MTU.Community


Go Back   MTU.Community > Singers & Hosts Wisdom

Singers & Hosts Wisdom Post how to be a great karaoke singer or host.

View Poll Results: Are Contests Good or Bad?
Yes, they're just for fun anyway. 12 15.00%
No, they're bad all the way around. 46 57.50%
Yes, with a good point scoring system. 22 27.50%
Voters: 80. You may not vote on this poll

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #41  
Old July 2nd, 2003, 12:38 PM
alanross's Avatar
alanross alanross is offline
VIP
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Outer Banks - U.S.A. Nags Head, NC
Posts: 1,913
Talking Karaoke Contests

I've just finished reading all the posts and it seems clear that the majority of KJs despise the thought of having to run a Karaoke Contest. I, too, despise them.

We are located in a resort area which relies almost entirely on summer tourism for its annual economic vitality. So in the off season, during the four weeks of January, one of the places we play, has insisted we run a Karaoke Contest. It does draw in more business for the bar all through January and the first part of February and then we're right back to normal, but by then we're only a few weeks away from a trickle of tourism resuming.

This past year was the eighth annual contest and it ran far smoother than in years prior because I changed my attitude.

Everything is what you put into it. I decided to embrace the contest this year and having made that decision, I focused on making it the best it could be. I developed a new scoring system for the judges which the bar manager has always appointed; I prepared a written explanation of how the judging was done and what the judges were grading on. I then made sure each judge was aware of the parameters of the judging and gave the contestants all the same information. These printouts made it clear to everyone what the judges were looking for, including the judges.

We play at this place seven nights a week and the contest is only held on Wednesday nights for four weeks of qualifying in January and the finalists all return the first week in February to compete for the grand prize. Every other night they can come in and practice the songs they want to sing for the qualifying and final rounds. Plus they can come to any of the dozen other shows we host at other places around town on any given night to practice. This seriously reduces the number of "just pop in to win people" because it's a month long event. It also increases business to all our shows because, as you know, Karaoke singers take it VERY seriously.

During each qualifying week, we chose the top three scoring vocalists as finalists so by the end of the fourth week we have 12 contestants for the finals. We also don't make the whole show about the contest. It is a subset of the Karaoke night. The first hour and a half are for anyone who wants to sing and for the contestants to warm up a bit. Then the contest runs for an hour, TOPS. Then we return to regular karaoke for everyone after the weekly prizes are awarded.

We follow the same format for the finals. In the south we call it the "y'all sing" time before the contest, then the finals, then back to "y'all sing".

I LOVE the idea of singers judging each other. Every year I hate hearing the moaning and complaining of the people who don't win, but if they judge each other, there's no one to blame but each other! Brilliant!

But the secret to the success this year was really my attitude. I gave it all I had. I was every bit as fun and lively as I am every other night of the week. Everyone knows how much I hate doing the contests and they all sympathize with me when I have to run one. I am friends with every one of our regulars and they know I have absolutely no love of the contests, so they spotted the change right away. Everyone's energy remained high, each contestant sang with all their worth, the judges paid stick attention to detail and you could see the contestants really try to give what they knew the judges were looking for.

At the end of the night, everyone felt like they had done their best performance ever and amazingly, all but one lady from out of town (who was terribly tone deaf and didn't understand why she didn't win) felt that the right person won based on the judging criteria.

The criteria I created was a score of 1-25 for Song Choice (How well the song suited the person's personality and voice); 1-25 for Stage Presence and 1-50 for Vocal Talent. Best possible score being 100. Three judges can each score up to the max for each category and the scores are all then added together for a max score of 300 per contestant. By having a wide range of 1-25 for scoring, the judges have more room to play with subtle differences between contestants. Scoring from 1-10 means that "Bill" and "Sue" could both get an 8, while using 1-25 means Bill could get a 20 and Sue a 22 because she was slightly better in a category.

Next year, however, I will apply these same criteria to the new judges (THE CONTESTANTS!) and I'm having them judge each other. Just brilliant! (That's probably why I didn't think of it - it's BRILLIANT!)

I hope this helps anyone who has to run a contest even against their recommendations to the owners/managers.

- Alan Ross
Nags Head, North Carolina
Reply With Quote
  #42  
Old July 22nd, 2003, 05:31 PM
DynamicMike DynamicMike is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 7
Red face between a rock and a hard place

I don't generally like contests.

