How to download karaoke to sing with a microphone. How to create a karaoke clip on a computer? It's simple! Screenshots of the GalaKar program

I don’t even know what to call it or explain. But it seems to me that every person already has the desire to sing and dance in their genes. It just so happens that from the very beginning of time, man has been singing and dancing. Of course, the singing and dancing of primitive people is difficult to compare with classical music and ballroom dancing. Well, it’s very easy to find parallels with disco music. Sometimes it seems that this disco music will make you start dancing like crazy with a tambourine by the fire and making strange sounds.

This article is certainly not about that. It's about karaoke programs for the computer, with which you can sing or create it. Let's start a little from afar, with history! Karaoke appeared in Japan, somewhere in the early 70s, at one of the rock concerts. The musicians just wanted to keep the audience busy while they were on a break. So they handed them sheets of music and played music without words, and they sang. This was the first karaoke.

Back then, no one thought that entire music centers for karaoke, karaoke bars and software for PCs would appear. But time passed, and progress did not stand still: everything developed and took on new forms. And already in the 90s of the last century, the first karaoke players appeared that were connected to the TV. A special video was recorded on special cassettes.

On which words and music were played, and a person sang into a microphone and from the TV speakers or other connected speakers the sound came out with his voice and song, and the result was a song. Of course, at first all this cost a lot of money and not everyone, but only rich people, could afford all this. And then in order to somehow equalize the chances between the rich and everyone else. Karaoke bars began to appear. And now everyone could sing their favorite song for a small fee. To this day these bars are very popular. After all, as before, people go there not only to sing their favorite song and drink a glass of alcohol. But they go there for the mood, and what could be better than singing their favorite song!

And somewhere towards the end of the 90s, disc karaoke players began to appear and they were not as expensive and complex as cassette players. Now everyone could buy it for themselves and organize karaoke parties for themselves and their friends every day. I have visited these places more than once in my time. And it was always a lot of fun. And even though my hearing is not perfect. But I, like everyone else, tried very hard and sang!

And in parallel, the history of paid and free karaoke programs for computers began. I mean custom. And such software is divided into two large groups:

turntables. They only know how to play karaoke and that’s it. They have varying degrees of complexity: with or without a staff. Such as Notation Player, KaraKEYoke, KaraFun and VanBasco's Karaoke Player.
editors. In addition, they can create special karaoke files. Such as KarMaker and AV Video Karaoke Maker.

Paid and free karaoke programs for computers

(just click on its name to go to the analysis and then download it):

It is valued for its simplicity and ease of use.

She is valued for her ability to display the staff for each instrument.

It is appreciated for its excellent performance and ease of use.

Opens up many opportunities for those who love to sing or want to learn it. However, in the era of technological progress, you can create your own clip using a modern personal computer, providing it with a suitable headset and installing certain software. In this article we will tell you in detail how to make your own karaoke.

Method 1

What you will need:

netbook, PC or laptop;
electret microphone;
sound card (built into the motherboard or external with a USD interface);
Internet access.

Instructions:

Install the driver for the sound card and check the sound;
Connect a special microphone for your computer to the card. A standard dynamic microphone will not work - the sound will be too quiet;
Set the volume so that there is no acoustic feedback, or use headphones instead of speakers;
Install the latest version of Flash Player on your computer;
Find sites with karaoke files on the Internet, choose the appropriate one and start performing.

Method 2

What you will need:

Karaoke disc recorded on digital media;
computer or laptop;
microphone.

Instructions:

Insert a karaoke disc into the device. Such disks, as a rule, already contain all the necessary plug-ins, which are automatically launched or installed;
Connect and configure the microphone;
A menu will appear on the screen in which you need to select the soundtrack you like and click the “Play” button.

Ready! The discs are adapted for use on a computer and do not require downloading additional programs.

Method 3

What you will need:

AV Video Karaoke Maker program (you can download it for free);
PC or laptop;
The video from which you want to make a karaoke video (in Mp3 or Wav formats);
Lyrics of the song.

