Beatboxing

Beatboxing (also beat boxing or b-boxing) is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of mimicking drum machines (typically a TR-808), using one's mouth, lips, tongue, and voice.[1] It may also involve vocal imitation of turntablism, and other musical instruments. Beatboxing today is connected with hip-hop culture, often referred to as "the fifth element" of hip-hop, although it is not limited to hip-hop music.[2][3] The term "beatboxing" is sometimes used to refer to vocal percussion in general.

"Beatbox" and "Beat box" redirect here. For other uses, see Beatbox (disambiguation).

History

Origins

Techniques similar to beatboxing have been present in many American musical genres since the 19th century, such as early rural music, both black and white, religious songs, blues, ragtime, vaudeville, and hokum. Examples include the Appalachian technique of eefing and the blues song Bye bye bird by Sonny Boy Williamson II.

Additional influences may perhaps include forms of African traditional music, in which performers utilize their bodies (e.g., by clapping or stomping) as percussion instruments and produce sounds with their mouths by breathing loudly in and out, a technique used in beatboxing today.[4][5]

Vocal percussion [is], "the imitation or approximation of percussion instruments," and beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion but can be described as, "music with your mouth... beatboxing is making and being the music, not just rhythm." ...Beatboxing is both the rhythm — predominantely through the bass and snare drums as well as hi-hat — while also incorporating various sound effects such as DJ scratching, synthesizers, and bass lines. Using the mouth, lips, tongue, and voice to make music is thus the beatboxer's equivalent to a pianist's fingers and arms.[6]

Many well-known performers used vocal percussion occasionally, even though this was not directly connected to the cultural tradition that came to be known as beatboxing. Paul McCartney's "That Would Be Something" (1969) includes vocal percussion. Pink Floyd's "Pow R. Toc H." (1967) also includes vocal percussion performed by the group's lead vocalist, Syd Barrett. Jazz singers Bobby McFerrin and Al Jarreau were very well known for their vocal styles and techniques, which have had great impact on techniques beatboxers use today. Michael Jackson was known to record himself beatboxing on a dictation tape recorder as a demo and scratch recording to compose several of his songs, including "Billie Jean", "The Girl Is Mine", and others.[7] Gert Fröbe, a German actor most widely known for playing Auric Goldfinger in the James Bond film Goldfinger, "beatboxes" as Colonel Manfred von Holstein (simultaneously vocalizing horned and percussive instruments) in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, a 1965 British comedy film.

Contribution to hip-hop

The term "beatboxing" is derived from the mimicry of early drum machines, then known as beatboxes, particularly the Roland TR-808.[1] The term "beatbox" was used to refer to earlier Roland drum machines such as the TR-55 and CR-78 in the 1970s.[8] They were followed by the TR-808, released in 1980, which became central to hip hop music[8] and electronic dance music.[1] It is the TR-808 that human beatboxing is largely modeled after.[1]

"Human beatboxing" in hip-hop originated in the 1980s. Its early pioneers include Doug E. Fresh, the self-proclaimed first "human beatbox";[9] Swifty, the first to implement the inhale sound technique; Buffy, who helped perfect many beatboxing techniques;[10] and Wise, who contributed significantly to beat boxing's proliferation. Wise inspired an entire new fan base of human beatboxers with his human turntable technique. Other pioneers of beatboxing include Rahzel well known for his realistic robotic sounds and for his ability to sing and beatbox simultaneously, Scratch a beatboxer and musician well known for further revolutionizing the use of vocal scratching in beatboxing, and Kenny Muhammad The Human Orchestra, a beatboxer known for his technicality and outstanding rhythmic precision, who pioneered the inward k snare, a beatbox technique that imitates a snare drum by breathing inward.

Modern beatboxing
Biz Markie beatboxing

The Internet has played a large part in the popularity of modern beatboxing. Alex Tew (aka A-Plus) started the first online community of beatboxers in 2000 under the banner of HUMANBEATBOX.COM. An early example of modern beatboxing was seen in the 2001 South Korean romantic comedy film My Sassy Girl. In 2001, Gavin Tyte, a member of this community created the world's first tutorials and video tutorials on beatboxing. In 2003, the community held the world's first Human Beatbox Convention in London featuring beatbox artists from all over the world.

Beatboxing's current popularity is due in part to releases from artists such as Rahzel, RoxorLoops, Reeps One, and Alem. In the Pacific, Jason Tom perpetuates the art of beatboxing through blogging, mathematics and motivational speaking in Honolulu, the westernmost and southernmost major U.S. city of the 50th U.S. state of Hawaii.[11][12][13][14]

Sometimes, modern beatboxers will use their hand or another part of their body to extend the spectrum of sound effects and rhythm. Some have developed a technique that involves blowing and sucking air around their fingers to produce a very realistic record scratching noise, which is commonly known as the "crab scratch." Another hand technique includes the "throat tap," which involves beatboxers tapping their fingers against their throats as they throat sing or hum. Beat boxers these days can produce up to 8 different sounds at the same time.

