Karaoke

29/01/2010

I love music, I love playing  the piano and I love singing. I am no singer, I lose my  pitch, tone and tempo when I sing, but I still keep on singing. I don`t have voice training lessons and I always am poor singer, but still, I repeat, I love singing.
I had always heard about karaoke back in my country but never had the chance to enjoy one, in my first 20 years of life. For a person who loves to sing but can`t  sing in public, karaoke is the best answer. I was first introduced to this method, of introducing the poor singer inside me to the others, in 2008. What my friends and I wanted was a little get together of the four foreign girls and do something. Finally ,it was decided on a karaoke night out.

 図1　Karaoke Stand

The karaoke bar , where I go to sing, is just 15 minutes away from my place. It has packages for free time, one in the noon -from 11.00a.m. to 8.00p.m. for 550yen (+400 if you order the drink bar)- and the other at night -from 10.00p.m. to 7.00a.m. for 800yen(+650 if you order the drink bar)-. As we were busy in the day time we at first went in fro the night session, where we sing endlessly till  the dawn. Due to the recent economic effect on our lives, now my friends and I manage to  find time for the noon`s free time session.

図2　Karaoke Room

Rooms are allocated according to the number of people who are taking part in one session.  The room above is for around  six or seven people in the maximum. The brightness of the  room  can be changed by the  dimmer switch. We always prefer the dim and dark atmosphere of the room where the singer inside us can perform with an enhanced energy (dark energy??).You get two mikes, great sound system in where you can have the your own way. The rooms are sound proof so the loudness and the noise does not matter in the least. The most interesting thing is , how noisy it can ever be, it never back feed !!!

図3　Karaoke Screen

The above photo is the karaoke screen where lyrics and the visuals are played. In Japan the lyrics of English foreign songs have its furigana on the letters so that even the Japanese can sing them.  All the lyrics are in Japanese, so a foreigner who does not know how to read in Japanese will have no chance of singing Japanese songs. In my case, I prefer English songs but I sing some Japanese songs too.

図4　Karoke Machine and Remote Controller

The machine on the left is  a karaoke machine. You can enter the code of the song with the number dial and control the key, tempo plus editing the song lists and many more. It`s everything is in Japanese, but still it is not that hard to read and understand. The device on the right is the remote controller, which has the same functions. Normally one room has two remote controllers and one karaoke machine. The karaoke machine is not  essential if the remote controllers are in hand. But in some cases the songs are lesser in some machines and some have  a large library of songs. So the songs you can sing differs according to the room.You can Choose songs by the song name, language, group, artist name, duet, old hits, duets and etc.

Karaoke has become one of my favorite hobbies now. I prefer going to the karaoke bar, but most of the time , I end up with you tube karaoke or some online stuff. This is a good leisure time amusement for the people who love to sing but still can not. No body worries about you going out of the pitch, wrong note or bad breathing and stuff. It is you and some of your friend, in a world of your own, shouting out a song.It `s so much fun, all tunes and music, love and rhythm and can do anything you want to.
I will be going there again and again, and I know this is some thing I am never fed up with.

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