Instructions:

Launch the AV Video Karaoke Maker program and click on the “Start a new project” icon;
Upload the desired video file from your computer. After adding a video, you can see it on the left as an audio track;
To make the added video act as a background, click on the “Add background” icon and upload the same video;
Next, you need to overlay text on the video. To do this, click on the “Add text” icon. The file must be in “.txt” format only. To make the text rhythmic, you can break it into syllables in advance.
Go to “Settings” to set the font size, color and other parameters;
Then you need to synchronize the text with the music. To do this, click on “Play” and while the music is playing, press F5;
Each time a word sounds, press the “Insert” icon or the “Alt+Space” key combination;
Then you need to export the resulting video. To do this, click “Export”, select the location to export the file, video format, frame size and click “Start”.

Your karaoke video clip is ready!

Method 4

For those who don’t want to bother downloading and installing software, there is the easiest method to make karaoke yourself. All you need is a computer with Internet access and a modern version of any browser that supports the Java-script script option. Many sites offer online karaoke services using an interactive built-in player. All you need to do is plug in your headset, select a song and start singing.

Now you know how to create karaoke yourself, and there is nothing difficult about it. All you need to do is acquire the necessary set of switching and equipment, download the appropriate software, and your laptop will become an excellent alternative to an expensive installation.

Since its appearance in Japan, karaoke has gradually taken over the whole world, reaching Russia, where it gained popularity on a scale not seen in any entertainment since the days of mountain skiing.

And in the age of development of modern technologies, everyone can join in the beauty by creating their own karaoke video. So, today we will talk about how to create a karaoke clip on a computer.

To do this you will need the following:

AV Video Karaoke Maker program, which can be downloaded for free on the Internet (there are also versions in Russian)
A video clip from which you are going to make a karaoke video.
The song is in “.Mp3” or “.Wav”, if you want to substitute other music in your video.
Lyrics of the song.

So let's get started:

Step 1. Open the AV Video Karaoke Maker program and get to the start screen. Here you need to click on the “Start a new project” icon indicated by the arrow.

Step 2. You will be taken to a file selection window. Pay attention to supported video formats - if your video file extension is not listed, then the video will need to be transcoded to a supported format or find another video. You can also select an audio file to add to the project.

Step 4. The next step is to add text to your future karaoke clip. To do this, click on the “Add text” icon indicated by the arrow. The text must be in ".txt" format. It is advisable to break it down into syllables in advance to make karaoke more rhythmically accurate.

Step 5. After adding text, you can go to settings, where you can adjust parameters such as the color, size and font of the text, plus see what music and background files have been added and whether they have been added.

Step 6. The most interesting step is synchronizing the music with the text. Feel free to click on the familiar “Play” triangle, and while the intro is going on, go to the “Synchronization” tab and then “Start synchronization” (By the way, this can also be done by simply pressing F5 while playing music).

Step 7 And now, every time a word sounds, click the “Insert” button, which is located in the lower right corner among the four buttons that you can click on. Instead of clicking the mouse, you can use the combination “Alt + Space”.

Step 8 We will assume that you did an excellent job with text synchronization. The only thing left is to export the video with the text tags. To do this, click on the “Export” button, which, as always, is indicated by an arrow.

Step 9 Everything is simple here - select the location where the video will be exported, as well as the video format and frame size. By clicking on the “Start” button, the video export process will begin, which will last several minutes.

Step 10 Enjoy the final result and invite your friends to join you for karaoke!

Now you know how to create a karaoke clip on your computer, for which I sincerely congratulate you.

My wife and daughters love to sing. A gift in the form of a karaoke system simply suggested itself. But I wanted to not just “scream”, but also teach the children something else. Therefore, the option of karaoke with a rating was immediately considered.
I couldn’t find any available karaoke systems with adequate ratings, so this homemade product was born.
Under the cut there is a lot of text and photos, videos, electrical diagrams, a little DIY, and a small guide to creating songs.
Spoiler - you can sing karaoke with points without shopping or handicrafts, having only a computer with a microphone.

