Background Music

Great show on Saturday night! Despite the fact that three bars in town had live bands (one of which came all the way from Kentucky), the place was fairly packed. The population dived a little for about an hour, but came back quickly. Lots of new singers, which was nice. On the down side, I then hear lots of “When is my song coming up?!?!”. Can’t win ‘em all I guess.

We also added an extra CD player to the rack. This allowed us to constantly run regular music in between singers. Never realized how much of a difference that would make, and although it got a little hairy at times trying to operate everything, the ‘filled void’ was well worth it, as it kept the place rockin’ all night.

Got a Karaoke business? Here are some tips for picking songs and operating your equipment, to fill that gap -

1. No matter how your playing music (CD or computer files), make sure your ‘off’ music is extensive. Using just a plain CD with only 12-15 songs will force your patrons to hear the same songs over and over throughout the course of the night. Make an MP3 disc with 100 songs or more. This allows for that ’something new’ factor during each and every song break.
2. Pick songs that are at least somewhat well known. You don’t necessarily have to have an entire archive of Britney Spears, but you wouldn’t want to toss songs in there like Dead Embryonic Cells from Sepultura. New top 40 type stuff combined with classic hard rock and country will make a fair mix.
3. Stay away from obvious popular karaoke songs? Thats a wishy washy situation there. Personally, I wouldn’t play a song that I KNOW is going to be requested by a potential singer. However, I will play songs by the same artists, that don’t get a lot of attention. This way, everyone will hear something different during the course of the night, keeping the situation ‘fresh’.
4. Keep your music running, and on a mixer channel that allows volume adjustment. Even when someone is singing, my ‘mix disc’ is running. I simply turn the volume down to nothing. When it’s time to cue the music, I discreetly fade-in. Using a Mute button will be far to awkward for the audience. Picture a singer finishing up ‘Grandpa’, and suddenly ‘Back In Black’ explodes in over the speakers. Very uncomfortable. The fade-in should be used as the audience is giving the singer their round of applause. This way, they don’t even see it coming, and the show keeps moving.
5. Volume - Low is the key here. I prefer to run the mix disc volume several db below the main karaoke music. That way it becomes blatantly obvious that it’s just background music, and the host can clearly be heard when announcing the next singer, contest results, last call (never liked that one ;)), or any other quickie information bits.