Karaoke Forums

As I mentioned in my Intro post, I am VERY new to karaoke. I have five years of DJ experience, but I just played my first karaoke song a week ago today, and it was at an outdoor event, a fundraiser with an "American Idol" theme. The singers had to know the music/lyrics, so there was no TV.

Today, I purchased a used equipment setup, and used Chartbuster Karaoke Essential 450's. The guy had disc sets 1-8. However, he let people flip through the CD binders. I don't like the idea of doing that. I think it might wear out the spine of the binders more quickly, and may be a theft risk too (maybe that's paranoid. ).

He didn't have any songlist because he let them flip through the binders. I went to Chartbuster's site. The "Download Songlist" button kept saying it was "temporarily unavailable". Is there somewhere I can download a songlist? There are 450 songs per binder, and eight binders! I have a gig Friday, and they want karaoke available... there is NO way I can get that many typed up!

I saw a couple of programs listed where you have a database of the info, but that's another $100 on top of what I already spent today. Doesn't Chartbusters (or someone else) offer a songlist free?

Also, I DJ off of my laptop using (a legally purchased copy of) Virtual DJ and my songs on an external drive. Can I also put my karaoke songs on the hard drive, or is that illegal (I'm in the US, if that matters)?

If that is legal, do you guys recommend using the same external drive for karaoke and regular music tracks, or should I have a separate drive for karaoke? I'm trying to limit the amount of "junk in the truck".

I have all those, and I have programs that make it easy to generate songlists. I made some for you:

http://inkaraoke.com/cbe1-8title.pdf
http://inkaraoke.com/cbe1-8artist.pdf

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

THANK YOU!!! I really appreciate you running that off for me. I really wasn't ready to spend another $100 to buy software to make a list.

Thank you for making that list for me. I really appreciate your time and effort!

I would have let you do that, if I thought you could make Friday.


It's no biggie. I spent all that time writing the program, it is nice to use it for more than just me. Eventually, I might provide a web service....

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

He has a great online book search!!!!

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

I'm confused Mcky are you saying that you wrote Latshaw's Song Book Generator?

Because looking at your Pdf files it is their work.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

I wrote the programs which allow me to build file trees which can be read by Latshaw's program. How else do you think I extracted CBE1-8 only so easily?

Once that is done, I script the output for Latshaw's generator.

I have another script I have written that creates an RTF file from the same input, but the output isn't as pretty. That is what I would use to produce online songbooks, since using Latshaw unattended is probably more than I want to try (too fragile).

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

OH OK but song list generator has an option that can sort out certain qualities in the name you could have told it to just look for CBE in the title field or disc field depending which way you have your files listed.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Can it exclude CBE10 while finding CBE1? And exclude CBE4[56] and find CBE4? And skip CBE9? Not that I know of....

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It can be done but not in one search you would have to search for each disc and uncheck the clear list box thus adding each disc to the list.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Sounds time-consuming and error-prone.

In any case, my programs allow you to build such a songlist from a spreadsheet, so that you don't need to actually have the music files present to build the songbook. Which is how I plan on allowing my song search users to create song books from upload lists.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Actually it took less than 4 minutes to extract just CBE01 through CBE08 using Songlist Generator using the Import filter.

Check "files that contain the word"

in the drop down box check "disc"

Type in "CBE01"

Uncheck "clear existing songs database before importing"

Click import!

Disc CBE01 is now in the song list, change CBE01 to CBE02 click import, disc 02 is now in the song list repeat as needed.

An important point here is that all my karaoke files are in seperate folders (ie) Sound Choice, Chartbuster, etc. so choosing the path you break it down so you are only searching the Chartbuster folder it speeds the process with Songlist Generator up.

Just how long does it take for you to type out a spread sheet?
450 songs per set times 8 sets, I sure wouldn't want to do that, even at the 50+ WPM I type. Also would also be prone to errors.

I also did what Thunder did and it took about the same time.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

I don't believe you understand. I already have the spreadsheet as a result of having the sets -- I build them from the file tree. Once I have done that -- as anyone could have done -- I can build a songbook. Right now my production facility isn't as pretty as Latshaw, so I usually use that if I want to build something for printing. Eventually, I will offer a PDF export. Probably only one style, so you won't want to throw away your existing generator.

Where it fits into my web site is this -- you can upload such a list and make it searchable online, i.e.:

http://inkaraoke.com/k/m/mickey

I will shortly have a mobile-phone-friendly version. That will allow singers to look up songs and do any number of things depending on how connected you are as a host. What I have set up already is the ability to send a standardized email to the host, which they could receive on their smartphone.

Since you can do this from a spreadsheet, you can just literally upload your songbook to my site and have a searchable system with request-maker -- sort of an internet kiosk. And all done from the start of a spreadsheet, which I think Latshaw's or other songbook programs can generate.

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[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Yes I get that part but every time you add a disc you have to type up a spread sheet for the new disc(s) do you?

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

No. They have already been named by the ripping program from IMDB. One of my programs makes the spreadsheet out of the file system. Latshaw will do that for you too.

Remember I am not talking about one karaoke jockey. I am talking about many, all of whom have obtained their spreadsheet in different ways.

Again, my perspective is not one KJ with one set of disks. Mine is providing this service to many who may have obtained their lists in diverse ways.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

[quote="mckyj57"][quote="drew-b-do"]
He didn't have any songlist because he let them flip through the binders. I went to Chartbuster's site. The "Download Songlist" button kept saying it was "temporarily unavailable". Is there somewhere I can download a songlist? There are 450 songs per binder, and eight binders! I have a gig Friday, and they want karaoke available... there is NO way I can get that many typed up!
[/quote]
I have all those, and I have programs that make it easy to generate songlists. I made some for you:

http://inkaraoke.com/cbe1-8title.pdf
http://inkaraoke.com/cbe1-8artist.pdf[/quote]

What software program did you use to create those songlist? I have over 15,000 songs and having some issues creating a songbook.

Mckyj57 used a combination of programs, one he wrote and another called "Song List Generator" from Latshaw Products.

If your music is on a computer then you can use that but if you are strictly CD then you have to type up your own.
(been there, did that, what a pain)

Let us know how your music is stored and we can probably help you out.

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I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Yes. If you have all your files in this format:

CB9028-04 - Artist, The - Title of Song, The.zip

(.cdg and .mp3 is OK too)

You can do this at the DOS prompt:

cd <the-folder-where-your-files-are>
tree /f /a > treeout.txt

Then send me that treeout.txt file (to karfiles@duxmail.com) and I can make you a songbook from it.

(Inspect the file to make sure it really is a list of your song files.)

If it is in some other format, one that is consistent and regular, then I can probably handle that. If it is all a mish-mosh, don't bother -- I won't deal with it.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Mckyj57,

Doesn't sound like you need this, but thought I'd offer it in case you could use it. I have a VB6 program that will read the file tree of a folder and create a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file for importing into a spreadsheet. It doesn't care about the order, eg,

CB9028-04 - Artist, The - Title of Song, The.zip

just that each of the 3 "fields" are separated by a "space dash space". Source available. There's nothing special about the source that I need to worry about revealing a trade secret.