Today there is an increase in the variety in which we see beatboxing throughout musical culture. People have gone as far as adding beatboxing in with different instruments to create a completely different sound unlike any other. Artist Greg Patillo goes as far as adding in beatboxing while playing the flute to very iconic songs. Beatbox has become modernized and has even been seen in popular movies such as Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. These movies showcase classical songs performed with a cappella covers in which all of the beats to the songs are done completely using the idea and technique of beatboxing to complete the sound capable to imitate the original song.

Notation

As with other musical disciplines, some form of musical notation or transcription may sometimes be useful in order to describe beatbox patterns or performances. Sometimes this takes the form of ad hoc phonetic approximations, but is occasionally more formal. [b] is usually the bass drum, [k] is usually the snare drum, and /ts/ ([t͡s]) is usually the hi-hat (in 4
4: 𝄆b-ts-k-ts-b-ts-k-ts𝄇).

Standard Beatbox Notation (SBN) was created by Mark Splinter and Gavin Tyte[15] of Humanbeatbox.com in 2006[16] as an alternative to International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription, which had been used sparingly before then.

In a research study published in 2013 and based on real-time MRI imaging of a beatboxer, the authors propose a notation system which combines the International Phonetic Alphabet with musical staff notation, in part motivated by their observation that many beatboxing sounds can be adequately represented by the IPA.[17]

Phonology

Each beatboxer can produce a very large number of unique sounds, but there are three distinct linguistic categories of sound within beatboxing. Ejectives are the strong puffs of air from the voicebox that give intensity to percussive sounds. The "t", "p", "k", "d", "b" and "g" sounds can all be made into ejectives. “Ch” and “j” are examples of ejective affricates.

Nonstandard fricatives are the mechanical sounds such as snare drums, cymbals, and other buzzing noises in beatboxing that are made with fricatives. Certain sounds, such as velar lateral fricatives, bilabial lateral fricatives, and linguolabial fricatives, are all judged impossible according to the IPA but are technically possible and are sounds that are commonly used in beatboxing.[18]

Coarticulation is the act of controlling a sound in two places at once. A common example of this is the sound created by rolling an “r” sound while saying a “v” sound. This is called a voiced alveolar trill with labiodental articulation. Similarly, epenthesis is the sound created when beatboxers sing and do percussion at the same time. Contrary to what the sound suggests, their tongue is not in two places at once. This effect is created by placing percussive sounds in the middle of words. [17]

Multi-vocalism

Multi-vocalism is a form of vocal musicianship conceptualized by British Beatboxer and vocalist Killa Kela. It describes Beatboxers who incorporate other vocal disciplines and practices into their routines and performances such as singing, rapping, sound mimicry and other vocal arts. Beardyman is a well known multi-vocalist.

World records

According to the Guinness World Records, the current record for the largest human beatbox ensemble was set by Booking.com employees. The record involved 4,659 participants and was achieved by Booking.com employees together with beatboxers at the RAI Amsterdam in Amsterdam, Netherlands, on 10 December 2013 during their annual company meeting.[19]

The previous largest human beatbox ensemble involved 2,081 participants and was achieved by Google (Ireland), Shlomo (UK) and Testament (UK) at The Convention Centre, Dublin, Ireland on 14 November 2011.[19]

Before Shlomo's record, the previous record for the largest human beatbox ensemble involved 1,246 participants and was achieved by Vineeth Vincent and Christ University (India) in Bangalore, Karnataka, India, on 5 February 2011.[19]

Selected discography

This list is a selected discography of commercial releases which are mostly/entirely beatbox-based or are otherwise notable/influential records in the history of beatboxing and its popularization.