For the bar owner, they usually advertise there is a contest starting at 9:30 or all the ringers know it starts at 9:30. So the ringers come in at 9:30, sing their song and drink a free glass of water until the vote for the ca$h. (And no, I don't own a bar)

The regulars who have sung a couple of songs (and have been spending some money) have to wait until the contest is over to get back to their enjoyment and the ringers leave the bar.

I was at a bar in Burbank and they did their contest as a Karaoke Suicide. You put your name in the hat if you wanted a chance. They only drew 5 names out and those 5 people didn't get to pick what song they were singing. An interesting twist, but the "ringers" don't like that too well.

I think a variation of that would be good. You put your name in one hat, and the song you want to sing in the other. If your name is selected, you come up and choose your song out of the other hat. You might get lucky and pull the song you want...or maybe you get stuck with a Blonde tune.

Just a thought...I'm not a KJ, just like to go have a good time.
Reply With Quote
  #43  
Old August 14th, 2003, 03:34 PM
darrinlutz darrinlutz is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 4
Contest.....

I see a lot of good post. We have done a sort of Name that Tune contest for small prizes, usually from the bar owner, free burger, drink, maybe a free ticket to one of his band dances.....

But I would like to relate a bad experience we saw......

One of our good patrons asked us to cheer her on at another karaoke show she would go to. We only run a show one nite a week at a different place, so we didn't mind obliging her....... Small show, about 6 singers as I remember, they each sang two songs. That took about an hour out of the singing rotation for everyone else. Two of the singers were the KJ, the other was his wife.....hmmmmm...... we didn't bother entering the contest, we were there for our friend. She sang very well, however, judging..... don't recall who came in first, but definately remember the KJ came in second.... needless to say , we haven't been back neither has our friend.

That just ain't right.....

Darrin
Karaoke Kraize
Reply With Quote
  #44  
Old August 15th, 2003, 08:26 PM
Ken Ken is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 12
wow Darrin !!!!

That was totally unprofessional of the KJ...what's the mentality of some of these people....it's almost like their ego's need constant "pumping', that's definitely the worst kj story that I've ever heard
Reply With Quote
  #45  
Old August 17th, 2003, 03:37 PM
SteveWalker SteveWalker is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jan 2002
Posts: 363
I just finished doing "Benningan's Idol" karaoke contest at six Benningan’s locations. It was organized by a couple ladies who own a travel agency so the top prize was a trip two to Cancun. I provided the music and the ladies registered the singers and picked the judges from the audience. We had fantastic singers on all three preliminary nights where one singer wins, then goes on to compete in the semi-finals and later the finals. Singers that don't win can come back to any of the other Benningan's to compete in the preliminaries.

Toward the end of a contest night, the two ladies would tally up the score and I have all singers doing a song like YMCA. As for judging, I always seem to know who is likely to win or at least I narrow it down to the top two. Funny thing is that my picks won only about half of the time. I noticed that the winners seemed to be the ones who came from show to show and were from these ladies home town. Perhaps the ladies felt more compassion for these people and decided to override the judge’s choice, not sure? I didn't want to ask them and remained neutral It's business as usual!

Steve
Reply With Quote
  #46  
Old November 20th, 2003, 08:10 PM
Sweet Music 4 U Sweet Music 4 U is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 3
Thumbs down

Darren, Now that's karaoke competition bias at it's worst... sounds like a thing like I once saw in a New Mexico Casino karaoke competition once.
__________________
When the singer is too good... Get them signed... :-)
Reply With Quote
  #47  
Old December 22nd, 2003, 09:55 PM
swany swany is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Howard City, Michigan
Posts: 319
Karaoke contests.

We hate em too, but they draw more people, a few things I have run into. The host said the judging for the finals would be DJs from a local radio station. Did not show on finals night, one of the judges son won the top prize. Contest rule, can't sing the same song in finals as you qualified with. The blond with the nice butt took home $350 and she sang the same song. Her boyfriend did not place ( he was not off key she was and he was a better singer )
Now for the good one I was at, can't sing the same song as you qualify with, finals there is no monitor. The respected music company puts on the show pays for the prizes and judges the show. Rules no relatives or employees of the show can enter. Former contest winners may judge as a guest on qualifing nights (not finals), but can be disqualified for bias judging (leans way to one person that the other judges have not even considered.
__________________
Take care and have fun. Swany
Reply With Quote
  #48  
Old December 22nd, 2003, 10:08 PM
Sweet Music 4 U Sweet Music 4 U is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 3
Exclamation

Swany,
The competition format you just discussed.. in your reply.. (the
second.. was what I did up until a year ago) When I stopped running competitions. It was a very successful format for us and many now do it because it was an extremely fair system to many.
It is a "marketability and honest talent" judging system and weeds out the bias in a nanosecond. It really shows how honest the show producers and the KJ really is.


