It’s the last full work week of the year, thanks to the bizarre calendar that has both Christmas Day and New Years’ Day on a Friday, and Christmas Eve is apparently a federal holiday now. I know my people will get the day off. Gonna be a weird week as everyone crams their stuff into this week then turns into a pumpkin next week. I have no idea how I am going to get everything done I need to! It’s anxiety-inducing! What do I do here? Why did I have to get COVID and lose like four days of work? I’m so tired! 𝓹𝓵𝓮𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓱𝓮𝓵𝓹 𝓶𝓮
Home Karaoke
I couldn’t think of anything good to write today, so I thought I’d write about how, because my wife and I enjoy karaoke, I built a weird little karaoke hole in our game room at home. I got one that was a little bit more expensive, but you can get karaoke machines off of Amazon for like $80, and the rest is simple if you have an Apple TV (Airplay - so if you have a TV or device that can be Airplayed to, this also works) or Chromecast. I’ll give you the iOS/Airplay version because that’s what I use.
On your iPhone or iPad, load the Youtube app, then choose screen mirroring. It will mirror your entire iOS device’s Youtube app, but when you select a song it will only play the video, meaning that it’ll be just like you’re in a karaoke bar, except you’re not waiting for your turn as much or spending $45 on one plate of chicken fingers and $10 for a beer. The only bad thing is it doesn’t support queuing up songs, but it’s fine, who cares. People can choose each time.
![Image](https://www.wheresyoured.at/content/images/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https-3a-2f-2fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2fpublic-2fimages-2fb3ec5315-9192-495b-a5f0-f32228784b79_1536x2048.jpg)
Another way to do this is to use the Karafun app which is $5.99 for a two day pass, or $9.99 for a month - it has a 39,000 song database, you can download songs for offline use, it allows you to manage singers and queue up songs, change the key and the tempo of songs - on top of that, it also has a web-based queue functionality, so people can scan a QR code and choose their songs versus handing around the iPad. This is what I use when I have (well, had) people over. It’s super slick. I love it.
You can even put photos up during songs!
![Image](https://www.wheresyoured.at/content/images/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https-3a-2f-2fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2fpublic-2fimages-2f3b57ca48-d75d-424c-bbbe-1ac820ee95b7_2048x1536.jpg)
The black line at the bottom there is because Karafun has a web link it generates once, and only once, meaning that the one time I shared it online people kept putting up joke songs into the queue. Not good.
But it doesn’t have all the songs I want, and I’m a prick, and thus I went on Fiverr, where tons of people will gladly make you a karaoke version of any song for about $15. I use this guy from Macedonia who is really great at what he does, is extremely kind and patient with me and my exceedingly specific requests. I just had him create a karaoke version of The Toadies’ You’ll Come Down, an extremely specific choice because I’m me, and I know what I want to sing.
And it looks great!
![Image](https://www.wheresyoured.at/content/images/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https-3a-2f-2fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com-2fpublic-2fimages-2f989eb779-0955-4e3b-a09f-7c5524219e8b_1536x2048.jpg)
It’s also important to remember that there’s always an audience for karaoke, so you need to make sure you don’t pick extremely long songs, especially if you’re singing a song that only you know. But that’s the fun of karaoke - walking that tightrope between enjoyable and obnoxious, getting steadily drunker until you finally pick a song you have to quit 1 minute in because you’re not able to follow the text.
Obviously this isn’t something I’ve done, but it sounds plausible.