Karaoke Revolution Specifics Unearthed

Thanks to GameSpy for their hands-on preview of Karaoke Revolution, Konami's PlayStation 2 title that uses the USB headset and "...requires you to match the rhythm and pitch for the vocals in a song" (although luckily for the tone-deaf among us: "Karaoke mode allows you to just kick it to a song without having to worry about performance.") This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all", from Mr.Mister to Avril Lavigne, and the previewer handily points out that "Not everyone can rock a guitar or a keyboard. Not everyone can dance... but almost all of us can sing (whether the results are appealing or not is another matter)."

Comments

Can you sing along with me on this tune?

[orthogonal]

This Harmonix-developed title, originally unveiled a couple of months back, sports "more than 35 tracks in all"

Ok, I don't want to beat a tired drum, to mix a metaphor into a bad pun, but...

Will it support any arbitrary mp3 I have?

35 tracks is pretty scanty, and I don't want to sing along to Mr. Mister (an 80s band?).

But I have three mp3s of "When I was a Lad", as I have three (legally purchased) different copies of Giilbert & Sullivan's "HMS Pinafore". Now that I'd love to sing along to.

Similarly, I have two complete recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, (one from emusic.com at $10 a month and one for $160.00 from Amazon.com -- emusic's not a bad bargain, although disc one of Seigfried's still missing).

And I have a German sing-along version of The Internationale played on guitar, apparently recorded in the heyday of the DDR (and I don't mean Dance Dance Revolution).

I mention these titles not to display my eclecticism (well, ok, not only to display it) but because these are titles that I can't ever imagine finding in a commercial Karaoke product (outside some "worker's paradise") but are at the same time ones I'd really enjoy singing along to.

And this is a general plea -- to manufacturers as well as to the Slashdot choir -- for open standards and interoperability: a karaoke machine tied to a proprietary standard which forces me to pay for karaoke versions of songs I already have, or for which the songs I want aren't available, is less than useless to me. I won't buy it, and the manufacturer won't get my money. A loss-loss.

A karaoke machine that plays my music, and makes my tone-deaf bleatings sound a bit more musical, however, would be worth my money. And I note that the open source software I use in my portable my mp3 player does provide a "poor man's" karaoke function by subtracting the right side of stereo output from the left and vice versa. It's not perfect, and that's why I'd pay for a more adaptable algorithim and the hardware to implement it.

But "Mr. Mister" and 34 other "Backstreet Boys In Sync with Britney and Other American Idles (sic)" I'm not interrested in. A proprietary and costly path to getting more tunes, I'm not paying for. A well designed open format karaoke machine, I'd vote for with my dollars.

Re:Can you sing along with me on this tune?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the part about including Avril Lavigne tunes? So all of your collection will already be in there.

Re:Can you sing along with me on this tune?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never done any work with sound processing, have you?

Do you have any idea how hard it would be to take an arbitrary MP3, isolate the vocals reliably, and determine their pitch?

Re:Can you sing along with me on this tune?

[Masem]

Harmonix has previously done Amplitude and Frequency, both music oriented games, and the same question "Can I import my own songs into it?" has been asked, and the answer is no. It's not issues with copyright, legality or the like. But instead, it's a lot of extra audio and programming work to get the songs into Amp/Freq/KR because they have to break down the songs into the individual components, fine tune it, and other difficult tasks that can bring up the size of the file to a huge size, larger than what can fit on a standard mem card. KR is going to be to Karaoke as Amp/Freq was to a jukebox -- neither was MEANT to be a replacement for that, but only a way to provide some play value to it.

Re:Can you sing along with me on this tune?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bollocks. You can do all this with an old 486, a soundblaster and dr Sbaitso. Processing voice input is lacking because the consumer level tech that uses it (voice dictation software) is nowhere near business technology.

