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WHERE ON THE WEB

Forget the shower
Online karaoke players make you sound like a stay-at-home star.
Too cowardly to face the crowd at the karaoke bar with your heartfelt rendition of I Will Always Love You? Relax. With an online karaoke player, you never have to leave your PC.

I achieved just the blend I wanted for my cover of Foreigner's "I Don't Want to Live Without You." Should I quit my day job? You be the judge. Or click here: Listen to the writer sing

The free Online Karaoke Machine at karaokeboogie.comhas a generous collection of rock, pop and country tracks by artists ranging from Abba to Tammy Wynette in the MIDI format. Just pick a tune, click "Sing it" and follow the lyrics in a window on the site. I was so busy crooning "Crazy" I hardly noticed the cheesy synthesized sound that's a hallmark of MIDI audio. For more current artists, such as Evanescence and No Doubt, try karaokegalaxy.com.

Want to really feel like a rock star? Download a karaoke player that lets you record your voice. With a free trial version and a cheap microphone from an electronics store, you can lay vocals over your favorite songs, mix the recordings and burn them on a CD for family and fans. For about $27.50, Karaokeisland.com's Easy PC Recording Studio is simple to use and lets you erase flubs for the perfect take. But I liked pckaraoke.com's $29.95 PC Karaoke better, because it offers more special effects and embedded-lyric songs at a lower price: just $1.99 apiece.

I liked that I could adjust the key of MIDI songs, a useful feature that helped me hit more high notes. But songs in the WMA format, which uses real instruments, sounded much better, thanks to PC Karaoke's mixing options. For instance, you can balance the volume of your voice against the music's and add an echo. After trial and error, I achieved just the blend I wanted for my cover of Foreigner's "I Don't Want to Live Without You." Should I quit my day job? You be the judge. You can hear me belt it out at usaweekend.com [Click to play, above].

-- Carla Thornton