I just got my hard drive back with the karaoke backing tracks - all 367GB of them!  :o

A good many of these files are still zipped, too...

About 200GB is the actual music, with the rest being the video lyrics and what not that go with each track. I'm guessing I have around 40,000 karaoke songs.

This collection is not sorted by artist, so I'm using the search function to find songs. I know I have at least 20 Green Day tracks: I listened to several of them, and most have no backing vocals. BoBD was not one of them.  :(

I know this collection is good, because I've already found 7 Alice in Chains karaoke tracks (4 different songs), and AiC karaoke has been impossible to find elsewhere. If a band as relatively obscure (and not performed at karaoke much) as Alice in Chains is here, I know there is a ton of great songs.

Only problem is that there is so much to search through it's taking my computer forever. I started my AiC search almost two hours ago, and it's still going!

Heh, it just now stopped. Only 110 minutes to go through each search...

For those who want to record but are tired of cheesy or non-existant MIDI, your problems have been solved!

Let me know what song(s) you want - I think I stand a good chance of being able to find a vocal-less backing track for you.

Ant

I just got my hard drive back with the karaoke backing tracks - all 367GB of them!  :o

A good many of these files are still zipped, too...

About 200GB is the actual music, with the rest being the video lyrics and what not that go with each track. I'm guessing I have around 40,000 karaoke songs.

This collection is not sorted by artist, so I'm using the search function to find songs. I know I have at least 20 Green Day tracks: I listened to several of them, and most have no backing vocals. BoBD was not one of them.  :(

I know this collection is good, because I've already found 7 Alice in Chains karaoke tracks (4 different songs), and AiC karaoke has been impossible to find elsewhere. If a band as relatively obscure (and not performed at karaoke much) as Alice in Chains is here, I know there is a ton of great songs.

Only problem is that there is so much to search through it's taking my computer forever. I started my AiC search almost two hours ago, and it's still going!

Heh, it just now stopped. Only 110 minutes to go through each search...

For those who want to record but are tired of cheesy or non-existant MIDI, your problems have been solved!

Let me know what song(s) you want - I think I stand a good chance of being able to find a vocal-less backing track for you.

Ant



Well, I could really use any non-vocal Green Day tracks at the moment, if you are up tonight, I'd like to talk:)

How much Nirvana do you have?

Is "Mack the Knife" anywhere in that 367GB?

One at a time!  ;D


Well, I could really use any non-vocal Green Day tracks at the moment, if you are up tonight, I'd like to talk:)


I tried calling - I got your voicemail.

Anyway, there are 58 Green Day tracks and probably 25 different songs. Unfortunately, quite a few have backing vocals though: Basketcase, Warning, BoBD, Holiday, Brain Stew, Longview, I Fought The Law (cover), and WMUWSE all have chorus backing vocals - you might be able to knock them out or oversing them - they aren't too bad. Some of those parts (particularly Brain Stew) could be edited out and a copy/pasted lyrics-less verse slipped in place.

When I Come Around has a few non-lyric "ahhs", but otherwise is good.

American Idiot and Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) are the only two I've found so far with no lyrics at all. I'll send those three to you later.

Ant

How much Nirvana do you have?


So far, SLTS, Come as You Are, Heart Shaped Box, Man WHo Sold The World, All Apologies, You Know You're Right, About A Girl, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, and Lithium.

I have better hopes for these tracks than with the Green Day stuff - afaik, most of these were sung just by Kurt, so most should be vocal free.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night is completely vocal free and sounds excellent! There's one for me.

Ditto MWSTW, About A Girl and SLTS. SLTS sounds like some kind of remix - it has like 16 bars of the intro riff as the outro.  ???

You Know You're Right has some faint "hey hey" vocals and a few words here and there in it. Sounds usuable as is, especially if the parody title were to rhyme.

Heart Shaped Box is useless (full lyrics) and All Apologies (one version anyway) has the outro lyrics. Come As You Are has a few lyrics in it, but they'd be hard to overpower.

Let me know what you want.

Ant

Is "Mack the Knife" anywhere in that 367GB?


