One of the most entertaining things to do is sing karaoke. But you don’t need to go out to a nightclub or bar to do it. You can do it in your home. It used to be that you needed an expensive machine to do karaoke at home, but with the advent of greater technology, there are now several different ways to do it inexpensively in the comfort of your own home. One of those ways is with Kanto Karaoke, a software that allows you to do it on your home PC or Mac. It’s a quick download for the free version that allows you to do mostly everything. It’s at least enough to try it out to see if you want to spend the money to download the full version.
Starting Out
Before you begin you need to download the software from the website. It’s available for both PC and Mac with free downloads for both. The only difference is that the PC version offers both a paid personal and a paid professional version. The Mac version offers only a combined personal and professional version.
For the purposes of this review, I’m working with the free Mac version. There are a few limitations with the free version: playlists are limited to just five songs, recording is limited to one minute, converting Midi to Mp3 is limited to one minute, and it can’t be used for professional use. Download your desired version and store the application wherever you store your apps on your hard drive.
What Can It Do?
First and foremost, it guides you as you sing karaoke! However, before you can get to that point, you have to do one major thing. You need to get some music to sing along to. If you’re experienced, you might have your own karaoke music already. You can use the music you already have on CDs or files that you may already own that are loaded onto your Mac/PC. It will play the following types of files: video karaoke, mp3 karaoke, midi files, CDG+MP3 files, KFN (karafun) files, and .KAR files. Downloading Music If you don’t have any music of your own, you’ll need to find some. The app does include a list of downloadable songs; however, these are offered at a price. After opening the app, click on “Options” in the top left. With the information you are presented with, Click on “Download MP3 Karaoke” about one-third of the way down on the left side of the app. This opens up a website in your browser where you can download your choice of songs. But again, these are offered at a low price.
The instructions on the website also give you three more options for downloading music. The first option is downloading through YouTube. If you have YouTube Red, you can download karaoke videos directly from YouTube. But if you don’t, there are apps available that allow you to download videos. The website suggests one: AllMyTube. You can download this free app to download videos, but like with the free version of Kanto Karaoke, there are limitations. Another option is to download from a free Internet site. The Kanto website suggests a few of them. The only problem for me was that some of the lyrics didn’t fit within the “lyrics box” on Kanto Karaoke. Of course, that’s not a problem with Kanto. That’s a problem with the the site you download the songs from.
The last option is to download professional karaoke songs. The website suggests Karaoke-Version.com where you can download your choice of songs for a fee of $1.99 each, but there are certainly many other websites as well where you could find the same thing. All in all, there are many, many options for finding songs. Playing Music Playing Music on Kanto Karaoke is just as easy as any other music player. First you need to add your files. You can either pull them up individually or create a playlist. In the free version you are limited to five songs in a playlist.
On the upper-right side of the main window underneath where it says “Playlists” you can click on “Add” to add a playlist and name it what you wish. Populate it with files by by clicking on “Add” underneath “Playlists Files” and adding the files off a disk or that you have downloaded from the Internet. You can also Search, Edit, Delete, or move through the playlist here. Again, you can also just play files individually by clicking “Add Song” underneath “Live Performance.”
In the bottom center of the main window are the audio controls where you can play, stop, change volume, forward, reverse, etc. Once you hit play the lyrics which appear in the center of the window and the music will begin to play. The lyrics will move through the song so that you can follow along easily. Additional Features There are also several other features of Kanto Karaoke, other than just the standard playing of music.
If you would like to see the lyrics in a larger window all on its own, you can press “Dual Display” in the lower-right. There is also an option to record your voice and the background music. Simply press the large round red button in the controls, and it will record for you, providing you have a microphone built in or attached to your computer. My voice isn’t that good for me to want to record it, though. You can also change the Tempo of the Key to better match what you are looking for. These options are in the upper-left of the window. You can save your settings as well by clicking “Save/Pitch Tempo.” If you would rather work with MP3s than Midi files, there’s an option to convert your files. Additionally there is a download mentioned on the website that will expand your options, but only if you are on a PC.
Conclusion
All in all, Kanto Karaoke is a fun tool to have around. If you’re just looking to play around a little bit with it, the free trial will do you well, and you’ll be able to find free files with some time invested on the Internet and YouTube. But if you plan to sing karaoke regularly or do it professionally, purchasing the full download would be your best option. Kanto Karaoke
