A tambourine support system to improve the atmosphere of karaoke: Support of play by multiple players

Karaoke is a popular amusement, but people do not necessarily enjoy karaoke when they are not singing. It is better that non-singing people engage in karaoke to enliven it, but this is not always easy specially if they do not know the song. Here, we focus on the tambourine, which is provided in most karaoke spaces in Japan but is rarely used. We proposed a tambourine support system to enliven karaoke. The proposal is a system that instructs a non-singing person to play the tambourine. The tambourine part for this song is automatically generated based on the standard MIDI file. During playback, the tambourine part is displayed in a common music game style. The correctness of the tambourine beat is fed to the display. The results show that tambourine players rated the system highly. However, singers did not appreciate the system because tambourine players concentrated on performance and they felt lonely. Here, we propose a support system that requests all people, including singers, in karaoke box to hold and play tambourine to enliven the karaoke. Our system of play is easier than the previous system and make it possible to play while singing and instruct to tambourine player. The results showed that our system gave a sense of unity to all people and enlivens karaoke.