Job Discussion Forums

[logician]

I was pleasantly surprised to visit a KTV and see that the rooms were large and comfortable.

However, singing at a KTV had similar problems to doing so on a bus.

1) It's often a bit too crowded to actually stand up, thus your voice is a bit-sub par.

2) There are almost no songs in English or Japanese (both of which are great for fast tempo songs.)

3) Apparently every single Chinese song is a slow-tempo, syrupy love ballad. The accompanying video is pretty bad. On a bus, all the videos were of female models in swimsuits. At the KTV, the videos were histrionically sentimental love stories. At least every other video had a girl collapsing. Causes included disease, getting hit by a car, and insulin overdose from the sugary sweet song. As soon as the girl collapsed, the boy would pick her up and run with her to get help.

4) Very few female soloists are available. Some of the girls present sang along with tenor male parts.

5) No perky songs from S.H.E. were available! That is just wrong!

Some of my friends tell me that there is such a thing as Chinese rock, but Taiwanese top 40 seems to be what I'm getting exposed to when I wander through stores with background music. When I'm waiting in offices and waiting rooms, the elevator music is, humorously enough, all the bad 1970's songs I hated as a kid.

Now, one of my favorite parts of learning Japanese was singing along to fast tempo JPop songs.

I have independently discovered one fast tempo Chinese song -- "Nan Gao" by Soldier. It's really not very good.

I'd like to find better Chinese music, but I'm not willing to just go into a record store and buy randomly until I find something good.

Can anyone offer tactics that have worked?