Sure sometimes you have to do "Kamakazie Karaoke"
as there is no monitor. Some folks prefer to have a printed
lyric book in front of them.

Sounds like there's a nitch for someone... I'll be SC or some
young entrepreneur to offer such a service!

I don't know, it may just be my suspicious nature, but why in the world would you invest in a Foundation Package and not have a monitor or TV to display the lyrics on? A $900 set is only useful if you have the proper equipment to use it... I'm sensing an alterior motive here somewhere.....

Just play them all on a CDG player, hit pause at each screenful, and type in what you see! That's what I do for most of my songs that I'm working on singing. I want to know exactly what's going to show up on the screen and how the pages get refreshed.

But, I'm thinking if you only LISTENED to 450 songs (without typing), it would take you over 26 hours (at 3.5 minutes per song). Now, I type about 120 WPM... so, I'd be willing to do it, but it would end up costing you over $1000. Personally, I don't think it would be worth the investment.

See I was in the "business of Karaoke" when you were a gleam
in your daddy's eye! Back in the old days we just had a great sound
system with a nice music stand and the lyric book for folks to sing from...
we'd also print up smaller Lyric books for folks to learn the songs and would
also encourage them to buy the tape or CD so they can sing along at home.
AND we marched thru piles of high snow in our bare feet... and we LIKED it! ;-)
We got along fine without video and IMHO half of the wipes are inaccurate anyway.

Sooooo I find it hard to believe that some enterprizing KJ or SC itself would not offer
a set of printed lyric sheets for a small fee ($100)? That or a web site with all of them...
Anyway if I don't find someone I'll do it myself and then just give it away, at cost,
to anyone who wants a set.

I went with Sound Choice, even knowing that they didn't include printed lyrics.
Good production values.

.02

Good luck!

At any rate you points are well taken... I and others I've spoke
with still would like to have the OPTION to read the lyrics in printed form
both before signing and while.

Anyway I'm doing it myself... just can't believe that someone doesn't
have a small book of the printed lyrics. And it won't take 26 hours either...
but it will take 8-10. Great lyrics sites out there now... can remember a time
when we had to listen to the record or look at the liner sleeve!

Thanks for your thoughts

Rebecca, you are right about being harder to sing with tapes as I use to do that back in the 80's as well...but maybe it wasn't harder but that we just became lazy.

For example, when you use to sing with tapes Rebecca, or anyone else, how many songs did you sing by memory???? without lyrics in front of you?? I believe I knew around 200 songs without them...now HA! if I don't at least stare down at the screen now and again I'd go crazy! LOL How many songs do I know now??? I couldn't honestly tell you..not with the monitor next to me...

Anyway, 8 to 10 hours to find 450 lyrics on the internet would be about finding each song on average within 60 to 90 seconds.

It's possible. But I can guarantee you that most of them will be inaccurate and incomplete, and some will next to impossible to find... some may take 20 minutes to find, if you can find them at all.

For my own CDG songbook, I have the "first words" next to each song number. I think that's about as far as I'd be willing to go. If each song was, for example, two pages long... the lyrics for the Foundation alone would be 900 pages, not to mention more heavy stuff to carry to a show.

For me to "transcribe" directly from a CDG into a word processor (by process of playing the CDG, pausing, typing, playing, etc), it would about 5 minutes per song. About 3.5 minutes of just having the song play, and an additional 1.5 minutes to type it up and press pause if needed. Thus, it would be at least 37 hours for me to do it all manually. But, in the end they'd be perfect, word for word.

For the entrepreneurial KJ: It's possible to have all the CDG on-screen lyrics in a laptop. When someone comes up to put in a song request, you can offer the service of printing out a lyric sheet for them to study beforehand (and take home if they want to)... for a nominal fee.

One of my ideas, that somewhat quickly flopped, was to generate a lyric songbook of all songs by an artist (such as AC/DC!). Then, I'd go to the band's concerts and sell them in the parking lot in a nice comb-bound package, for like $5 to $10. Uh, then I realized it would probably be illegal... and with the internet boom, don't think I'd sell as many as I could in the old days.

Still I'd be willing to pay for a book like that from SC... say $99?

I love the idea of having it all on a laptop and being able to give
folks a printed sheet to take home.

Do most KJ's also sell tapes/CD for the folks to practice at home?

Thanks

There's also a place in Southern California that automatically gives you a tape for free after you sing (one tape per each song)... you know, those 10-minute cheapo tapes. The problem is, you can only sing one song per night due to the number of singers.