Karaoke and the Tour

Karaoke for me is a funny thing. While karaoke itself hasn’t changed much, my idea of it has changed dramatically over the years. In years past, I held a highly unfavorable opinion of karaoke and the people who did it. Back in the day (during my college years) I saw it as something that the talent-less did for entertainment. Every time I heard somebody do karaoke, they were awful. Even worse, they weren’t even playing instruments. At least bar bands could play. Yeah, that’s pretty snobby, but I see that now. So what changed?

A couple of things have changed. I’ve gained maturity over the years, and my love and appreciation of music has grown in leaps and bounds. Also, I learned how hard it can be to get on stage in front of a lot of people through my experiences with open mic nights. How did I do? when i was starting – lets’ just say they weren’t my finer moments. I was super nervous – I’d forget lyrics; my hands would shake from stage fright. With time I became better and more confident as a performer.  Another thing that changed was I took singing lessons. Through this experience, I learned just how hard it is to be a good singer.

It wasn’t really until I took singing lessons, that I saw karaoke as the ideal vehicle for work on my singing. It freed me from having to concentrate on the chords i was playing and providing the rhythm.  Somwhat recently, I discovered that people I already knew in the Seattle tech scene liked to perform at karaoke. So I’ve started doing it and discovered that I really like it. One of the things about doing open mic nights in the past, I limited song selections to what I could sing and play. With karaoke, I’m free to work on my singing and related activities like composure, stature, pitch, breath control, and be in character. Now when I think about song choices, I think: do I like the song? is it within my range? do i think I could do it well?  As I try more songs, I surprise myself on the number of songs I’m finding that I think I can do well. I’m also noticing that I’m not nervous anymore when I go on stage. hmmm, I wonder why that is? Nevermind for now. That is a different post.  So what about the “tour”?

The Seattle Karaoke Tour was devised by Jeff Croft and Alix Han. Eight nights in a row of karaoke, where each venue is different from the last, throughout Seattle. I’m looking forward to it. Last night was a great start. I’ve got a list of new songs that I haven’t tried yet.  I’m hoping to make it to each night, to try them all. We’ll see what happens.