강남 가라오케 originated in Japan with the meaning of an orchestra, plainly put. It is a form of entertainment, when you can sing along with some music which is playing on a system. The original singers voice is not there, but it is a popular song, which most people know. Sometimes the volume is down lower, so that the singer can not be heard quite as well.
The DVDs of karaoke are played on a DVD with the lyrics so you can read them while the music is playing. There are some other methods used for karaoke and they are laser discs, VCD and CD+G. CD+Gs were ordinary CDs which had the audio included and with the lyrics included. These could be played on a CD player but the words were hard to read. Then the VCDs which are used for karaoke will keep the quality MPEG videos to display the lyrics.
With the DVD the video is also included so that it is accompanied by the videos of high quality because they are just for karaoke. The DVD discs come in two different formats non-multiplex and multiplex.There are vocal demos for the multiplex ones so the listener has a choice to either use them with the vocals and listen to the song at the same time. This helps to practice and use it as a comparison to the original song played. You can remove the vocals if you want to sing along without them. For the person more familiar with karaoke, the non-multiplex are the ones without the vocals.
A very important fact is that the karaoke tracks on the DVDs are not of the original artist who recorded the song but it is created differently. The sound is so close to the original though and the original artist is probably not the original one singing either with the multiplex DVDs.
With the technology today the players of karaoke can change the pitch of the music to suit the voice of the person singing along with it and also keep the original songs tempo the same. Karaoke discs will come with some background singers or singer with mainly the chorus as an accompaniment or a background singing.
There is a room called the karaoke box which can be rented for any number of times which the user would like. It has all the equipments which a karaoke room needs so that the person can have a personal quiet place to practice for their own performance. Some bars which have karaoke sometimes will charge a fee for the use of the karaoke which could be either $1 or $2 and this will be per song.
There is another option that is available too to buy their own karaoke player to have in their home. They are not all that expensive and the karaoke DVDs are about the cost of a CD.
There is a game played in karaoke bars called karaoke roulette and songs are played randomly and the people have to choose the song being played and these can be bought on the computer also. There are some websites which make it a global community for karaoke so singers can share with others.
