Low-budget MIDI karaoke mania!
Posted on March 18, 2004 @ 7:16 pm
Despite my geeky tendencies, I tend to subsist at least a few rungs below the rest of the civilized world on the technological ladder at any given point in time. Case in point: I do not own, nor have I ever owned, a cell phone. In fact, I could probably count the number of times that I’ve even spoken on someone else’s cell phone in my life on two hands. Along similar lines, I’ve also managed to totally miss out on the entire MP3 revolution. I don’t own a portable MP3 player, I don’t have an account at the iTunes Store, and I’ve yet to rip the first song from my archaic CD-based music collection.
Back in the halcyon days of college, however, I did boast an amazing collection of rock/pop MIDI files on my computer. You might remember these amateur MIDIs — they were the instrumental music files that typically came out of your computer speakers sounding like they were played by a ham-handed first-year piano student with a faulty metronome and a vintage 1986 Casio keyboard. Nevertheless, back in the day (circa 1996), they were ideal for use as slow-loading, browser-crashing background music to accompany the animated GIFs, scrolling marquees, and “hot links” on your Geocities webpage.
Anyway, let’s get back to more important matters, i.e. my rockin’ MIDI collection. I had it all — Weezer, the Beastie Boys, Garbage, the Smashing Pumpkins — and all of them were absolutely wonderful in a completely horrible kind of way. It was such a guilty pleasure just to hear how bad the latest Top 40 hit would sound once a MIDI “artist” got ahold of it and piped its melody through the “harpsichord” channel, slightly off-tempo.
On occasion, when we weren’t busy playing Quake or going to Wal-Mart at 3:00AM for a case of Sam’s Choice soft drinks, my friends and I would hook up the rinky-dink microphone that came bundled with my modem, load a few songs, and partake in a little activity that I liked to call low-budget MIDI karaoke. We’d take turns at the mic, performing our favorite songs and recording our efforts using Windows’ built-in Sound Recorder program (just in case anyone might ever need musical evidence of what a bunch of losers we could be at times, I suppose). Sadder still, there was no alcohol whatsoever involved in these activities.
Up until my hard drive crashed a few years ago, I still had a few of my favorite karaoke performances saved — including a lovely rendition of Beck’s “Where It’s At” and a tongue-in-cheek, Shatner-esque cover of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic” — all backed by the sweet, slightly off-key sounds of MIDI. Ah, those were the days.
Oh, what the heck! Why not play along with low-budget MIDI karaoke at home? You know you want to…
Posted by Jess | Filed Under Random Musings |
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