Please take the following advice with a grain of salt. I'm not an experienced piano player, but I've taught myself to play a bit, starting with the same set of goals you describe.

If you want to do self-study, I can recommend two books. The first is Alfred's "Adult All-in-One Course". It's really good at teaching basic piano skills in an incremental way, while giving you a sense that you are really playing the piano.

The other is Cannel and Marx's "How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons: What Music Is and How to Make it at Home". It shows you how to play piano using a "lead sheet" that shows only the melody and chord symbols, rather than sheet music that tells you every note to play with both hands. With this approach, you can play just about any song from a song book or "fake" book. It's not very good at teaching you basic motor skills, but it makes playing a lot less intimidating.

I don't know much about the tuning aspect, except that you'll probably want to let the piano acclimate to it's new home.

Google eric Madis
He is terrific! And in ne Seattle!

I've yet to meet a piano shop that wouldn't let prospective buyers try out instruments in store. That said, if you start playing Heart and Soul, most employees reserve the right to kill you.

Figure out what your budge allows, and then call shops and see what they have in stock. Here's a place to start. Call ahead so that you don't waste time and gas driving around to maybe find 1 instrument in your price range.

Unless, are you asking where you can try a bunch of models without any pressure to purchase? If so, try your nearest college or university school of music. Everywhere I've been (which is a lot of schools of music all over the country) has a different piano brand in nearly every practice room, it seems.

zzounds

Right, as per Musely, are you searching to make a CD+G disc, or just a plain video DVD? What source material are you using? I may know a guy who knows a guy who could offer suggestions.

I assume this is for personal use, of course. For commercial, venues sometimes get buzzed for piracy, so they will require that you have all the source CDs on hand.

As far as I know, a Karaoke DVD is just a plain DVD that just happens to have video on it that has images of text. So any software that can create DVDs should work here. (This is different than Karaoke CDs, which use extra channels on the CDs to encode the graphics, and requires special software to generate the graphics since it's not a standard format like .jpg or similar.)

So you may be able to make a Karaoke DVD using a regular movie maker program, like the ones you can get on a Mac or PC; load up a suitable background image, soundtrack file, and then go to town putting captions at the appropriate places in the timeline. You won't get the words changing color, and adding all the captions can be quite a chore, but it's definitely simple.

--

It seems that much of the software out there for creating a Karaoke DVD assumes you already have a Karaoke CD (CD+G) or MP3+G files already, and that you just want to *convert* it to DVD, not create brand new content.

There are tools out there that make it easier to add lyrics to a mp3 file by allowing you to just enter the lyrics as a plain text file, and then play the song and hit space to change the color of the words in time with the music; but most of these seem to be for creating MP3+G or Karaoke CDs, not DVDs, but you could first create one of those and then convert to DVD. But that's tedious, and gives you old-skool chunky karaoke graphics on your DVD.

--

A quick google search for a DVD-based creator didn't turn up much; results were swamped by CD+G creators and DVD convertors, but I did find this one:

http://www.powerkaraoke.com/src/prod-karaoke-video-creator.php

Apparently it can create .AVIs and DVDs, so sounds like it may be what you're looking for. There's a free trial download available anyhow, so you can at least give it a shot. Looks pricey, though:

http://dvd-player.audio4fun.com/video-karaoke-maker.htm

This one seems to be freeware, but looks like you get what you pay for... Anyhow, searching for 'karaoke video creator' looks like the best search term.

Craigslist, if you have the patience and time to spare.

I've found what you're talking about by cruising Criagslist "office/commercial spaces for rent" and search 'bathroom' as a keyword.

Check out FindaGuitarTeacher.com. It's a free website with over 2500 guitar teachers on it that are sorted according to states and cities.

Well, I don't know that there's a scientifically proven "right" answer to this, other than when they pocket or break. I change tom heads yearly unless I pocket or break (which only happens if I try to go single ply...I should know by know I hit too hard for that shit). By year's end the coating's mostly gone and I usually have a few bead dents. I rarely change kick heads, though those do weaken after time and dull. Snare heads I tend to replace yearly, and are usually in the same condition as the tom heads. Bottom heads I tend to not do anything about, though like kick heads they eventually lose flex.

Alicia Dara is awesome!