Idea

Classic karaoke systems are essentially a combination of a video player and a microphone mixer. The video contains illuminated letters with seascapes in the background, and the soundtrack to the video is the backing track of the song. The signal from the microphone is mixed into the track being played and output to the speaker system.
Any computer can handle video playback; Moreover, there is a special format for karaoke, which takes up orders of magnitude less space than video.
The basis of the karaoke system, therefore, can be a computer. In my case, I chose an old, but quite working Asus EEE 900 netbook. Of course, it also needs an acoustic system and, highly desirable, a TV or a large monitor, or even better, a projector.
Mixing the signal from the microphone into the track turned out to be more difficult. The simplest option seemed to be to use the microphone input of the computer and connect the output to the speaker amplifier. The system mixer can be configured so that the microphone signal is mixed into the music being played.
However, practice has shown that in this case the signal from the microphone is noticeably delayed, which makes the idea unsuitable for use. Anyone who has ever heard an echo in telephone conversations understands what it is. It is almost impossible to speak, let alone sing, with an echo.
As far as I understand, the delay is due to the implementation of the audio paths of most “ordinary” PCs - they are completely digital. That is, the signal from the input is digitized, then digitally mixed with the reproduced sound, and only then converted into analog form and supplied to the output. Since buffers are used during digitization, signal delay occurs.
It was impossible to do without a hardware “additive” to the karaoke system.

Hardware

Our eastern brothers came to the rescue, they found a board for a microphone amplifier - mixer. You can connect two microphones and a music source to this board, and a mixed signal is removed from its output, without any delays due to the purely analog nature of the circuit. The board was immediately ordered. Separately, I will say that now the seller’s fee is more expensive (I took it for $12.87) and differs in the photo from the one I ordered.
In appearance the board was disappointing. Crooked soldering, different types of parts, and an abundance of Chinese fingerprints on the side of the tracks - this could be expected for $1-2-5, but this board has a higher price. However, it worked the first time I turned it on.

Photo of the board

The scheme and thoughts about it

This is what the mixer circuit looks like:

The diagram is simplified - only one of the two channels of the microphone amplifier is shown, since it is identical to the second. Also only the left channel of the output stage is shown, and the power circuits are not shown.
Microphone preamplifiers, tone block and final amplifier are assembled on dual operational amplifiers. The board also contains an on-chip echo effect block and an analog tone block with separate adjustment of bass and treble tones.
The board is powered from a bipolar 12V AC voltage source. To generate the required voltages, stabilizers are installed to organize a 12-volt bipolar power supply, as well as a 5-volt stabilizer to power the echo-effect microcircuit. The power supply schemes are typical and not of particular interest. It's funny that all the stabilizers are labeled by different manufacturers - Motorola, ON Semiconductor and STMicroelectronics, although I suspect that they are still fakes.

To power the mixer, I used a purchased three-watt, dual-winding 12V with a midpoint. I installed the transformer in the housing from a power supply combined with a power plug. This made it possible to remove the transformer from the circuit and thereby reduce interference.

Board improvements

To evaluate points when singing, a signal with the singer’s voice, without a “backing track,” must be output to the computer. The signal was fed to the microphone input of the netbook - from one microphone to the left channel, from the other to the right.
It should be noted here that in modern laptops with a combined audio jack, the microphone input is monophonic (single-channel), and it will not be possible to use some game modes that require separate signals from each microphone (competition, duet).
The board in its original version does not have a microphone signal output, so some modification was required. In fact, the modification came down to finding the point from which the signal was taken and soldering to this point. The point found by the scientific method of inference and testing is shown in the diagram. The point shown is for one microphone - the input amplifiers of both of them are absolutely identical.