1980s

1990s
  • Rahzel – Make The Music 2000 (1999)

2000s

2010s
  • Beardyman – I Done A Album (2011)
  • Hopsin – "Lunch Time Cypher" (2013)
  • Reeps One – "Move" (2013)
  • Vonox - "ODM" (2017)
  • NaPoM – "Lips" (2018)[21]
  • MB14 – "AMBITVS" (ambitus) (2019)

When asked to beatbox, Siri will repeat the phrase "Boots and Cats" to mimic beatboxing.[22] Teen Vogue called it "perhaps the most entertaining mid-day pick-me-up ever created."[23]

A GEICO radio commercial, featuring a supermarket employee beatboxing various announcements over a store intercom ("Cleanup on aisle 14" with beats interspersed), won the Westwood One Sports Sounds Awards Media Choice Award for best commercial heard during the radio network's coverage of Super Bowl LII.[24]

gollark: The hard part is just working out which coordinates correspond to a particular person.
gollark: See, I can actually do that easily by taking the Cartesian product of some sets.
gollark: I'll leak *everyone's* coordinates.
gollark: I apologize proactively retroactively for the unfortunately imperfect accuracy of indoor GPS and/or mobile network location.
gollark: Here is my exact location.

See also

References
  1. TOWARD A BEATBOXOLOGY, Human Beatbox
  2. The History of Beatboxing, humanbeatbox.com
  3. D. Stowell and M. D. Plumbley, Characteristics of the beatboxing vocal style Archived 2012-02-25 at the Wayback Machine. Technical Report C4DM-TR-08-01. 2008.
  4. Duchan, Joshua S. (April 4, 2012). Powerful Voices: The Musical and Social World of Collegiate A Cappella. Tracking Pop. University of Michigan Press. p. 43. ISBN 0-472-11825-0. Retrieved July 29, 2017.
  5. Thompson, Tok (2011). "Beatboxing, Mashups, and Cyborg Identity". Western Folklore. 70: 171–193.
  6. Sherman, Philip (2015). "Introduction". Boots and cats!: Beatboxing from a pedagogical perspective (M.A.). Royal College of Music in Stockholm, Department of Music Education. p. 3. Retrieved 2 February 2019. () Cites: McDonald, Brody (2012). A Cappella Pop, p.81, Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Music, ISBN 9780739095072; who quotes Jake Moulton (of The House Jacks and Mosaic).
  7. "Michael Jackson BeatBoxing". YouTube. 2008-03-27. Retrieved 2011-01-13. Jackson beatboxes while explaining how he composed "Tabloid Junkie", "The Girl Is Mine", "Who Is It", "Billie Jean", and "Streetwalker" (song on the Bad album 2001 Special Edition)
  8. HISTORY OF BEATBOX: OLD SCHOOL, Human Beatbox
  9. "Doug E. Fresh". MTV Artists.
  10. "Darren Buffy Robinson | HUMAN BEATBOX". www.humanbeatbox.com. Retrieved 2017-02-02.
  11. "Hawai'i's Human Beatbox". University of Hawaiʻi Foundation Office of Alumni Relations. 19 October 2018. Retrieved 31 October 2019.
  12. "Kapiʻolani CC alum stays on beat spreading message of perseverance". University of Hawaiʻi News. December 13, 2018. Retrieved 31 October 2019.
  13. Yamashiro, Lexus (15 July 2017). "KCC Alumnus Inspires Community Through Beatboxing, Motivational Speaking". Kapiʻo News. Retrieved 31 October 2019.
  14. Garfield, J. Breath Control: The History Of The Human Beat Box on IMDb. 2002. A documentary on the history of the art form, including interviews with Doug E. Fresh, Emanon, Biz Markie, Marie Daulne of Zap Mama, Kyle Faustino, and others.
  15. TyTe. "Standard Beatbox Notation". HumanBeatBox.com.
  16. Liu, Marian. "Beatboxing: An oral history; Hip-Hoppers Turn to Voice-Based Rhythms". San Jose Mercury News, California. Archived from the original on 2017-01-16. 2007-01-04
  17. Proctor, M.I.; Bresch, E.; Byrd, D.; Nayak, K. & Narayanan, S. (2013). "Para-Linguistic Mechanisms of Production in Human "Beatboxing": a Real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 133 (2): 1043–1054. doi:10.1121/1.4773865. PMC 3574116. PMID 23363120.
  18. Victoria Fromkin; Robert Rodman; Nina Hyams (1 January 2018). An Introduction to Language. Cengage Learning. p. 199. ISBN 978-1-337-55957-7.
  19. "Largest human beatbox ensemble". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 2012-03-27.
  20. "Mary Had A Little Boy 12". Discogs. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  21. "NaPom - Lips". swissbeatbox.com. Retrieved 2018-04-03.
  22. "Siri drops sick beats when you ask her to beatbox". CNET. CBS Interactive. 13 January 2016.
  23. Kate Dwyer. "iPhone's Siri Can Totally Beatbox – Teen Vogue". Teen Vogue.
  24. "Motel 6, GEICO Win Westwood One’s Sports Sounds Awards." Inside Radio, February 7, 2018. Accessed 02-07-2018.

Beatboxing-Communities supporting the scene for more than 10 years:

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