SM2U
__________________
When the singer is too good... Get them signed... :-)
Reply With Quote
  #49  
Old December 23rd, 2003, 01:14 PM
swany swany is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Howard City, Michigan
Posts: 319
Sweet Music 4 U, We try to do an honest show, lot of bars want to do contests and they want to judge them, we say no! Explain that we have to judge it, or we don't do it. The reason, we don't want some of the bad things that can go wrong. We also, make sure that owners and or relatives, employees of the bar know they can sing but, not in the contest. We have to set the standards for our own shows. Most people want fair contests, and some of the local talent we run across should be on star search or American idol. To all a very merry christmas, and prosperous new year. Remember to have fun.
__________________
Take care and have fun. Swany
Reply With Quote
  #50  
Old January 3rd, 2004, 06:45 PM
kevin7007 kevin7007 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 19
Re: contests

Quote:
Originally posted by kking
Jumpmaster:
I have always enjoyed hosting contests and I have always hated the judging part. After seeing different contests and methods for judging, the one I chose for my contests is as follows: the contestants judge each other. This is more work because it involves making forms for each contestant to use for judging. This is how it works. Each contestant is given a form with everyone's name on it except theirs. I have three categories listed, with scores from 1-5. I then announce contestants names and make sure the contestant/singers are judging the right person, when that person comes up to sing. After the contest I pick up forms and tally scores and announce the winner. Hope this helps. kking
we also like doing contest my wife and i love
your judging idea do you also use this method for the finals .
also we were thinking about the contestents paying a$1. fee each time they qualify to boost up the purse. what do you think ?
as for as some of the other kjs / djs thoughts i love to sing but i do it for fun these contest are for the ones who are very very good you may win you may lose most mature adults 21 and older relize this . and it is grrreat entertainment. YOU MAY HAVE THE NEXT BON JOVI OR CLINT BLACK AT YOUR SHOW dont laugh its happened. please reply .thanks
Reply With Quote
  #51  
Old January 3rd, 2004, 07:06 PM
Sweet Music 4 U Sweet Music 4 U is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 3
It's was a flat purse with a straight up entry fee based upon the minimum number of paid entries.. paid out over the top 10 singers and then the remaining 20 of the top 30 recieve trophies. we used to draw in this series 150 singers. and in the finals we had 400 singers qualified. with the same singers soring under the same system. and different judges every time. 11 of the singers are now in the recording industry. 1 is now a well known karaoke & audio consultant in the southwest us.
__________________
When the singer is too good... Get them signed... :-)
Reply With Quote
  #52  
Old January 4th, 2004, 12:24 PM
kevin7007 kevin7007 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 19
super cool beans thats what it is all about , succeding and watching others do the same thanks for the reply
Reply With Quote
  #53  
Old February 8th, 2004, 05:17 AM
ltproductions ltproductions is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Victorville,CA
Posts: 27
Re:Contests

First of all, thanks to all of you for the great suggestions that you've posted in this forum. Some of these ideas are really great and I'll be proposing them to the bar owners as alternatives to a contest. I've been a KJ in the Inland Empire (Southern California) for about 10 years now. I too, have mixed feelings about talent contests, but there is no doubt that they do increase business every time, if only temporarily. I've had all the same problems that you've all had and just have a few thoughts of my own. I've tried all the various judging systems at one time or another and
none is perfect. I thought having the contestants judge each other was the answer until I had one where 3 of the contestants (out of 10) were related (husband, wife, and brother/brother-in-law), gave each other maximum scores, and skewed the results in their favor. Needless to say, I was really disillusioned and ticked off! I've since settled on 2 hand picked (by me) permanent judges that I KNOW are fair and unbiased. One is a woman, which prevents the "girl with the nice butt" from winning every time. The 3rd is an alternate which I change on a weekly basis. The contest goes ten weeks with prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Prizes vary from venue to venue. Sometimes it's cash, sometimes it's a buffet dinner for 2, sometimes free drink tokens from the bar, etc. It's not perfect. Some people still think it's rigged and there's usually at least one whiner in the group, but all-in-all it works pretty well for me. Looking forward to hearing from more of you and more of your great ideas!