Where the signal is picked up from the microphone

The signal was recorded before all processing (volume control, tone control, echo effect). In a good way, it was necessary to use a buffer amplifier to eliminate the influence of the microphone input on the signal, and also use an attenuator, because The signal level for the microphone input at this point is too high and the input is clearly overloaded: something like . However, practice has shown that a direct connection was quite suitable for the required application, and the overload turned out to be very useful for singing with points.

Cosmetic improvements

After the initial excitement of turning on the board had dissipated, I noticed the echo effect. Firstly, the echo was with obvious repetitions, while I wanted something closer to , when individual “reflections” were not heard. Also, when the echo level control was turned to “zero,” the “double” voice from the microphone was still clearly visible.
The first problem was solved quite simply - the echo effect microcircuit provides for setting a delay using echo logic levels on four pins. The board even has places for jumpers, but the required levels were still set by routed tracks. According to the initial delay, the delay was set at 160 ms, after adjustment it became 61 ms.
To solve the second problem, I had to take a closer look at the wiring of the echo effect chip. If we simplify the diagram, it can be represented as follows:

From the diagram you can see that the input signal branches into two paths - the main one (shown in red) and the echo signal (blue). The echo signal is the input signal delayed by the chip. After a delay, the signals are mixed.
Part of the mixed signal is again supplied to the input of the delay chip, thus forming “repeats” characteristic of echo.
But according to this scheme, if the echo level control is set to “zero”, then the delayed signal will still pass to the output! This was the reason for the unpleasant “double” voice.
It was decided to remake the scheme as follows:

In this version, the operation of the circuit remains similar, but when the echo is turned off, there will be no “repetitions” in the output signal.
The circuit diagram has changed as follows (changes shown in red):

An additional 22 kOhm resistor is needed to slightly equalize the adjustment of the depth of the echo effect. In the end, it still turned out imperfect - for most of the stroke of the regulator the echo is not heard, it appears only at the end of the stroke. Moreover, when turned to maximum, the attenuation becomes too small and the echo does not die out, but rather intensifies. All this can also be solved by installing and selecting resistors in the feedback circuit, but I left it as is. In most cases, echo is not needed, and children even like the amplified effect and indulge in the “demonic sound.”
Another modification was needed when it turned out that one of the “backing track” channels was playing much quieter than the second. In this case, the signal from the microphones went to both channels with the same volume.
The problem turned out to be a 10 uF capacitor immediately after the volume control. The “folk” transistortester showed a capacity of 1 µF. Here he is, the hero:

Replacing the capacitor with a similar one solved the problem. The inner perfectionist also demanded that we replace a similar capacitor from the second, “normal” channel, and also re-measure the remaining capacitors on the board. Yielding to persuasion, he did just that, receiving a feeling of deep moral satisfaction (which, however, did not affect the sound quality in any way).

The board was placed in a case made from an old CD drive. The guts were taken out of the drive, the body was shortened, and the front and rear panels were made of textolite. The nameplate on the front panel is paper with a printout glued to PCB, with a film glued on top of it. It looks collective farm, please don’t judge it too harshly. But it satisfies the goal.

Photo of the assembled device and power supply

And a still life:

Photo of the case from the inside

Now I would do the body differently. In particular, placing the microphone jacks above the volume control was a bad idea, since the inserted plug interferes with the adjustment. It is better to display under the elements or to the side of them. It’s tempting to put connectors on the back panel, but it’s dangerous: if you touch the cord, everything will fly after it. If the connectors are on the front panel, there is a chance that the cord will simply be pulled out. For me, this danger is relevant - my two-year-old son likes to work as a backup dancer when his sisters sing.
It is also better to place the inscriptions of the adjustment elements on top so that the handles do not cover them.

