Some karaoke tracks are good. Some take a good song and turn it into rubbish. Some are in the correct key, some are transposed up or down a step to make them easier to sing, and some are transposed into keys that bear no relation to the original. Some have normal intros/interludes/outros, some have
abbreviated ones, and some have ones that are far longer than anything on the original recording.
What I would like would be a general database of karaoke disks and tracks which contains the following information:
- Running time (easy to figure)
- Key(s) (Not too hard to figure, but may require listening)
- Vocal range, minimal/full (some songs have high/low notes that can be substituted)
- Intro/Interlude/Outro lengths
- Blind starts (indicate whether any disks fail to give pitch/tempo/timing for the start of a song)
- Male/female/either/duet (MM/MF/FF/MX/FX/XX)
- Flavor (original/dance-remix/just-plain-wierd/etc.)
When I sing karaoke at places, I try to use recordings I can count on (DK arrangements are pretty consistent) but sometimes I get caught doing a song which is way off-key or off-tempo (like a version of Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight" which runs 5'27 or "Music of the Night" that runs 6'30). If there were a karaoke database I could have in my Palm, or that karaoke jockeys could use to add info to their songbooks, that would help avoid such embarassments.
[BTW, yes I know some level of embarassment is part of karaoke. But song arrangements that run 50% slower than they should add insult to injury by taking 50% longer to get over with.]