Karaoke Forums

I had no idea the game last night was rigged that much.  I never did figure out who who the judges were last night.  I thought two of them had to stay consistant for each evening.  I guess that's even been thrown out the window.  

This maybe of some use to people who go for competition

Winning Tips!

1. Song Choice Is Very Important!

Choose a song that holds meaning for you, that you can relate to and are able to convey its meaning to your audience
Choose a song that is reasonably well known over an obscure selection
Avoid choosing a song that is too popular otherwise you risk boring your audience
Choose a song with some variation such as tempo, range, or key to keep your audience interested
Avoid choosing songs that are too long
Avoid choosing songs that are too slow. A fun, upbeat song is often more memorable than a heartfelt ballad
If you have more than one song choice, mix them up a bit to show your range and versatility

2. Vocal Performance

Use changes in pitch, intonation, tonal control and dynamic range (from soft to loud) to showcase your abilities and to add some variety to your performance
Sometimes, less is more. If you have the ability to hit a note so high only a dog could hear or are able to fill a room with sound without a microphone remember, it is far more impressive to show a dynamic shift from rather than maintaining a single sound throughout your performance

Highlight your strengths and downplay your weaknesses. Modify the song and melody to your advantage. If you can not hit a particular note without sounding shrill or flat, it is best to arrange the song to avoid accentuating weaknesses

3. Stage Presence

Release your inner entertainer. It is seldom enough to simply stand in one place and sing. Try swaying to the music if you can not dance. At the very least, try to walk about the stage during your performance
Use body language to help convey the song's meaning but avoid clichés like pointing to your eyes or your heart

Consider props and costumes to enhance your performance appeal
Sing to your audience. Make eye contact whenever possible
While glancing is fine, avoid singing directly to the monitor(s)
Have fun with your performance and the audience will too

4. Competition Ettiquette

Be respectful to your fellow competitors
Do not distract competitors by speaking loudly during their performances
Whether you win or lose, be graceful
Best of luck to you and remember to have fun!


Courtesy of the Canadian National Karaoke Coalition

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

X L ENT stuff again Jian, however.............

It seems that any and every contest ends up being a beauty contest, to some extent.   Not saying it's right but it happens.

Every knows that karaoke (any) contests have the potential for being ....unfair.   Look at the last olympics with the judge they caught rigging the score as a favor to another country for a return favor.     So you are always taking a chance that it could happen to you.

Karaoke contests will kill your business, faster than a bad rotation.     If any of my bars want to do a contest, they can bring in another company to do it.   That's how I feel about the subject.     So no more crying, if you can't take the outcome.  

I would say that if you are not a regular, at a particular bar that's holding the contest, your odds just went down.    Is it fair?    No.    Is it right?    No.   Does it happen?   Yes.   Can you stop it?   No.         A Karaoke contest equals a dead bar, after it's over and everyone is mad about not winning.      Seen it happen way too many times.    Just remember you are there to make the bar money, not lose it.     You're better off giving away Tee Shirts that everyone has an equal chance at winning.    Nobody will be mad if they don't get one and everybody will be back again next week, with no hard feelings.

Interesting comments Bigdog.  We're in the middle of our long contest and so far the business has picked up a lot actually.  But there are signs of arguments breaking out among some of the regulars.  We'll see how this all ends up by the middle of August. There's really not alot of other god places in Canby for these people to hang out at so they're going to have to settle their differences unless they're interested in going miles out of town!  :no:  LOL

I was in a contest myself, years ago. They were both popularity contests rather than singing contests.

I won the first although I did not deserve to. There were at least 20 contestants. I'm certain that 3 of them sang better than I did. The judges were the bar owner and a few of the staff. What could I do about it? Spend the check they gave me for $100.

The contest started two hours ealier than their show usually started. I was so caught up in the excitement that I didn't pay attention to how much I was drinking. By the time the contest was over, they had to help me to the stage to collect my check.

It was rigged or at least unfair. I have no interest in seeing my friends lose to me especially when they did a better job than I did. They had one more contest a year later and never did it again. I can't blame them.

I did an Elvis contest off 6th street that used to be a weekly thing.  I listened to the other contestants and they quite frankly were real bad.  However, I knew real quick that I had no chance because each of the contestants had at least one full table of peeps cheering at the top of their lungs after their performance. Sure as the sun will rise, I got up to sing, nailed my selection down to sounding like Elvis and after I finished about two people clapped fairly loud. (non-affiliated to any other singer apparently). The guy who won did some real bad dancing and laughed through his performance and made an (@$%&#!) of himself and he had probably two tables of peeps cheering him on. The three judges were picked from the crowd and yes, they raised hands to "volunteer" so how does anyone know that their seats weren't right next to the contestants? Karaoke contests are never fun, never accurate and give money to the person who brings the largest crowd. (Hmmm. Maybe it DOES work. For the bar)  :O

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Who loves ya baby?

Exactly, it really is just a ploy for the bar to make more money.  Of course it's spending some money for prizes, but each person here has to pay $10 to enter the first time and $2 for every attempt there after.