Larry T.
Reply With Quote
  #54  
Old February 11th, 2004, 11:02 PM
Sherri Sherri is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Posts: 39
Just an idea for those of you looking for a different style of Karaoke contest.
I had a problem with some people who owned personal karaoke machines, and could practice every day, against these poor guys who sang only out at karaoke, and had no means to "Brush up on their songs"
My solution to this problem was:
(my karaoke show is country)
I took a mess of old time country classics that most everyone should know. I place girl songs in one bag, and boy songs in another. When the singer comes up to sing, he choses a song out of the bag, if he doesn't like the first song he choses, he may put it back and chose another. But, he must sing the second song if he discards the first one. This takes care of the practicing karaoke singers, and makes the shot a bit more fair. Plus, they seem to enjoy the challange!!
Everyone in the audience gets a judging ballet, and I end up with winners. Then I make all the winners compete on a different day, for overall winner, and I have local radio station personel judge. No one seems to balk if the radio station judges!! It is raising the egos of people who otherwise didn't have one. Hope someone out there, likes the idea and gives it a whirl. It's been working great, they're having a ball!!
Reply With Quote
  #55  
Old February 12th, 2004, 09:01 AM
jahern jahern is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: Bell Gardens, California
Posts: 646
Fair???

Doesn't seem fair for those of the lower voice persuasion. In your system are people allowed to do it again changing the key once they determine that it is too high or low (usually too high). I think that in the men's category tenors would have the advantage since songs rarely expose the lower range.

Country songs might be a different story altogether.

Reply With Quote
  #56  
Old March 11th, 2004, 06:28 AM
Garry A. Leslie Garry A. Leslie is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Chester England
Posts: 216
Competitions good or bad?

Hello All,
Just a thought on competitions.
In the UK we have a lot of Brass Band competitions, they all have to play a set piece and then another number to show off how versatile they are.
When you listen to 20 bands all playing "The Bells of St. Mary's"
you can imagine how boring this can be.
So use "My Way", as the set piece, Everybody thinks they can sing this better than Frank anyway, (the competitors can all change keys and pitch so no-one is diasadvantaged male and female)
Then they can do their own thing on their own song.
It would certainly show who is the best performer.
Might just kill off karaoke competitions forever.
Regards from across the pond
Garry
Reply With Quote
  #57  
Old March 11th, 2004, 10:01 AM
alanross's Avatar
alanross alanross is offline
VIP
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Outer Banks - U.S.A. Nags Head, NC
Posts: 1,913
Judging

Just held our annual contest last night and we used the suggestion from earlier in this forum about having the contestants judge each other. We held five weeks of qualifying and chose three finalists each week. Last night, we held the finals and all fifteen of the finalists were the judges and at the end of the night, not one person complained that the results were "fixed". Also, I cleared the seats around the stage and made all the contestants sit there to do the judging. There was therefore more pressure on them to pay attention and really think about their scoring. The results were very positive. It truly is the best way to handle the judging.
__________________

Alan Ross

PRIMARY TEST MACHINE:
HP Compaq DC5100SFF
Windows XP Home SP3
Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz
2GB Ram
250G Hard Drive
Sound Device: SoundMax digital Audio
Reply With Quote
  #58  
Old March 20th, 2004, 12:59 AM
Jumpmaster_2376 Jumpmaster_2376 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 4
Quote:
Originally posted by Sherri
....
I had a problem with some people who owned personal karaoke machines, and could practice every day, against these poor guys who sang only out at karaoke, and had no means to "Brush up on their songs"
My solution to this problem was:
Sherri, thanks a bunch for your post, and I don't mean to pick on you, but to me your post illustrates why I started this thread 2 years ago! Before I get into it, let me first agree with your premise, randomly picking songs and letting folks sing and picking the best of them is fair enough and would certainly be fun.

I didn't have a problem with your idea, as much as some of the words you used to explain it.

There are so many different ideas about what karaoke is all about. Your obviously a caring person and want to take care of your singers so you designed a contest for them to be fair. Yet, I can't help but take offense to your notion that "people who practice" required you to come up with a "solution to this problem". Now I'm not saying your wrong and I'm right...but for me....I would think I died and went to heaven if I had a bunch of regulars who went out and bought machines to practice for my shows!

Naturally these singers who practice stand a better chance to win, but remember they cared enough to go out and make the purchase and spend the time practicing. Secondly, you don't even need a machine to practice a song, a cd player works great. At any rate, I have a problem with the notion that the "good" singers are the "problem."