You're in luck! I've got at least three files for it. The first one is completely vocal free, though I don't know how much it sounds like the original since I haven't heard it in ages. There's lots of bass, good drums, horns, harpischord?, trumpets - sounds like a big band made it really.

PM me with your email addy and I'll send it to you.

Ant

Before Matthias asks, yes, I have Stairway to Heaven as well (at least 3 copies). The first one sounds off in the beginning, but it is completely vocal free. The second is softer (sounds like a light jazz version) and has a vocal instrument, but it's unobtrusive and would be very helpful in getting your lyrics to match the song.  It too is 100% vocal free. The third is zipped right now.

So yeah, I'll be able to do "Airline To Dayton" soon enough.  :)

Ant

For Dee Range, Rick Cormier, Kristof, Pat and others (and me): "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" is also among the 'load, and is by FAR the best karaoke track I've heard so far. A very good flute plays the main lyric line. It sounds like it was performed by an orchestra and exceeds TOS in every way... and is completely free of lyrics. There's a few choir "ahs" in places, but they are good.

Ant

It may take a while, but if you shell to DOS (run CMD), you can get a directory listing to a text file by typing (nb you need to CD <directory> to the place you've saved your files, first):

DIR > fulllist.txt

...then when it's finished, open the text file and search in that.  The file system's not particularly good at dealing with 40k files in one directory - a while back I wrote a little bit of code which splits files into subdirectories based on the first letter of the filename - would that be useful for you?

PS 200GB of music?  Holy cow... could you email it to me ;)

Well, if you don't mind, I would love to have Karaoke versions of any or all of the songs that I have parodied thus far.
http://www.amiright.com/parody/authors/mikeysquirrel.shtml
No rush, and it doesn't have to be all of them (although that would be nice!).
I plan to record more and I'm having a very hard time finding good karaoke tracks. Any way you can help would be great!
Thanks Ant!

It may take a while, but if you shell to DOS (run CMD), you can get a directory listing to a text file by typing (nb you need to CD <directory> to the place you've saved your files, first):

DIR > fulllist.txt

...then when it's finished, open the text file and search in that.  The file system's not particularly good at dealing with 40k files in one directory - a while back I wrote a little bit of code which splits files into subdirectories based on the first letter of the filename - would that be useful for you?


Yeah, a file system like that would help a bit. I don't know why, but the computer takes susbtantially longer to read the compressed files than the MP3s. Unzipping them all would help, but they all are named something like "zm2005-08 - angels - williams, robbie" - maybe that's why the search takes longer - it has to read past the beginning of the file name, thousands of times over.  :-\\


PS 200GB of music?  Holy cow... could you email it to me ;)


Sure, as long as you can handle 100 emails a day for a year as well as pay me for the time to send them - I'd have to quit my job to do it.  :D


Well, if you don't mind, I would love to have Karaoke versions of any or all of the songs that I have parodied thus far.
http://www.amiright.com/parody/authors/mikeysquirrel.shtml
No rush, and it doesn't have to be all of them (although that would be nice!).
I plan to record more and I'm having a very hard time finding good karaoke tracks. Any way you can help would be great!
Thanks Ant!


As I said before, each search takes nearly 2 hours to complete. If you had 101 Beatles parodies, I could do it, but the better way for me is for you to give me a few OSs you would really like to record to first and I can go from there.

Ant

PS: Since most everyone has done "Be Our Guest", I figure it'll get requests. I have it, but it has backing vocals, so it's useless.

So far, SLTS, Come as You Are, Heart Shaped Box, Man WHo Sold The World, All Apologies, You Know You're Right, About A Girl, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, and Lithium.

I have better hopes for these tracks than with the Green Day stuff - afaik, most of these were sung just by Kurt, so most should be vocal free.

Where Did You Sleep Last Night is completely vocal free and sounds excellent! There's one for me.

Ditto MWSTW, About A Girl and SLTS. SLTS sounds like some kind of remix - it has like 16 bars of the intro riff as the outro.  ???

