Sequencer Karaoke View

Load a midifile.

Karoakefiles and midifiles are the same, the only difference is the extension .mid for midifiles and .kar for a karaoke file. The ability to add lyrics is defined in the MIDI standard. For some reason however it has become custom to give midifiles with lyrics the extension .kar instead of .mid. Select menu Files/Open midifile. Press the play button.

Adding lyrics.

If there are lyrics in a file that you loaded, then they will become visible in the large display in the lower part of the screen. Most midifiles won't have any text.

You can type the text in the text edit window or copy and paste it from the web browser or a word processor. Use hyphens (-) to dis-tin-guish the syl-la-bles in the words. The hyphens will not be visible in the Karoake display but each syllable will highlight at a separate time. When you press any key while playing only one syllable will be processed. You can also place a backslash (\) at the start of each first line of a verse, while playing only one verse will be displayed at a time.

When you have entered the text then set the cursor before the first word, select mode is words and press the play button. While playing press a key (any key) in the exact tempo that the words and syllables should be sung. Each word is highlighted in the text edit window when it is inserted with the key. When the song is stopped the Karoake display and the events list will be filled with the words of the song. Press play again and the text in the Karaoke display will highlight at the appropriate time. Check the Half Speed option to reduce the tempo while inserting the words for more accurate timing.

Other option are to insert complete lines instead of one word at a time (mode is lines) or to insert one character at a time (mode is characters). Character mode is specially for languages like Japanese and Chinese where there are no spaces between the characters.

Adding chords.

Besides "Words" "Characters" and "Lines" there are 2 other operating modes: "Chords" and "Chords and lyrics". In mode Chords only the chords (in Yamaha's XF format) are displayed. You can insert the chords in the same way as words. In mode chords and lyrics, to insert chords and lyrics you must have sepaparate lines of chords and lyrics in the editor. The line with chords must be placed above the line with lyrics. Each chord must match a word or syllable and the first character of the chord must be placed exactly above the first character of the word. Place the cursor before the first word (not on the chordline) and press the play button. Each time you press a key the word will inserted together with the chord that is above it and the next word will be highlighted. At the end of the line, the chord line will be skipped and the first word on the lyrics line is highlighted.

You can also add chords by right clicking on a lyric and choose the "Attach chord" option.

Valid C chords: C, C6, CMaj7, CMaj7(#11), Cadd(9), CMaj7(9), C6(9), Caug, Cm, Cm6, Cm7, Cm7b5, Cmadd(9), Cm7(9), Cm7(11), CmMaj7, CmMaj7(9), Cdim, Cdim7, C7, C7sus4, C7b5, C7(9), C7(#11), C7(13), C7(b9), C7(b13), C7(#9), CMaj7aug, C7aug, C1+8, C1+5, Csus4, C1+2+5

Substitute C with C#, D, Eb, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, Bb or B.

Chords with a different bass tone are written as slash chords: C/E

Adding background pictures:

Define a default picture in the Preferences menu or insert pictures in the eventlist, insert a marker event with the value "picture:mypicture.jpg" where mypicture.jpg must be present in the same folder as the midifile, otherwise its complete path should be specified

Edit menu

Contains options to clear the editor, extract chords and/or lyrics form the karaoke file to the editor, clear chords and/or lyrics form the Karaoke file.

Save the file.

Select menu File/Save as and save it as a karaoke file.