Karaoke

Pablo Retes is a 47-year-old police instructor in Nayarit, Mexico. Anne Hiscock, 44, is a Web site administrator a half a world away in Tasmania. But on any given day, they may be crooning directly to each other - and to a worldwide cyber-karaoke audience of 50,000 would-be pop singers. "When I sing an Elvis tune, the world's out there listening," says Retes, one of a growing number of karaoke fans letting loose on the Internet. "I never sing in bars. Just on the Web." Adds Hiscock: "It's wonderful.

So you want to try karaoke but you're too embarrassed to do it in public. Or maybe you've tried in bars, but some lounge lizard is always hogging the microphone. Here are a few tips to get you started. First, karaoke isn't an aristocratic activity - there are plenty of home machines priced at around $200. Although the technology behind karaoke players is more complicated than standard audio, a home machine is easy to set up and use. A karaoke CDG (Compact Disc with Graphics) is a specially-formatted music CD which contains graphics that are timed to display on a TV or monitor through a "sync track" on the disc.

"Duets" is a romantic ensemble drama-slash-road movie that takes place in the rarified parallel universe of karaoke. Like fans of "Star Trek" and other sub-cultures, karaoke has its own devoted partisans, people who live for the night at their local bar, where they can sing along to pre-recorded versions of their favorite songs to the delight or agony of their fellow crooners. It's a rich human vein to tap, but "Duets" uses karaoke as a backdrop, without providing a deeper context. The movie follows three duos who've been thrown together by fate - each of whom is travelling to a karaoke championship in Omaha, where their destinies, inevitably, catch up with them.

"Coyote Ugly" is a testimony to the power of beautiful people, loud music and manipulative filmmaking - and if that's what you're looking for on a hot summer night, you can't do much better anywhere else. Unless, of course, you turned up the volume on your ZZ Top CD and bought the latest issue of Maxim magazine - which, coincidentally, features "The Girls of `Coyote Ugly' " on its cover and in a multi-page photo spread. Same basic effect. The story of a beautiful but shy singer-songwriter who supports herself by shaking her bared midriff at a rowdy New York bar, and becomes a better person thanks to the redemptive power of karaoke, "Coyote Ugly" doesn't display a single deep thought, or even a middlingly profound one. What it does display in abundance, and in all manner of skimpy costumes, is a wealth of beautiful folk - mostly ladies, but there is a token cute-as-can-be guy who takes off his shirt and dances on the bar - gyrating to loud music, speaking in cute little catchphrases and just generally having the rowdy good time of their lives.

The Queen of Karaoke was holding court at the Coyote CafM-i, waiting for "The Hit Man," Eddie Hitt, to set up his music machine and play the first chords of "Wild Thing." It's the cue for the queen's son to escort her to the front of the Gambrills bar, where Hitt switches tunes and Ruby Steinbach belts out the lyrics telling how she was "Born to be Wild." And that was 89 years ago. "It's my theme song," she says, breaking into one of those grins that has padded her legendary status on the Anne Arundel karaoke circuit.

CHICAGO -- From tai chi to ginseng to yoga, Americans have long looked East for antidotes to stress. But David Cho thinks he has found the ultimate Asian import to defrazzle the American psyche. It's shaped like a Coke can, is about the size of a photo booth and holds up to three people in its cozy confines. It is not a tall, skinny hot tub, but what Cho calls a "cyber jukebox." This new invention has nothing to do with the Internet. Instead, it is essentially a portable karaoke booth that Cho believes will lower the blood pressure of the American masses.

THOSE WHO HAVE heard it believe my proposal for a Candidates Karaoke Night favors Martin O'Malley, but I disagree. True, the O-Man is the only candidate for mayor with his own band and the experience of singing to crowds, but he's a niche performer at best, and it's not like he's down with the funk. The guy sings Celtic rock ballads -- and a little bit of that goes a long, long way.Make him sing something by Silkk The Shocker, and we'll see what O'Malley's made of.And we'd make the first-ever Candidates Karaoke Night fair for all contenders.

Doing his best impersonation of a singing Ken doll, Charles McElhose joins in a duet of 1997's silly Aqua hit "Barbie Girl." In a mock manly baritone, he milks the song's biting lyrics.It's Wednesday night at the Days Inn in Towson, and McElhose, known as "Karaoke Charlie," is sharing his collection of songs -- everything from Genesis to Jennifer Love Hewitt. In the hotel's dimly lit, smoke-filled Crystal Restaurant, bustling with waitresses delivering Miller Lite after Miller Lite, a crowd of supportive and mostly skilled singers eagerly anticipates a shot at faux fame.

THEY CAME READY TO sing at the Cheers Lounge in Eldersburg on Saturday evening.More than two dozen brave souls entertained the crowd and vied for prizes in the lounge's first karaoke contest. The contest was held in cooperation with karaoke company RLO Products, radio station COLT 104.3 FM and Cheers Lounge.Cheers manager Bob Bruner saw the event as a good way to help replenish area food pantries and to bring a crowd to the lounge. Admission to the contest was an item of canned food; most patrons brought more.

LONDON -- Yes, Elvis lives. And soon he may be singing your song.Ken Lomax of the University of Cambridge has developed a way to reproduce the singing and speaking styles of performers, living and dead. So far, Lomax has generated voice "templates" for opera stars Maria Callas and Kiri Te Kanawa -- and the king of rock 'n' roll.Lomax's "voice morpher" builds a template of a performer's voice from recordings. It captures features of the performer's distinctive singing style, such as how the words of a song are pronounced, the tone of the voice and the characteristic timing of certain phrases.