Crooning and croaking with computer karaoke By John Moore	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
家でカラオケを楽しむ方法 今週はコンピューターを使ってカラオケを楽しむ方法を紹介します。英語の曲を自宅でこっそり練習して、上手になったら人前で披露するというのはいかがですか？

無料ソフト vanBasco Karaoke Player をダウンロードすれば自宅でカラオケも簡単

In America on a Friday night, the way to have fun is to go dancing. In Japan, on the other hand, karaoke rules. This is a fundamental cultural difference. American kids can hop and bop all night, but they'd be ashamed to sing in public. Likewise, you'll never get a Japanese person to shake his body to a boogie beat.

The great thing about karaoke is that it's an excellent method for improving your English, as well as being good entertainment. Some Japanese kids are too shy to make a peep in the classroom, but give them a microphone and some background music, and they'll do an amazing Elvis impersonation.

I'ｖe been wanting to try karaoke at home, using my computer and the Internet, so last night, my son Peter and I finally got it set up. Peter ordered a pizza, and we had a little party. Here's how it went:

First we had to download some free software, and I chose vanBasco's Karaoke Player(http://www.vanbasco.com), which has a great graphical interface with lots of interesting functions. It only took a minute to download and install.

Next, we needed to find some karaoke songs to sing. The right type of computer file is called a MIDI karaoke file, and it usually has a ".kar" extension. The vanBasco home page itself has a handy search form for finding songs, but there are many other places to look, such as the Midi Karaoke Library (http://www.midikaraoke.com/) mentioned here six weeks ago.

OK! The vanBasco Karaoke Player works just like a CD player, but when you press the play button, you see the words of your song going by. You can adjust the tempo and tone. You can also mix or mute different instruments. Great!

Peter is a good singer, but he mostly likes Japanese songs. Oh well. I usually end up "croaking" instead of singing. In fact, I believe the word "karaoke" really means "croaky" singing. I'm much better at dancing. But now at least, we won't have to spend any money going out to a karaoke pub, because this computer karaoke works great. It's completely free, except for the pizza.

By the way, karaoke is becoming more and more popular in the U.S. these days. If you look in the Google directory (http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Music/Karaoke/), you'll see over a hundred karaoke club pages on the Web.

Shukan ST: Oct. 3, 2003

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