Karoake Revolution Song List

[cdneng2]

Karoake Revolution's song list is available here, which I've shown below:

Addicted
I'm Coming Out
All You Wanted
It's End of the World As We Know It
Are You Happy Now?
Kiss Me
Believe
Ladies' Night
Billie Jean
Like a Virgin
Bizarre Love Triangle
One Week
Broken Wings
Red Red Wine
Celebration
Save Tonite
Chain of Fools
Science Genius Girl
Complicated
She Talks To Angels
Crawling in the Dark
Smooth Criminal
Don't Know Why
Son of a Preacher Man
Every Morning
The Power of Love
Everything You Want
Waiting For Tonight
Girls Just Want To Have Fun
When a Man Loves a Woman
Hey Jealousy
Wind Beneath my Wings
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
You Really Got Me
How You Remind Me
You're the One That I Want

I think the success of this game will mostly be determined by the selection of songs available. Everyone's taste is different, so I'd question the appeal of the songs to teenagers. It almost seems like the song selection is specifically targetted to GenXers (us old farts that are 25-35) that like to reminisce.

It'd be nice to be able to pop in a CD of your favorite song, and Karoake to any of your favorites. Most ghetto blasters and bookshelf systems had that function built in for free during the Karoake fad, so I couldn't see how difficult it may have been for them to do have done this to the PS2 game version.

Regardless, the last time I karoaked, I was trashed... and now that you can do this in the privacy of your own home, it seems like a pretty good bet for a party game. I just have to remember to have alcohol around so that I can blame something for my terrible singing.

Re:Karoake Revolution Song List

[AlexMax2742]

Science Genius Girl

This was also in the Harmonix game Frequency. Anyone else catch on to this?

Re:Karoake Revolution Song List

[metamatic]

Wow, two songs I could sing along to. That's better than I expected.

When is Mark Mothersbaugh going to release DEVO Karaoke discs?

Re:Karoake Revolution Song List

[tessaiga]

Everyone's taste is different, so I'd question the appeal of the songs to teenagers. It almost seems like the song selection is specifically targetted to GenXers (us old farts that are 25-35) that like to reminisce.

Good point. Especially strange choice given that if you assume their target audience is the same as the DDR crowd, then they should have been aiming for teens and early 20-somethings. Although I do notice quite a few songs from the last few years. They probably just wanted to cover all the bases.

It'd be nice to be able to pop in a CD of your favorite song, and Karoake to any of your favorites. Most ghetto blasters and bookshelf systems had that function built in for free during the Karoake fad, so I couldn't see how difficult it may have been for them to do have done this to the PS2 game version.

Actually I'd imagine it would have been a lot more difficult. The karaoke feature you talked about simply relied on the fact that in most instances vocals are equally mixed in both channels, and can identified and therefore removed by simply changing the phase on one channel by 180 degrees. Pretty simple to do, although it doesn't work for every song (especially those with heavy processing like echo and resonance). If you're curious, check out some DSP filters like AnalogX (Winamp plugin) which do the same thing for the PC.

The game, on the other hand, would need to isolate the vocals much more accurately (the "invert-and-add" technique typically is "good enough" but not perfect), then compare your singing to it. The game itself probably does it either by having vocals and instrumentals on separate tracks, or storing the info their algorithm needs in binary format separate from the music.

(As a side note, I noticed what I assume is Cher's "Believe" up there. I wonder how many people will be able to mimic that :) )

Re:Karoake Revolution Song List

[ikkonoishi]

Japanese cultural trends tend to follow a few years behind the states. Japan is a big seller for stuff like this.

ugh..

[darkmayo]

Honestly i'd rather have that fat guy/girl exercising via DDR than trying to belt out songs from the 80's

Though I can definately see "Like a virgin" being popular with this crowd.

Expansion Discs

[xanderwilson]

From the article:

Thankfully, expansion discs should be available in the future so I can get my Britney Spears/Christina Aguilera groove goin'.

Yay! Another proprietary format! Because singing along with my stereo is SOOOO stupid without a PlayStation to guide me! I actually like the concept of this game, but 35 songs will get old REAL fast, especially if it isn't a custom list for the gamer.

Alex.

Re:Expansion Discs

[Dot.Com.CEO]

What do you mean by "proprietary format"? AFAIK, not exactly being a karaoke fan, you can buy karaoke cds for something like 5 euros. So, if you want "open format karaoke" get audio cds or karaoke dvds. If, however, you think the concept is good, I don't really see how the format could be "open" while it being a commercial product...

