New Karaoke Tech Helps the Pitch-Impaired
Jan. 27 -- Peter Parker remembers when he and other karaoke singers queued up their songs on eight-track tapes.
Those were the early, innocent days of belting out songs in front of complete strangers. Now technology is making the whole affair a little smoother — and a little less embarrassing. (Just a little.)
"Everything has changed," says Parker, who has no relation to the Spiderman character but is publisher of Karaoke Scene Magazine, the Cypress, Calif.-based magazine devoted to the fine art of karaoke. "And I think that is accounting for its vast popularity."
Amateur Crooning Boom
According to the International Music Products Association, sales of karaoke machines in the United States jumped 79 percent in the past year, reaching 1.1 million units. In Style magazine selected karaoke, which began in a Japanese bar in 1971, as one of its "hot new trends" for 2003.
Singing with piped in background has gotten even more attention recently with the popularity of talent search shows like "American Idol" and "Star Search."
Also behind the boom are a series of technological tricks that help prod wavering egos into the spotlight.
Perhaps most useful, is pitch-correcting technology.
Help for the Pitch-Deprived
If you have trouble reaching the high notes, or all the notes, for that matter, this feature detects the off notes and then overrides your singing with an on-key note of your own digitally processed voice.
"The feature works in real time," explains Ed Pearson, sales director of IVL Technologies, a high-end audio firm based in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada that offers the feature in its home karaoke unit. "It plays your voice back in 3 milliseconds — there's no perceivable delay."
The technology has been used by professional singers in the studio and in live performances for more than 10 years. IVL's sister company, TC-Helicon provides this equipment for the pros, although Pearson says he's not at liberty to reveal which artists depend on it.
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