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Karaoke Wikipedia
2010-12-31 22:16:14
 

History

A karaoke bar in Wuhan, People's Republic of China.

The concept of creating studio recordings that lack the lead vocal has been around for probably nearly as long as recording itself. Many artists, amateur and professional, perform in situations where a full band/orchestra is either logistically or financially impractical, so they use a "karaoke" recording; however, they are actually the original artists. (This is not to be confused with "lip synching," in which a performer mimes to a previously produced studio recording with the lead vocal intact.)

[edit]1960s: Development of audio-visual-recording devices

From 1961–1966, the American TV network NBC carried a karaoke-like series, Sing Along with Mitch, featuring host Mitch Miller and a chorus with the lyrics to their songs superimposed near the bottom of the TV screen for home audience participation.[2] The primary difference between Karaoke and sing-along songs is the absence of the lead vocalist.

Sing-alongs (present since the beginning of singing) fundamentally changed with the introduction of new technology. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s, storage of audible materials began to dominate the music recording industry and revolutionized the portability and ease of use of band and instrumental music by musicians and entertainers as the demand for entertainers increased globally. This may have been attributable to the introduction of music cassette tapes, technology that arose from the need to customize music recordings and the desire for a "handy" format that would allow fast and convenient duplication of music and thereby meet the requirements of the entertainers' lifestyles and the 'footloose' character of the entertainment industry.

[edit]1971: Development of the karaoke machine

There are various disputes about who first invented the name karaoke. One claim is that the karaoke styled machine was invented by Japanese musician Daisuke Inoue[3] in Kobe, Japan, in 1971.[4][5] After becoming popular in Japan, karaoke spread by Hideo to East and Southeast Asia during the 1980s and subsequently to other parts of the world.

In Japan, it has long been common to provide musical entertainment at a dinner or a party. Japanese drummer Daisuke Inoue was asked by frequent guests in the Utagoe Kissa, where he performed, to provide a recording of his performance so that they could sing along on a company-sponsored vacation. Realizing the potential for the market, Inoue made a tape recorder that played a song for a 100-yen coin. Instead of giving his karaoke machines away, Inoue leased them out so that stores did not have to buy new songs on their own. Originally, it was considered a somewhat expensive fad, as it lacked the live atmosphere of a real performance and 100 yen in the 1970s was the price of two typical lunches, but it caught on as a popular entertainment. Karaoke machines were initially placed in restaurants and hotel rooms; soon, new businesses called karaoke boxes, with compartmented rooms, became popular. In 2004, Daisuke Inoue was awarded the tongue-in-cheek Ig NobelPeace Prize for inventing karaoke, "thereby providing an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other."[6]

[edit]Filipino patent

Filipino musicians and entertainers immigrating to Japan became a notable trend in 1967,[7] with streams of singers continuing to enter the country well into the 1970s and bringing with them their music. With a knack for improvising gadgets at minimal costs, Filipinos devised solutions that would generate greater revenue at a smaller cost than having a musical band, resulting in the development of 'minus-one music' - a sing-along musical accompaniment recorded on cassette tapes, a singing style that also became prevalent in the Philippines from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. It was also during the first half of this era that 'minus-one music' was popular in the Philippines, where it was synonymously termed 'multiplex music' and recorded on cassette tapes on which both a vocalized and non-vocalized instrumental-only version of the same song were available. Indeed, 'minus-one music' was actually first recorded with the use of cassette tapes and not on thecompact disc, which came into existence several years later according to the claims associated with Roberto del Rosario's work.[8]

Inoue never bothered to patent his invention, possibly losing his chance to become one of Japan's richest men. Roberto del Rosario, a Filipino inventor who developed a sing along system in 1975 and patented it in the 1980s called his sing-along system "Minus-One", now[when?] holds the patent for the device now commonly known as the "karaoke machine". The spread of "Minus-One" music would have been attributed to a few Filipinos who brought with them their music, as mentioned above in the late 1960s through to the 1970s, wherever they go and within which period a few started going to Japan as entertainers. Following a court battle with a Japanese company which claimed to have invented the system, del Rosario's patents were issued in 1983 and 1986, a decade after the device was supposedly invented.[9]