Microphone

The board provides for connecting dynamic microphones. This is important because the inputs of PCs, smartphones and tablets are mostly designed for connecting condenser microphones. If you connect the wrong type of microphone for which the input is not designed, then the sound, if any, will be very quiet or distorted. I didn’t have a dynamic microphone available, so I ordered one. Good or bad, I can’t say, I have nothing to compare with. In fact, I am satisfied, the sound, in my opinion, is quite clean.
The microphone is lightweight, fits well in the hand, and is comfortable. The cord is thick but very flexible. The cord is a bit heavy if you're not used to it, especially compared to the microphone itself, but it doesn't weigh on your hand. No one complained about the severity, even 6-7 year old children.
Since I don’t understand the word “at all” when it comes to audio equipment, I will describe the microphone in simple words. The microphone is designed to “hear” sounds only in the vicinity of the microphone itself. Moreover, the polar pattern is such that you need to sing at the “top” of the microphone, and not at the side. As far as I understand, all microphones of this type are designed this way.

Microphone photo

Despite the fact that the board has two inputs, to begin with I decided to order only one microphone, because... it was not clear whether the toy would “go in” or not.

Sound quality

The system being developed is not intended for music lovers or audiophiles. I doubt that it will provide sound quality acceptable for these categories. From a layman's point of view, the system does not introduce noticeable distortions into the sound. The only thing we could notice was a slight background hiss that occurs when supply voltage is applied to the board. But it is much weaker than music and voices and can only be heard in complete silence. If you don't pay special attention to it, it's invisible.
This noise is introduced by the microphone amplifier, since it disappears when the signal level from the microphones is turned to zero. Unfortunately, I don’t have equipment to measure noise levels, frequency response, and the like, so I can’t give any quantitative values.
So just a few examples. We recorded on the phone through a simple adapter with a voltage divider.
Voice:
“Silence” test - the first 5 seconds were recorded with the microphone turned off (the switch on the microphone itself was used), then the supply voltage was removed from the board:

Software part

The highlight of the karaoke system was supposed to be a scoring of singing. We already have a computer, the signal from the microphone is connected to it, all that remains is to find software that can evaluate singing in points.
A short search led to the game and its successor, which well met the goal. The games are based on the game on Sony Playstation and invite players to sing karaoke for points. Their positive feature is that it displays a stylized “staff” and shows in what key the player is actually singing and whether he hits the notes or not right in the process of singing.
To analyze the player's singing, the signal from the microphone input is used - only the voice, without mixed music.
Choosing between the two listed, I settled on UltraStar Deluxe, since Vocaluxe requires Windows 7, and the netbook I was using already had Windows XP installed and I didn’t want to install anything else. In addition, despite the lack of development, the latest versions of the game are quite stable and playable.
The big problem turned out to be finding Russian songs for the game. An Internet search allowed me to download several dozen options, but only a few of them turned out to be normal for testing.
What should be said here is how these songs are organized. The basis is a text file that contains the title, artist, genre, etc., links to the sound file, covers and background video, as well as information about words and notes. You can read more about the file format, for example, .
While it’s easy to correct covers (dressing up half-naked performers) and title texts, information about words and notes is more difficult. Briefly, this information boils down to the fact that for a given position in the song, the next syllable and the key of the note corresponding to it are indicated. And if everything was more or less in order with the syllables in the songs found, then with the keys we often came across complete trash. This was clearly visible (or rather, audible) if you loaded the song into the editor and turned on the mode where the notes specified in the file are played over the song. Even I, with my bearish hearing, obviously understood that the tonality was wrong. I had to delve into the fascinating world of creating and editing songs for these games.

