
Kids' singalong tapes and DVDs still use this technique. Usually the ball is a big red dot, but sometimes it'll be a different color or a small icon appropriate to the setting. Truly ancient iterations of such videos often had the ball marking every beat in the tempo - musical literacy was a much bigger deal in the early 20th Century.Īccording to The Other Wiki, the bouncing ball was named and invented by Max Fleischer, the founder of Fleischer Studios, in 1924. As the ball bounced, it would light up the words it touched.

Sort of the karaoke of its time, but intended for a mass audience. Instead, an animated ball kept the beat as it bounced along the lyrics.

"Follow the bouncing ball" was a technique of directing singalongs in movie theaters, replacing the manual process of somebody holding a ball on a stick and using it to point out where to look on projected lyrics. It's time for a singalong! Music! Words! And.
