- 8 Mar 2005
- 2,094
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Everyone knows karaoke is huge in Japan, pop singles come out regularly in the format:
1. Single
2. b-side
3. Instrumental (karaoke) version
There is the get on stage with the reflective backdrop karaoke, the anoy your friends in the booth ending with osomatsu sama afterwords... the sing karaoke to win liquor at the hostess bar karaoke, etcetera.
The only time I've ever thought of effacing myself by letting the world hear my wretched singing voice is while I was in Japan... but I'm wondering if my experiences are similar to others.... outside of karaoke with friends, this is what I've found...
There always seems to be one guy who is a professional trained singer (you find this in karaoke I think eveywhere...), they belt out some showa-period tune perfectly while girls bat their lashes and look on in amazement.... then they do it every other night and it gets boring to you... but not to anyone else.
People I've seen in Japan take karaoke seriously, very seriously, maybe too seriously? Forget giving a half-hearted rendition of whatever song you choose to sing, people tend to give you a disdainful look if you're not giving it 100%... Getting drunk and brutalizing your favourites doesn't need to be so stressful, but it seems like public karaoke is like this---
I won a bottle of korean chu-hi at a hostess bar when I was in Japan, it was for my stirring rendition of "Raindrops keep fallin' on my head."... I sang it as shmaltsy as I could, and, it is a song I know pretty well... call me a Burt Bacharach fan I guess.
I guess singing karaoke publicly, you realize how little you actually DO know of a song, as verses flick by on the screen, you're very drunk, and you get the feeling that picking "Welcome to the Jungle" might not have been the best choice... I'm not very good at reading kanji, and all the pop songs I know are by girls...
Has anyone practiced karaoke with the intent to impress others? What are your karaoke resources?
Tell me your karaoke-monogatari.
ps. Oh yes, one other thing as I look for an admin to pm about deleting my dumb double post, in karaoke, and a lot of music in general, there is a difference in the way that sylables are sung...
Letters like u and i which may be more silent in spoken Japanese get a full beat as fits the music... also, r-sylables get pronounced as if they were an "l", instead of the cross between a d & r, in spoken Japanese.
1. Single
2. b-side
3. Instrumental (karaoke) version
There is the get on stage with the reflective backdrop karaoke, the anoy your friends in the booth ending with osomatsu sama afterwords... the sing karaoke to win liquor at the hostess bar karaoke, etcetera.
The only time I've ever thought of effacing myself by letting the world hear my wretched singing voice is while I was in Japan... but I'm wondering if my experiences are similar to others.... outside of karaoke with friends, this is what I've found...
There always seems to be one guy who is a professional trained singer (you find this in karaoke I think eveywhere...), they belt out some showa-period tune perfectly while girls bat their lashes and look on in amazement.... then they do it every other night and it gets boring to you... but not to anyone else.
People I've seen in Japan take karaoke seriously, very seriously, maybe too seriously? Forget giving a half-hearted rendition of whatever song you choose to sing, people tend to give you a disdainful look if you're not giving it 100%... Getting drunk and brutalizing your favourites doesn't need to be so stressful, but it seems like public karaoke is like this---
I won a bottle of korean chu-hi at a hostess bar when I was in Japan, it was for my stirring rendition of "Raindrops keep fallin' on my head."... I sang it as shmaltsy as I could, and, it is a song I know pretty well... call me a Burt Bacharach fan I guess.
I guess singing karaoke publicly, you realize how little you actually DO know of a song, as verses flick by on the screen, you're very drunk, and you get the feeling that picking "Welcome to the Jungle" might not have been the best choice... I'm not very good at reading kanji, and all the pop songs I know are by girls...
Has anyone practiced karaoke with the intent to impress others? What are your karaoke resources?
Tell me your karaoke-monogatari.
ps. Oh yes, one other thing as I look for an admin to pm about deleting my dumb double post, in karaoke, and a lot of music in general, there is a difference in the way that sylables are sung...
Letters like u and i which may be more silent in spoken Japanese get a full beat as fits the music... also, r-sylables get pronounced as if they were an "l", instead of the cross between a d & r, in spoken Japanese.
Thanks, appreciate it!Mycernius said:No worries, doubling has been deleted
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