I was talking to one of my neighbors today. Last night they were listening to me and my Genos during an impromptu concert. Another neighbor joined our conversation. He was asked if he heard the music and answered no. The first neighbor started telling him what he missed and that I had the biggest karaoke machine he has ever seen. .........AARRGGH!!!! -charley

That they might think we do anything at all I guess we need to consider a major achievement!

Maybe try every couple of songs or so to do an unaccompanied piano bit. No drums, no backing. It might help them reconnect with YOU and not the machine. Just one or two a set can make all the difference between them liking YOU, and them liking your oversized karaoke machine! 🎹😂

Charlie, "Ignorance is bliss" as the old saying goes. Some of my audience members thought the same thing until I provided them with a quick education about the complexities of an arranger keyboard and the necessary skills that were needed to be acquired in order to play it. On a few nite club jobs, I actually had an audience member sit down at the keyboard and I said "OK, play me a song" which they obviously could not do, even on their best day and despite the fact that some were home piano players. Most were utterly amazed at just how complex of an instrument that an arranger keyboard is, and I was often applauded for my ability to utilize the intricate, onboard systems to produce wonderful music that everyone seemed to enjoy.

One of the songs I performed, La Bamba, using the onboard Rock Cha Cha style and one of my custom guitar voices, really got their attention. I played the intro and bridge using the guitar voice, sang the song in Spanish and had the dance floor filled to capacity. It was a fun song to perform, and those that watched me perform it got a great education about an electronic instrument.

I recorded the song using my onboard USB Audio Recorder of the S-950 during a live performance. Click here to hear my rendition of La Bamba

All the best, old friend,

Gary

This is a good work, Gary, I think your specific manner to sing songs and the backing provided by an arranger gives people joy and optimism, which made you a demanded performer.

Since many musicians perform with backing tracks (mainly singers), the word "karaoke" doesn't really say that much; with good singing and good sound people accept it.

There's a restaurant at my building, sometimes a whole jazz band plays there, but more often there's just a saxophonist or a singer plays over backing tracks, for financial reasons.

In Russia people played and sang with arrangers at restaurants, but they switched to backing tracks mostly because it sounded better (a lot of backing tracks are originals "borrowed" from original performers), I think the same thing happened in many countries.

The thing is that a lot of people don't really understand what a chord is and how it works, even if they listen to music a lot and attentively. They think something like that there's a melody and other sounds are random, keeping up with the tempo.

In the same time, thinking about players in an orchestra playing classical music I would admit that an arranger was designed so that playing would be more fun and less painful.

In the end, everything can be judged and misjudged. Perhaps people today are so overwhelmed with all the new things that are coming up, like artificial intelligence, I think it's luck to get noticed and to have some reaction.