[edit]1990s

Entrance Hall of a karaoke box inTaipei

Karaoke soon spread to the rest of Asia and other countries all over the world. In-home karaoke machines soon followed but lacked success in the US and Canadian markets. When creators became aware of this problem, karaoke machines were no longer being sold strictly for the purpose of karaoke but as home theater systems to enhance television watching to "movie theater like quality". Home theater systems took off, and karaoke went from being the main purpose of the stereo system, to a side feature.

As more music became available for karaoke machines, more people within the industry saw karaoke as a profitable form of lounge and nightclub entertainment. It is not uncommon for some bars to have karaoke performances seven nights a week, commonly with much more high-end sound equipment than the small, stand-alone consumer versions. Dance floors and lighting effects are also becoming common sights in karaoke bars. Lyrics are often displayed on multiple TV screens around the bar.

[edit]Second patent case

Yet again another battle on patent infringement continued on with another company.[10] Posthumously awarded in favour of Roberto del Rosario under G.R. No. 115106, 15 March 1996 of the Philippine Supreme Court filed on 18 January 1993, it was a final victory for his family members a couple of decades after the first patent was enforced.[citation needed]

[edit]Technology

Early karaoke machine

A basic karaoke machine consists of a music player, microphone inputs, a means of altering the pitch of the played music, and an audio output. Some low-end machines attempt to provide vocal suppression so that one can feed regular songs into the machine and suppress the voice of the original singer; however, this is rarely effective. Most common machines are CD+G, Laser Disc, VCD or DVD players with microphone inputs and an audio mixer built in. CD+G players use a special track called subcode to encode the lyrics and pictures displayed on the screen while other formats natively display both audio and video.

Most karaoke machines have technology that electronically changes the pitch of the music so that amateur singers can sing along to any music source by choosing a key that is appropriate for their vocal range, while maintaining the original tempo of the song. (There were some very old systems that used cassettes, and these changed the pitch by altering playback speed, but none are still on the market, and their commercial use is virtually nonexistent.)

A popular game using karaoke is to type in a random number and call up a song, of which participants take turns to try to sing as much as they can. In some machines, this game is pre-programmed and may be limited to a genre so that they cannot call up an obscure national anthem that none of the participants can sing. This game has come to be called "Kamikaze Karaoke" or "Karaoke Roulette" in some parts of the United States and Canada.[citation needed]

Many low-end entertainment systems have a karaoke mode that attempts to remove the vocal track from regular audio CDs. This is done by center removal, which exploits the fact that in most music the vocals are in the center. This means that the voice, as part of the music, has equal volume on both stereo channels and no phase difference. To get the quasi-karaoke (mono) track, the left channel of the original audio is subtracted from the right channel. The Sega Saturn also has a "mute vocals" feature that is based on the same principle and is also able to adjust the pitch of the song to match the singer's vocal range.

A row of 3 karaoke booths at a shopping center in Angeles City.

The crudeness of this approach is reflected in the often-poor performance of voice removal. Common effects are hearing the reverberation of the voice track (due to stereo reverb being put on the vocals); also, other instruments (snare/bass drum, solo instruments) that happen to be mixed into the center get removed, degrading this approach to hardly more than a gimmick in those devices. Recent years have seen the development of new techniques based on the Fast Fourier Transform. Although still not perfect, the results are usually much better than the old technique, because the stereo left-right comparison can be done on individual frequencies.

[edit]Early age

Early karaoke machines used cassette tapes, but technological advances replaced this with CDs, VCDs, laserdiscs and, currently, DVDs. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Pioneer Electronics dominated the international karaoke music video market, producing high quality karaoke music videos (inspired by the music videos such as those on MTV).[citation needed]

In 1992, Taito introduced the 

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