We ran a couple of large contests in the past.  1 of them was a country idol contest in which several bars competed, there would be local finals, regional semi finals & a finals.  Each club sent the top 2 from each club & the 2 winners from our club went all the way to the finals & 1 actually won the finals.  Prize - $1000 (if i'm not mistaken) PLUS she was the opening act for Diamond Rio at the state fair - she went on from there, due to some agents that were watching, to Nashville & competed at the Nashville Star.  Not sure how far she went with that.
Next year there was a similar contest with just a cash prize - our club winner went on to take 3rd place at the finals ($500).  
Our 5 judges consisted of 'karaoke friendly' local band members, a radio personality from a local college station, a sound engineer from a local recording studio & an average karaoke singer none of which were affiliated with our club.  Judging was based on vocal ability (highest points), stage presence/performance (2nd highest points), overall appearance (little points - but could make or break a tie score, this WAS an 'Idol' contest).  No audience response was included - most unfair judging criteria IMO.

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

More good points from Lonman.  Have fairly unbiased judges who all know what they're doing and a judging criteria that pays more attention to singing ability and doesn't involve audience participation or reaction. Makes sense to me! Too bad we couldn't have done something like that here.

I think the best type of Karaoke contest is the type that is held that night and prizes not cash are given away.  I have done several that if you were on the singing rotation list you were in the contest.  I picked out several songs...silly songs that I knew everyone would know ahead of time. This way they did not know what they were singing until they were on the stage.  An envelope was circulated around with only the song numbers and they were allowed to pull a number.  Judging on this was done by the entire crowd.  The crowd loved it because it was hilarious to see this big burly guy with a way deep voice singing Any Man of Mine.  Everyone that participated got a "singing star" ribbon and I had 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.  These high dollar prizes were purchased at the dollar store...nothing like a frozen mug for ice cold beer (they loved it)!  Another prize was a 12oz bottle of coke with a little airplane style bottle of JD.  I invested maybe $25.00 of my money into the night but it kept the crowd happy, no one got their feelings hurt, it didn't matter if you were drunk (it made the performance better), and it got them asking for more.

As far as my last post, I put that up for inspiration really.  If your serious about your singing then just don't give up.  Somewhere there will be fair judges..it did happen to me.  I only spoke of that contest, there have been many others I have won and lost but I like to sing, many think I am good, so I am going to keep on trying.  

OFF to my day job!  Have a great day all!

I think it is a mistake to interrupt the majority of the “karaoke contests” to be synonymous with a “talent search” or “talent contest”. There are flaws with both but the biggest issue a truly qualified judge has in a karaoke contest is choosing a winner from a loosely structured event with a group of people who have limited and sometimes no talent. To put it another way, if there are 10 contestants and 4 suck, 3 are mediocre, 1 is above average, and 2 are exceptional you have a relatively easy contest to judge. However, the karaoke contests I have witnessed are typically 6 suck, 3 mediocre, 1 above average. You might think ok what is the problem the above average contestant should easily win, right? Well this is where it gets brutal because many times the above average contestant will not have “est”; (youngest, slimmest, cutest) you know what I mean. So I believe karaoke contests are a necessary part of the bar/nightclub and kj industry to build business and satisfy outside sponsorships but I do not think of them as anything more then that.

Where I come from; 3 sing better than the original singer, 5 are AI prospect, 2 are above average.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Although if the qualifying rounds are done properly, the finals will generally yield a pretty damn good show - which is what I try to stress to the contestants, even if you win or not, you all basically have won to an extent since the finals crowd are typically alot more responsive & larger than regular nights & how many times are you in a 'showcase' of singers with a large responsive crowd?

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

Jian

You have got to be kinding, right? If not then your venue must see alot of talent scouts on a weekly basis. I am in Chitown and let me tell you we have a lot of karaoke.

No, am not kidding. The karaoke place that I normaly go to have at least 15 very good singers most nights. All karaoke bars here have Karaoke7 nights a week and there are 15 of them within 5 min walks of each other. There must be well over 50 around town, and all offer karaoke 7 nights a week.

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I can neither confirm nor deny ever having or knowing anything about nothing.... mrscott

Oh, you're in karaoke paradise!

No kidding, sounds like a place to visit if a person wants to recruit talent.

Speaking of Nashville Star, some dude came to my karaoke on Saturday night, and since he was new I went and smoozed a bit to try to get him to come back. He kept going  ON AND ON about how he finished 36th in Nashville Star. When he sang he was OK, but nothing special. First off, I don't even know what it means to finish 36th. Do they even have that many peeps on the TV rounds? It may just be an easy lie to keep up since it would be hard to verify who really finished where outside of the top 15 or whatever...

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C Mc
KJ, FL

36th??? Wow!   Guess some just have to build their confidence somehow....

The Miller beer promoters came into our bar a few weeks ago. They gave away free
Miller beer all night and gave me Chicago Cubs baseball tickets to give away. He said
you can have a contest and give the tickets to the best singers. I explained to him how that was a bad idea. Instead I gave everyone who sang a raffle ticket and at the end of the night raffled off the Cubs tickets.

I think most people love the idea of a contest, but to me it is making one person happy and the rest mad at me.  LMAO

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[updown]~*~ MONKEY BUSINESS KARAOKE~*~ [/shadow][/updown][/glow]

Babs,

I've been a Cubs fan (you live in or near Chicago, you know better than to ask me why) for 35 years.  The next time you have tickets I think the best and fairest thing you can do is to not tell anybody and then send them to me.  I promise to make really good use of them and to not tattle about where I got them.  LOL

Larry

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"Life is too short for diet soda and lite beer"