I don't have a firsthand referral, but I googled "seattle fingerstyle blues guitar" and found this instructor:

Chris Bailey Guitar Instruction

It looks like he is well-versed in several styles, including fingerstyle blues, and will teach in your home. I also found one of his craigslist ads, and he's offering the first lesson free.

anything by -
BJORK!! ("It's oh so quiet" should be your first stop)
Evanescence and/or Amy lee?

Blue Skies by (many) - Try Rosemary Clooney or Ella Fitzgerald.

Nina?
Metric?
Curve?
Garbage?

Nim is spot on with Heart and Jefferson Airplane.

Roxanne is a great idea! also in the men-doing-women-impressions dept. might be
- Lovin Touchin Squeezin. by Journey.
- Runaway by Bon Jovi (ff to the last 2 minutes)

In the nonrock world, have you done Donizetti's "Linda di Chamounix" already?

It partly depends on what your range is. Are you a soprano, mezzo, or alto?

Anyway, here are some suggestions off the top of my head: "Barracuda," by Heart. "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane. "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," as sung by Etta James or Aretha Franklin (both great recordings by great singers - I think Aretha's version is in a higher key). "Little Bird" by Annie Lennox. "Cry Baby" by Janis Joplin. "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell.

Dusty Strings in Fremont has a great selection. During the Memorial Day weekend they typically have a Folklife Festival sale, which might get you 10-15% off the normal retail price of at least some of their instruments.

The Folk Store, in the University District has a smaller selection, but the owner is a mandolin player himself, and is super helpful.

Dave Keenan the twangmeister: http://davekeenan.com/Teaching.html

I would put 3-4 microphones on the 20 singers, and 2 on the piano (low and high), and record into protools.

I would get:

protools mBox pro
an external hardrive and firewire
2 shure sm57 mics (for the piano)
3 to 4 shure sm58 mics (for the vocals)

I believe you can record 6 separate lines with the mBox pro which would allow you to take all those sources and track independently and then be able to mix after the fact using the protools software on your mac. You should investigate that first though. Another option would be to get a small mackie mixing board and do a live mix of all your vocal microphones and run it into protools as a stereo feed to 2 tracks, and run the piano in on 2 other tracks (so using 4 instead of 6 tracks).

good luck, clearlythere!

If you know that many opera singers, you probably directly or indirectly know someone or an institution that has Pro Tools. With that program, you could give everyone his/her own mike and then mess with the levels of each track individually later, provided that you have the boards and mikes and a sufficiently gutsy computer set up.

Get a copy of Rock Band 2 and play vocals for a couple hours a day.

Krista Mercier

Jenny d'Armand 

Try "Roxanne" by The Police. Sting isn't a lady, but he sings like one.

And while you're gender-bending, why not try some Zeppelin? That's some fun singin' right there.

Anything in Hedwig and the Angry Inch would do and would be so, so fun to sing.

Hm. Most (by no means all) male pop singers have tenor ranges, so try taking those songs up an octave and you'll be in soprano range easily. Singing Rush an octave is an adventure.

As for female singers with high ranges, you could try the output of Cleo Lane (British jazz singer with amazing range), Flyleaf, maybe Blondie if you're working more a mezzo range, and (I hate to say it) Mariah Carey.

There is a local guy in Seattle who records under the name The Sight Below that I've really been digging lately. Its close to stars of the lid and other ambient music but with more of a shoegaze vibe. This track always blow my mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YwZNfjJ15U
Its basically just the same simple guitar part looped over and over with increasing amounts of reverb and feedback...simple but effective. Though his previous albums had more keyboards and drum machines, his latest one, It Falls Apart, is mostly guitar...

Emeralds, and their guitar player Mark McGuire's solo stuff, is mostly very clean looped guitar that is layered until it becomes a giant drone...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fabt4-UyvM8

Masterati is a recently defunct band that features layered looped guitars with hard driving rhythm section... a lot heavier than most of the other looped guitar stuff that's been recommend. Easily one of the best live bands I have ever seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKSRvqnrajQ

Early examples of looped guitar that I really like are Ash Ra Tempel's Inventions for the Electric Guitar and the Brian Eno/ Robert Fripp collaborations (which is the first example of live looping that I'm aware of).

I am done nerding out now....