Video Transcript
Courtney: Hey friends. Welcome back to Good Day. Okay, you know we like games, and you know we like to sing, and you know we love Rover. So we’re gonna put all that combined with our friends from Nerds On Call. Ryan Eldrige, you’ve got this fantastic setup for us that we’re actually gonna take for a spin in the next hour.
Ryan: Yes, and I’m going to do this. I’m going to do an anti-Apple message. I hate Apple music. It’s terrible. It’s constantly playing.
Ken (off screen): No, no, he’s right.
Ryan: I’m trying to sing my song.
Ken (off screen): It is.
Courtney: Because it just pops up whenever it wants to.
Ryan: It’s driving me crazy.
Marianne: It does make me crazy.
Ryan: Okay, so, carpool karaoke. Check this out. So let’s say you wanna be like James Corden, and you wanna do like singing in your car and whatever. First things first, don’t carpool karaoke alone. That is just a recipe for disaster. You’re hanging out the window, trying to get people to sing with you. Don’t do it.
Courtney: And don’t do it on an active roadway. Go to like a parking lot or something like that. Don’t try to do this passing the time on the morning commute.
Marianne: Good disclaimer.
Courtney: That is illegal.
Ryan: Yes, and my little flourish there trying to get untangled from the cords. So the first thing you’re gonna need is…Siri leave me alone. Stop it. Tim Cook and WDC Today fix this. For goodness sakes. Gosh, you guys. So anyway.
Ken (off screen): We are experiencing technical difficulties.
Ryan: One of the first things you need is this is called the Starmaker app. This thing is amazing. It’s three bucks a week if you want it. But they’ll start out with like a free trial. With a VIP membership. And you have all kinds of cool songs you can listen to and sing to. You can get this $14 microphone so you can be like a pro. The nice thing about this one is the really low gain on it. So that way if you got some speakers going on in your car you’re not going to hear a lot of feedback. Stuff like that. You also need a little splitter. I know, we’re getting technical here. This is five bucks though at amazon.com. It’s real easy. All it does is it splits out the microphone from your audio. Now a lot of people, you’ll see in the app, they’ll actually use headphones. So that way it kinda does it for em, but this is way cooler. I mean, that’s really all you need.
Courtney: That’s all the setup. Okay.
Ryan: I mean even if you don’t have an audio jack in your car. Just use an external speaker.
Courtney: Oh, boom.
Ryan: And you’re good to go.
Courtney: Easy, peasy.
Ryan: How cool is that?
Courtney: Okay, so what you do, is you take this. You load it up into the car. You’ve even brought the little safety features here. Take a look at the little mount over there. You take that.
Ryan: You’ve got a little mount. That was $32 on Amazon.
Courtney: Boom, and it’s nice and big for the iPad.
Ryan: Yeah, and it puts the big, this is the big ole iPad, and it fits perfect.
Courtney: Excellent, okay, so we’re gonna take this outside. Coming up in the next hour. We’re gonna take this for a little spin. You know who’s gonna be our first group to sing? Those guys over there.
Ken (off screen): Yeah.
Courtney: Gay Men’s Chorus.
Ryan: Oh, real singers.
Courtney: They have requested a Lady Gaga. So we’re gonna take it for a spin. Literally, in Rover. Ryan, you ready?
Ryan: I am so ready to go.
Courtney: I’m so excited.
Ryan: We are going to load this thing up, and we’re gonna go crazy.
Courtney: This is gonna be amazing.
Ryan: They have Metallica on here. So I’m just gonna be…
Courtney: Oh oh oh, like that.
Ken (off screen): Oh yeah.
Ryan: Oh wait, never mind.
Courtney: You okay.
Ryan: Yeah I’m okay.
Courtney: You shook a lot.
Ryan: I was a little scared.
Marianne: You shook a lot.
Courtney: See you guys next hour.
Ken (off screen): All right, lets do it.
Ready to channel your inner James Corden?
Whether you’re a secret shower singer or a belting out the tunes singalong star, everyone loves carpool karaoke. Make this summer’s road trip the BEST TRIP EVER by hooking up your ride with the gear to make is a singing, laughing, concert on wheels.
Safety First
No matter what, make sure you leave your passengers in charge.
Don’t interact with the karaoke controls or try to watch the lyrics while driving. Just enjoy the fun and laughs while keeping your attention on the road.
We recommend a separate tablet or smartphone mount, pointed toward the backseat and/or the passenger only.
Invest in a splitter and microphone
Apps are designed to record a single person singing on a cell phone or tablet through a headset.
People typically just don their headsets and sing into the in-built microphone.
To share the experience requires that you separate your phone’s audio-in (the microphone) from the audio-out (speakers/headphones).
You’ll need to you’ll need a splitter to allow you to connect your phone or tablet to both an aux microphone and either your car’s aux jack or a portable speaker.
This startech headset splitter for $5.50 works great.
Plug in one end to your phone’s aux jack and you’ll be left with 2 aux-in ports.
Plug a microphone in one side and your audio out cable (connected to either your car’s aux jack or portable speaker) in the other.
The microphone you choose doesn’t have to be expensive. We recommend Audio-Technica ATR-1100 for $15.
It features a 10’ cord and 3.5mm aux connector.
The microphone has a unidirectional polar pattern which helps to reduce feedback.
You want to avoid high-grain or multi-directional microphones as they’ll likely cause feedback which ruins the karaoke experience for sure.
Install the Starmaker app
With your system hooked up, you’ll need an app that lets you karaoke (gives you the lyrics in time with the background music). The goal here is to get an app with an extensive library of the songs you like and an easy interface.
The Starmaker app is free to download and gives you access to a limited library of songs. For $2.99/week or $6.99/month you can access the full library.
It has an extensive catalog of songs that will keep your road trips fresh.
You can even record audio and video of you singing which can be later edited with pitch correction and voice effects.
Once you’re done, share and sing along with other members of the Starmaker community.
Or save your goofy antics for your own future giggles and don’t post. Your choice.
Make sure you have access to cell network or WiFi
Starmaker requires an Internet connection to work.
If you aren’t running the app on your smartphone, you’ll need to connect your tablet to a WiFi hotspot.
Optional accessories
If you want to do some serious backseat karaoke, we recommend you get a mount for your tablet or smartphone.
This lets even those in the back seat see the lyrics and participate in the fun.
Charger City’s “LongArm Xtreme” for $32 is a great option.
It’s highly versatile and fits in your cup holder, so you can take it with you from car to car.
If you want to video record back seat passengers singing, simply start the recording from the front seat and use the swivel feature to turn your device to face the rear.
Looking for a more social singing experience?
Try out Sing! Karaoke by Smule for iOS and Android.
It’s social network for singing.
You can sing with others and record it for later playback. Sing along with popular artists and their hits.
The service has some great features such as the one where famous artists sing ½ of a duet and you join in for the other half.
Once you’re done singing, you can post the recording within the community and they’ll vote on your performance.
A star is born!
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About The Author: Andrea Eldridge is CEO and co-founder of Nerds On Call, a computer repair company that specializes in on-site and online service for homes and businesses. Andrea is the writer of a weekly column, Nerd Chick Adventures in The Record Searchlight. She prepares TV segments for and appears regularly on CBS, CW and FOX on shows such as Good Day Sacramento, More Good Day Portland, and CBS 13 News, offering viewers technology and lifestyle tips. See Andrea in action at callnerds.com/andrea/.
