Karaoke, Online and Offline

It's no secret that I enjoy a night out with some good karaoke. There are a number of venues in Santa Barbara, and I actually put together a spreadsheet that outlined the different venues on different days-- turns out that every day, there's at least two venues offering karaoke somewhere in Santa Barbara. I personally have only tried Zodo's and Old Town Tavern, and OTT has become the favorite. First, it's offered 3 times a week, second, G-Man (the DJ) has a HUGE selection of songs, and third, they start early enough in the evening that if you get there right on time, the crowd is so thin that you don't have to wait very long to get a number of songs in :-) I blogged about one of our first outings here.

I tend to gravitate more toward country and oldies, since those are the genres I know best. The last time my friend AJ made it out, he commented on how he normally doesn't like country, but my singing it was okay. Funny, I thought the same thing about rap music-- I'm not a big fan of it, but when AJ sings it, it actually sounds fun! Even funnier, apparently Kartik was of the same opinion-- not a big fan of country, but after a few visits to OTT with me and Tabitha (who also likes country), he actually got hooked, and now listens to it all the time! Score one for the country converts side ;-) It's even gotten to the point that he is willing to get on stage and sing one of his favorites! This from the guy whom I figured would rather have teeth pulled than go up and sing!

These days, with Todd back in town, the karaoke nights out are going to be scarce, so I get my fix at the computer instead. Last summer I discovered some fun online karaoke sites, and eventually decided to purchase a membership on one of them. I chose Myspace because they were having a sale at the time-- an annual membership cost only $5/month instead of the standard $10. SingSnap, my other favorite site, had a number of good songs available for free at the time, so between the two sites, I could find just about any song I wanted to sing (except for ABBA-- what is it about ABBA that makes it so difficult for others to procure rights to their songs?) Now I've got a SingSnap membership, for reasons outlined in my previous blog post.

How do they stack up?

Well, I liked my Myspace membership because it allowed me to change the pitch (very important!) and because it enabled me to hear myself singing through the speakers. I could also apply various effects to the audio-- but mostly I just used the reverb.

SingSnap's paid membership also allows pitch changes, though not at the same level of granularity as Myspace, which leaves some songs still out of my range. I can't hear myself through the speakers, but they do provide a sound meter to gauge how loud my mic is, and best of all-- at the end, while previewing the recording, I can adjust the volume of music to make it louder or softer than my voice, and adjust the timing of the vocal and instrumental tracks in case they get misaligned. Reverb and compression are offered, but performed automatically by SingSnap.

In terms of song selection, there's overlap between the two sites on some of the most popular songs, but amongst the songs I like, there seems to be a pretty even mix of what one has that the other doesn't. So between the two, I've got a nice array of songs at my disposal, and rare is the time I cannot find a song I want on either one.

Feature-wise, both sites offer some pretty comprehensive benefits (what is missing on one site is offered on the other, both ways), and both sites offer a good selection of songs. These days, SingSnap does offer a few more advantages over Myspace: like being able to view recordings if you aren't a member, being able to embed the song player on your website, and being able to duets much more easily than on Myspace. Nothing's quite as fun as being able to record a duet with yourself :-D So, that's where I am these days. Come say hello! My SingSnap profile.

And if you're interested in singing karaoke online, I highly recommend both sites as a great place to get your song on :-D