I'm not familiar precisely with those follow-the-bouncing-ball animations worked, could you elucidate? I only know of follow-the-bouncing-ball from the Mitch Miller TV iteration, and its ilk, which would be an on-screen method.
However for lyrics presentation without screen display, you'd need a solid amount of paper for each song. And have to swap out reels of some sort. It'd seem a screen format would be needed... For that, one would need either a movie screen, slide screen, or television screen; A movie screen doesn't fit in bars (where the liquor usually needed to get people to Karaoke is applied), and the television screen puts the technology at its earliest into the 50's for mass acceptance. A slide screen/projector could be quite workable- in fact, many churches are using them nowdays for new songs which aren't in hymnals. But the closest I've seen it lyric-matched there is the use of a piece of paper, either leading or trailing the current line, to keep people on pace; most times it's simply a lyric sheet.
Although the earliest Karaoke was- as Porsupah's link to Wikipedia showed- by cassette tape, the music could have been created on LP, as well; but the use of Compact Discs increased both the portability and random access of music for Karaoke systems, which I think was a factor in allowing it to flourish. Also, CDs being a data-storing format allowed the music and lyrics to be stored together in one item.
I imagine in another 5-10 years there will principally be specialized hard-drive music players for Karaoke; my sister has said most Karaoke DJs work heavily with laptop computers and are shifting towards using them as the central control- though they still need quite a bit of other audio machinery.
There are rather a lot of fore-runners of Karaoke... including the aforementioned Mitch Miller (who, interestingly enough, is still alive..) but I think someone trying the concept in the 30's or so would wind up with a rather unweildy system. By the 50's, it might be much more streamlined; and the 1980's and the advent of the television/monitor as a replay (not merely broadcast) and compact disc were much riper conditions for the invention.
no subject
However for lyrics presentation without screen display, you'd need a solid amount of paper for each song. And have to swap out reels of some sort. It'd seem a screen format would be needed...
For that, one would need either a movie screen, slide screen, or television screen; A movie screen doesn't fit in bars (where the liquor usually needed to get people to Karaoke is applied), and the television screen puts the technology at its earliest into the 50's for mass acceptance. A slide screen/projector could be quite workable- in fact, many churches are using them nowdays for new songs which aren't in hymnals. But the closest I've seen it lyric-matched there is the use of a piece of paper, either leading or trailing the current line, to keep people on pace; most times it's simply a lyric sheet.
Although the earliest Karaoke was- as Porsupah's link to Wikipedia showed- by cassette tape, the music could have been created on LP, as well; but the use of Compact Discs increased both the portability and random access of music for Karaoke systems, which I think was a factor in allowing it to flourish. Also, CDs being a data-storing format allowed the music and lyrics to be stored together in one item.
I imagine in another 5-10 years there will principally be specialized hard-drive music players for Karaoke; my sister has said most Karaoke DJs work heavily with laptop computers and are shifting towards using them as the central control- though they still need quite a bit of other audio machinery.
There are rather a lot of fore-runners of Karaoke... including the aforementioned Mitch Miller (who, interestingly enough, is still alive..) but I think someone trying the concept in the 30's or so would wind up with a rather unweildy system. By the 50's, it might be much more streamlined; and the 1980's and the advent of the television/monitor as a replay (not merely broadcast) and compact disc were much riper conditions for the invention.
--Chiaroscuro