Also,

Because singing along with my stereo is SOOOO stupid

Actually, it is.

Re:Expansion Discs

[xanderwilson]

What I mean is: even if you have the CD (or even Kareoke CD) of the songs you want to use with the game, you'll have to (a) buy them again in the "expansion disc" format and (b) hope they come out with your songs in the expansion disc format in the first place. I doubt we're going to see Moxy Fruvous or Eddie from Ohio on the list anytime soon.

Actually, it is.

At least wait until you've heard me sing before you judge.

Alex.

Re:Expansion Discs

[Dot.Com.CEO]

Well, I'm sorry if my comment was overly sarcastic but I think it is entirely unrealistic to expect a company like Sony to, essentially, publish an open-source library to what is, without a doubt, a very complicated process. I don't think, really, they just drag and drop a couple of mp3s on the cd and burn it...

The comment on karaoke was intended to be funny, by the way, sorry if it didn't come through as such.

Re:Expansion Discs

[xanderwilson]

I took it as funny. My response was meant to be funny as well. So do we both suck at reading comments or do we both suck at writing them? I'll put a [grin] here, lest there be any doubt.

Alex.

Re:Expansion Discs

[Anonymous Coward]

oh go blow each other and be done with it

I'd rather buy the Xbox Karaoke game.

[JFMulder]

Go see it here.
It will feature music and lyrics obviously, like a real karaoke machine, but it will let you copy your own MP3's and WMA's from your PC, more or less rip out the voice from the song, add your own lyrics and upload them to your Xbox. New songs will also be available on Xbox live.

Add to that the possibility of uploading pictures on the box and viewing them on your TV screen, and you've got a really good product.

Re:I'd rather buy the Xbox Karaoke game.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rip out the voice? I'll believe that when I hear it.

That's a lot easier to type, than do.

Re:I'd rather buy the Xbox Karaoke game.

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell does it manage to accurately "rip out" the vocals from any arbitrary song? I'm sceptical on this one.

Re:I'd rather buy the Xbox Karaoke game.

[JFMulder]

I remember there was a Winamp plugin a few years back that managed to do this in realtime. Basically, it tries to remove the frequencies that are related to human voice in the song. The problem with it of course is that it also censors out some musical instruments that also operate in that frequency, but from my experience it achieved pretty good results. Not perfect, as you could still hear an echo of the lyrics, but anyway, when you're singing on top of it with your friends, you won't hear the echo anymore. They will never sound as good as real karaoke files, but with a little bit of tinkering, they might be able to pull it off quite well.

What would be great are CD's in the DVD Audio format with DD5.1. Imagine ripping each channels except the center one where the voice would be recorded and only get the band playing. Now that would make some pretty cool karaoke files.

Re:I'd rather buy the Xbox Karaoke game.

[JFMulder]

Tssk tssk tskk... talking to myself...
People interrested in the subject can start here.

Falsetto? That sucks!

[TheGreatGraySkwid]

The article says that people with deep voices have to sing falsetto to get points...which I'm gonna have a problem with.

I'll admit it...I've enjoyed a few nights of Karaoke. My three Karaoke songs were "People are Strange," "Chantilly Lace," and "Secret Agent Man."

Would it kill the Japanese to include something in the lower registers, eh? Eh?

Pop Idol here they come

[CheeseEatingBulldog]

Isn't it bad enough that people sing false under the shower, let alone having people all around the world *and their kids* singing out of tune?

/lAf.

wonder how good it is...

[bigbigbison]

I'm not sure if it was this game or another karaoke game, but I happened to see G4TV's awards show and before one of the commercial breaks they showed one of the guys from Barenaked Ladies sing along to his own song and it said he was awfull! Not sure what that says about the game, but it was the funniest moment of the entire show.

Maybe good for one or two times

[renuncln]

I could see pulling this out at a party and people getting about a half an hour of entertainment out of it. I sure hope it's priced accordingly though, maybe around $20-$25. Although I can't seem to get the image of some poor sad soul singing his heart out to his PS2 all by himself (scary).

I don't sing it but...

[UltimaL337Star]

What if you only speak linux?