[The last renewal of this page: January 10, 1998]

KARAOKE was born in Japan in the first half of 1970's, but I had developed the system in prior to that time, and had started to enjoy it.

In 1968, I had been enjoying the german MINUS-ONE phonograph record for the acccompaniment of of my Violin playing violin concerto together since I was juniorhigh student. The MINUS-ONE was a record of orchestra without a soloist, and I think even students of school for music or professional players were also using it.

As I was with the MINUS-ONE for a long time, it was not far away to get reach to the "KARAOKE". In those days, there was a radio program in early in every morning titled "Pops music without Song". In this program a music instrument such as Saxhorn plays melody instead of Singer, and I was humming a tune listening to them everyday. Soon, I found myself, trying to built a microphone-mixer, pourchasing parts hanging around Akihabara, an electric town in downtown Tokyo, everyday. Of course, I used the recording of the radio program as a music source. After the first private FM broadcasting stationwas borne, they started a program for the orchestra play for the professional singers recording. They were just what I wanted and I was getting into, and involved into "KARAOKE" deeply with the "Homebrew MINUS-ONE system for Songs"

A few years later, one campany started to "invent" and sell the system called "KARAOKE" with 8-track music tape. And I remenber, that was the first time that the word "KARAOKE" was started to be used in the world.

After the KARAOKE was borne in the world, I bought a lot of KARAOKE tapes (casette tape) as a source. I gave them to my friend many years ago, but I remenber I had 200 tapes at least. I was enjoying that using a Hi-Fi tapedeck and a big floor-type speaker system with highpower Hi-Fi amplifire.( Sorry, my neighbors!! ) When the laser-disk was made and started to sold in the market, I purchased it, with DAT(Digital Audio Tape) recording system, to digitalaize all the systems. I do not buy software recently as much as before, but I have nearly 200 laser disk and there is no proble at all when we hold a home KARAOKE party even KARAOKE enthusiast are among us. In case I need very recent songs, a Communication Karaoke system run with a personal computer and MIDI(GM) synthesizer helps us. I built the Karaoke system on a Hi-Fi stereo system using Mcintosh power amplifire(MC7300) and JBL's big speaker system (Studio Monitor 4344) to enjoy fantasitic sound and music world.



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