You Know You're Right has some faint "hey hey" vocals and a few words here and there in it. Sounds usuable as is, especially if the parody title were to rhyme.

Heart Shaped Box is useless (full lyrics) and All Apologies (one version anyway) has the outro lyrics. Come As You Are has a few lyrics in it, but they'd be hard to overpower.

Let me know what you want.

Ant


Well, SLTS isn't what I have planned to do(since I suck at that song singing wise, but I could do it if I intentionally sing it silly). I'll let you if I change my mind on SLTS.

;)

With Come As You Are, I plan to do the boom box version. The progression to the boom box version of CAYA is different from the studio version. I'll have to learn how to play the rest of the song myself(I can play some of it).

I know how to play Lithium, Where Did You Sleep Last Night and About A Girl(as well as Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam), so those I don't have to worry about needing any recordings for.

The ones I really want are to more rare ones, mainly Hairspray Queen, Blandest and Anorexorcist. Hairspray Queen(I've found a solid midi to it, but I want a better version) is actually not hard to play guitar wise, but it requires a full band sound to be good. Blandest and Anorexorcist I can't play(at least at the moment), another problem is I can't find the Anorexorcist midi from awhile back. It's like it's gone now.


On another note, I haven't forgot about burning the CDs for you(stuff from the Nirvana box set and The Smithereens CD). The computer I'm using at home, can be used for internet(but it's kinda slow), but the spyware is still in there and CD drives don't respond(spyware might have something to do with it). I'll have to wipe the computer clean of all programs, get the CD drives to work and reload some new software in it.(When I can get it)

I could ask my dad if he can get them burned(if you want the stuff soon) or a co-worker. For the Box-Set, it will have to be more planned out(since I'll have to be there to point out what needs to be copied).

The ones I really want are to more rare ones, mainly Hairspray Queen, Blandest and Anorexorcist. Hairspray Queen(I've found a solid midi to it, but I want a better version) is actually not hard to play guitar wise, but it requires a full band sound to be good. Blandest and Anorexorcist I can't play(at least at the moment), another problem is I can't find the Anorexorcist midi from awhile back. It's like it's gone now.


If I come across those I'll let you know. I didn't do a full search for Nirvana songs, so there is a chance I have one of them... a very remote chance.  :(

As for the CDs, no rush there. I've had similar problems trying to burn CDs, though in my case I think I just got a bad/old batch of them that wouldn't read correctly.

I'm going to try to have a recording of "Where did you sleep last night" done by Monday. I don't know how many times I can sing it in a row w/o losing my voice - Kurt is screaming his guts out at the end of that song.

Ant

I don't know why, but the computer takes susbtantially longer to read the compressed files than the MP3s.

Not entirely surprising - it's got to open the zip, read the contents list and close the zip again.

What I'd do is this: if you don't have it already, download and install Total Commander (simply the best file management tool for Windows, ever).  <Alt+F7> gives you the search dialog - you can enter all search extensions, e.g. *.mp3;*.midi;*.kar (or whatever), and ensure you check the "Search archives" checkbox.

Go and make a coffee while it thinks about it - it's got a lot of thinking to do.

When the search has finished, click the "Feed to listbox" button - this will stick all 40k files into the one list, so this may take a while, too.

Select all the files (Ctrl+<numeric keypad +>)

From the "Mark" menu, choose "Save Selection to File"

...and you'll have your text file of all the titles.

If I come across those I'll let you know. I didn't do a full search for Nirvana songs, so there is a chance I have one of them... a very remote chance.  :(

As for the CDs, no rush there. I've had similar problems trying to burn CDs, though in my case I think I just got a bad/old batch of them that wouldn't read correctly.

I'm going to try to have a recording of "Where did you sleep last night" done by Monday. I don't know how many times I can sing it in a row w/o losing my voice - Kurt is screaming his guts out at the end of that song.

Ant


I'll also have to look, I'll try another for Anorexorcist, since I can fall back on the Hairspray Queen midi if nothing else happens. I'll also have to try to find another Blandest midi, unless it's the winamp messing up when trying to play it.