References

This section is relevant only if you wish to send your song to the official Karaoke Mugen database. If it’s for yourself, you’re free to do as you wish.

You might need this information to create your karaokes :

Websites

When you edit or add a song, it’s important to have good references so not to make a mistake when naming artists, singers, songwriters, studios, etc.

Beware, some of them use a particular writing style (with quotes or other special characters).

• For animation :

  • anidb (songs tab on an anime page, right after the Anime Tags section )
  • MyAnimeList
  • vgmdb
  • Series-centric wikis
  • Wikipedia (check all languages)
  • NicoNico / BiliBili (for AMVs)

• For video games and visual novels :

  • vndb
  • Series-centric wikis
  • Wikipédia (check all languages)

• For tokusatsu and live series:

  • Series-centric wikis
  • Wikipédia (check all languages)

• And as a rule of thumb :

  • Google (!)

We are of course aware that sometimes, some information is difficult to find, (AMV authors from the 2000s, songwriters, etc.) We won’t whip in public if you can’t find everything.

Lyrics

• Lyrical Nonsense : Probably one of the best. Lyrics in kanjis + romajis and sometimes more. They’re very active about adding new lyrics and update those after the single’s released (which gives us the precious booklets containing lyrics). In order to know if one of their transciptions is an ear-made one, scroll down and you will see the status, “official” “transliteration” or “by ear”. You will usually also get the song’s release date.
• VGMdb : A huge database containing singles / albums / OST released to this day. You’ll sometimes find booklet scans by looking on the right at the “cover” field on the song’s page.
• Anime Lyrics
• Anime Song Lyrics
• Asia Lyrics

Japanese

You may have noticed that some names have diacritics, for example the artist name Mâya Uchida.

There are standard writing rules for names here.

• A name with a long “o” (ou) is written “ô”.
  • Sometimes some names are written “oh”, as “Yuusha-Oh Tanjou”. This is the hepburn english transliteration, which is “ou” in modified hepburn. “Oh” stands for “ô” here too.
• A name with a double “o” (oo) stays as “oo”.
• A name with a long “u” (uu) is written “û”.
• Un nom avec a long “a” (aa) is written “â”.
• A name with a long “e” (ee) is written “ê”.
• A name with a long “i” (ii) stays “ii”.
• A name with an apostrophe (Shin’ichi for example), keeps it.
• Particles have to be transcribed as wa, wo, he and not ha, o, e (“te wo tsunaide DANCIN’ DANCIN’”, “kimi no na ha wa”).

Video size table

That table is indicative: for a given image resolution you should use the maximum Bitrate listed below to get an acceptable video size.

The karaoke base having a huge size already, it’s important to take as little space as possible. Having a 130Mb file for 1 minute 30 of video is not acceptable.

Studios / creators

Nock published a Google Sheet containing the most exhaustive list of creators and animation studios.

Almost every studio in there are already in the Karaoke Mugen database.

This list should be used as a reference, if you contribute to another database than KM’s, please keep that list in mind so your karaokes and those from KM’s base use the same studio/creator names.

The list is available here

Transcript rules

Please respect those rules when transcribing japanese script into latin characters when you want to add your karaoke to Karaoke Mugen’s base.

If it’s for personal use or for another karaoke base, it is up to you.

• In a japanese karaoke, the non-japanese words have to be put in uppercase to show they’re different. If we were keeping those in japanese it would be like: writing “ze wurld” for “The world” in a japanese karaoke featuring some english words. Examples:
  • zankoku na tenshi no THESE
  • sumashu SMASH
  • imajineeshon IMAGINATION
  • doramatikku DRAMATIC - purofesshonaru PROFESSIONAL
• Particles have to be transcribed as wa, wo, he and not ha, o, e (“te wo tsunaide DANCIN’ DANCIN’”, “kimi no na ha wa”).
• Long vowels as “ou” are written as such and not with a macron or a caron (mahou, ikouzo, hajimemashou, deshou).
• Do not put caps at the start of sentences (except in non japanese karaokes where it is allowed).
• Do not put periods. Commas, apostrophes, hyphens, tildes, elipsises, question and exclamation marks are allowed when they give hints on the lyrics’ tones
• Do use caps for proper names (Japari Park, Kaguya-san, Ultraman).