell it, or trying to compete with them and keeping it a closed loop while you blow your money into an industry (software) that you(the karaoke manu) knows nothing about?
-me

I always use a little reverb, and like one post said, I turn it down for rap songs but also for anyone who "swallows the mic". If you don't use reverb, my experience is that you will hear a lot of stuff you don't want to hear - like the "poppin' p's"

But nobody sounds like they are singing in a tin can. I never go that far.

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I'm not a cheerleader, but I paid for my pom poms with my own money!

Every now and then i'll have a singer in the middle of a song ask me, "Give me some more echo!"

I generally nod and that's it.

I refuse to put 'sewer pipe' reverb on vocals, or put the vocals 47 feet in front of the backing tracks, or do anything else at a singers request to subject the rest of the room to crappy sound.

Funny how it's generally the mediocre (at best) singers that like to tell you how to run the board. The excellent singers and the crappy singers never do.