I have wanted this for so long I actually thought of asking you personally, but now…NOW!

YES YES YES!

I’ve been contemplating a mash-up of “Millionaire Girlfriend” and Stephen Lynch’s “A Month Dead” as a tribute to Anna Nicole Smith.

This also allows me to work on my parody of Millionaire Girlfriend. Yes, I know that’s kind of redundant, since one couldn’t possibly ADD to the humor of Millionaire Girlfriend, but let’s just say it’ll be a different take on the idea.

Short answer: Yes. I have personally made discs that I was able to play

Long answer:

There are 3 types of karaoke systems that you might find in a bar.

One is Laser Disc based, although you hardly ever see that anymore. One is hard-drive based, where all the songs are stored on a hard drive jukebox and those are not too common, usually only in the “do it yourself” karaoke places where you rent a room to sing for just your friends. These first two systems are not systems you’ll be able to use these files on.

The third type of system is the one that’s most common and uses CD’s that are in a special format called CDG or CD+G (CD plus Graphics). The player they use is called a CDG player. It’s basically just like a regular CD player except it also has a Video Out jack. This third type is the type of system you wil be able to play on.

If you get the MP3+G format you can use those files to burn a CDG disc that is exactly the same as the discs a Karaoke DJ uses.

There are some caveats however….

In order to burn a CDG disc from MP3+G files, you need software specifically designed to do that (most CDG burning software requires a different format file, .bin, which isn’t available at the JoCoKa Store because the file sizes are much much larger, like the size of a .wav file), *and* your CD burner has to be compatible with burning CDG discs. Almost any Plextor drive should be compatible.

Here’s a link to a software product that can burn a CD+G disc from MP3+G files: http://www.powerkaraoke.com/src/prod_powercdgburner.php

Here’s a link to a list of compatible burners: http://dartpro.com/support/devices.asp#CDGRecorders

A link to a page with more info on checking the compatibility of your burner: http://karaokebuilder.com/kbdrives.php

I can’t believe how badly, and in how many different ways, I can screw the song up singing it on my own!

So… These will play in a standard Karaoke machine if I take it into a bar? Could be a lot of fun - and yes - I’m thinking “First of May”, as someone else mentioned above…

One comment about the karaoke is that if you want people to be able to sing it who aren’t really strong singers you really should have the melody somewhere in there… In the “Code Monkey” chorus if you aren’t really familiar with the tune you end up singing along with the backup and it sounds pretty strange… Just a thought…

‘Code Monkey’, ‘Creepy Doll’ and ‘Big Bad World One’ were especially well-received… and you obviously can’t go wrong with First of May in a bar full of drunk people.

One note about the mp4 iPod format files: if you have a Windows box, installing Quicktime is probably necessary in order to have the proper codecs installed on your PC, but once you have those codecs you *will* be able to play the files on Windows Media Player; you won’t have to use the Quicktime player if you don’t want to.

Wahoo!