Besides, I've practiced songs a million times without the machine (in fact I don't even try the karaoke version until I know the song by heart). The problem is that it's hard work to learn a song, especially if it's brand new. To really learn a song I have to sing it over and over and over. Some might be able to grab a mic and hammer a song without any practice. But for me, I have to sing it until I can sing the song acapella from start to finish remembering every single word, with correct phrasing and correct melody, etc. Only then, would I want to step up and perform the song well for karaoke. (Non-serious singers actually believe the music and words will help them "remember" a song - The serious ones know that the opposite is usually true). Don't get me wrong I'm not a snoot, I do "Scaryoke" all the time as you describe and I love it. But for me to pick a song I want to sing, I practice it a lot!

The non-singers don't really care about singing well, and just hope that they heard the song enough that it'll come back to them when the pluck a song out of a book. Sometimes they get it right and sometimes they don't. I don't mean that as a put down at all, in fact I think that's great too, as long as they are having fun! It's kinda like when I go hunting with my brother in law. He's a fanatic, knows everything about it, spends the money on his equipment, and gets results. I go with him and don't take it anywhere near as serious and yet I have a great time because of the experience and for hanging out with him. It's the same thing (only opposite) when he comes to Karaoke with me.

To me, that's what karaoke is all about! It's about bringing the good singers in to entertain and amaze people with their talent while at the same time showing off the other skills or lack of them for the rest. Everybody has a great time! The good singer who practices gets his Kudos, the guy who can't carry a note gets the high 5's because at least he had Elvis's hip gyrations down pat, and such.

Your post to me illustrates the point I was trying to make when I started this thread.....how can you possibly put on a "fair" contest? American Idol had plenty of controversy and their system is probably about as fair as you could expect because at least all of America votes and whatever "it" is, all of America can decide "it." Even so there was plenty of Studdard/Aiken controversy created. The difference between American Idol and a local karaoke contest is that for Idol the controversy only increases the viewer ratings, but for a local bar the "viewers" are the participants or at least they know the participants well, and when your judges stamp 1 as a winner, they also stamp the others as loosers, causing almost all the."viewers" to be offended.

Again, I think your contest is as fair as any I've seen. I just think your comments reflect the larger problem....What is good karaoke.....my answer is: the great, good, fair and non-singers all meeting together to have one hell of a good time ... so who is really best? ALL OF THEM

Again, thanks Sherri for your post. Hope you don't think I was coming down on you because I wasn't. I was merely illustrating the different schools of thought on karaoke.

I thank all you for your posts, and hope to see even more. I too have done contests (reluctantly) since the thread has started and I've got a lot of good ideas that have improved my contests.
Reply With Quote
  #59  
Old March 20th, 2004, 02:05 AM
alanross's Avatar
alanross alanross is offline
VIP
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Outer Banks - U.S.A. Nags Head, NC
Posts: 1,913
Good Karaoke

The question of what makes good Karaoke can be answered quite simply: Whatever appeals to an audience enough to keep them coming back.

From my perspective, we draw huge crowds because we have an excellent sound system which we use to focus on each vocalist. We tweak each song to bring out the best of each performance. We have very large crowds with usually a minority of people actually singing. Most of our audience comes out to watch.

Therefore, to me, the best Karaoke is Karaoke that is enjoyable for singers and non-singers alike.

Having said that, the only people who really enjoy the contests are the non-singing audience members. Contestants are always stressed, the host (me) is always under fire and the singers who don't want to be in the contest are stuck waiting for the contest to end before they can sing. Although we've fine tuned our contests to work far more efficiently than ever before, they are still a pain in the butt!
__________________

Alan Ross

PRIMARY TEST MACHINE:
HP Compaq DC5100SFF
Windows XP Home SP3
Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz
2GB Ram
250G Hard Drive
Sound Device: SoundMax digital Audio
Reply With Quote
  #60  
Old March 20th, 2004, 02:53 AM
Jumpmaster_2376 Jumpmaster_2376 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 4
alanross, I agree with you totally. The only ones who enjoy the contest are non singers.

The only thing I would add is:


The only ones who enjoy the contest are those nonsingers:

who aren't too emotionally tied to one of the non-winning singers!


Still they usually do increase revenues and traffic a bit and most owners will want them. I still dislike them! There are some great ideas on this thread though about how to run one with minimal resistance!

I also think your right about how important it is to have a good system and to run it properly.
Reply With Quote
Reply


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:15 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.7.1
Copyright ©2009 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
The contents of this forum are copyrighted by Micro Technology Unlimited, 2000-2008. Use of any material from these Forums is prohibited without written agreement from MTU.