Roberto del rosario home town

Among the many famous Filipino inventors, Roberto del Rosario's invention of the karaoke machine is probably the most famous.

During the 1960's singers and musicians from the Philippines began migrating to Japan.

To reduce the expenses of having a band, these singers and musicians improvised musical devices that would accompany their singing.

These devices were known as 'minus-one music' which were multiplex music cassette recordings with no vocal tracks.

It was music without lyrics.

Roberto del rosario children

Roberto del Rosario was a musician and music teacher who played eight instruments.

He developed an advanced sing-along-system known as OMB (one-man-band) which was the combination of a music player, voice taping mechanism, tuner and mixer.

This sing-along-system (SAS) allowed his students to sing with the recorded music using a microphone and an amplified speaker.

The sing-along-system was very popular in the Philippines and Japan. The Japanese coined the system "karaok