A fascinating world with a small video tutorial

The game includes tools for creating songs (UltraStar Creator) and organizing them (UltraStar Manager); In addition, there are several third-party editors (,). My favorites were Yass and UltraStarEditor. Although they are not bug-free, they are quite convenient and allow you to edit a song, unlike UltraStar Creator and SongEasy, which are aimed at quickly creating a song.
In these editors, you can visually place syllables in the desired positions in the song, set the key, listen to the result - in this mode, the notes sound over the track. It was in them that I became convinced that most of the Russian songs I found in the public domain had the wrong notes.
However, bringing a “crooked” song up to standard or creating a new one is still quite labor-intensive. It takes me 2-3 hours to write a song.
Creating a song involves arranging syllables in the right positions and setting keys for the syllables. It’s easy to arrange the syllables - where it’s sung, it’s “drawn” there, but with keys it’s more difficult. Musicians can probably easily pick out a melody by ear, but this is not my case. I did it in different ways.
At first, I found the midi file of the desired song and opened it with a midi editor. I used and . Next, I found a channel with the main melody and watched it in Piano Roll mode. This is actually the same display that is used in the game itself and in the editors. Then all that was left was to simply (but not quickly) assign the required tones to the syllables.
It is important that the midi key matches the key of the melody being used. You can use the same midi converted to mp3 as a melody. I did this for one of the songs, and used this for conversion. However, even if the key does not match, it is enough to correctly determine the starting note, and simply shift the rest proportionally.
I made my last songs in the UltraStarEditor, which is what I use now. In it, a spectrogram of the track is displayed on top of the “staff”, and if you use a full-fledged song with a voice as a track, then with some skill you can determine the desired pitch of the note. But this does not always work - often on the spectrogram the voice merges with the instruments, and the performers are not robots or musical instruments, and their voices do not always sound exactly according to the notes.
Subsequently, I searched for sheet music for songs on the Internet and relied on them. It is important that the notes correspond exactly to the leading voice, i.e. Guitar chords won't work. These notes work best:

The picture helped a lot in “translating” the notes into the editor.
Another option is to find a video lesson on playing the piano of the desired song. There you can immediately see which notes need to be used.
I repeat, for those who are familiar with musical literacy at a level of more than “heard”, it will most likely be much easier. But even if you, like me, have been spared a musical education, there are still many ways to create songs.
Although I eventually settled on UltraStarEditor, I can’t say that the editor is ideal. There are glitches that at one time pretty much ruined my life. Let me list some of them; Perhaps this will save someone hours of wasted nerves:
- does not like paths and file names in Russian
- after creating a song, be sure to write down the title and author, then it’s better to save the song and restart the editor
- sometimes copy-pasting stops, reboot helps
- when copying blocks, notes sometimes fall out, you need to double-check.
I try to make songs in two versions - “full” and a backing track. As practice has shown, people are often embarrassed to sing along to a backing track, but they are completely embarrassed to sing along with the performer. This doesn't make the game any worse.
To make my life easier, I try to find a backing track in exactly the same key and tempo as the original song. The easiest way to understand whether a backing track suits a track is to run them in parallel. I used the editor for this.
The easiest way to make a song is with a voice - both the words and the tonality are audible. Then altering it to fit a backing track becomes trivial - it’s enough to change the track and, perhaps, move all the syllables a little.
Finally, one more important point. Before making a song, it is highly recommended to set the desired tempo (BPM). You can find out the tempo using or something similar.
There are a lot of nuances in editing, but once you start, it all doesn’t look so scary. I hope it becomes a little clearer after watching this video.

The songs I created are in the public domain.
Bonus - which is probably already 15 years old. I don’t remember where I got it, it was back in the days “before the Internet”. There are a LOT of songs, Russian and English.

This is roughly what the gameplay looks like. The singer is a child, not a professional.

The quality of the voice recording in this video is unimportant - I didn’t have time to adjust the levels and started the first voice recorder I came across, which, as it turned out, recorded with a sampling frequency of 16 kHz. So please don’t judge the quality of the microphone and board based on this video. Above are examples of normal recording.

How to sing without hardware

The intrigue of this whole idea is that you can sing with points without any purchases or modifications. You need to use a microphone that connects directly to the computer. If you are lucky and your computer's audio path allows the signal from the microphone to pass through without delay, you will get exactly the same effect completely free of charge and without SMS handicraft! Even if there is a sound delay, you can sing without transmitting sound from the microphone to the acoustics, and the game never ceases to be interesting.
That is, just install the game, connect the microphone, download songs and have fun!

Thank you for your attention! Have fun singing!
I welcome questions, comments and constructive criticism.

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