Question: i have tried beatboxing just with my mouth, should i try and use the back of my thorat aswell to help the sound? :)

Carolyn McGettigan answered on 22 Mar 2010:

Yes, I think the cool thing about beatboxing is that the performers are really inventive with how they use their voices. In my previous answer when I mentioned the throat I meant the ‘voice box’, basically the bit you use to say ‘aaaaa’. From watching beatboxing performances, it seems they can sort of interleave the bits that sound like the drums and hi-hats (which I think they do a lot with their mouths) with ‘buzzing’ from the voice box.

Can you access the youtube video I put on my profile? If not, here’s the link in full: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7oADuVfpGI

If you watch the clip, go to the bit where the beatboxer Shlomo does the Missy Elliot song around 1:00 into the clip, you can hear he puts a melody in the bass line and those high sliding notes. Same with the White Stripes tune at around 1:50. He’s doing that by buzzing the voice box, like you would to sing and in a lot of speech sounds. What I think is really clever is how he does the melodies and spoken bits (which use the ‘buzz’) while the drum sounds keep going. It’s almost like a type of auditory illusion, where it sounds like all the individual ‘instruments’ are playing continuously when in fact he probably he can only make a limited number of sounds at the same time.

I know that there are beatboxing workshops that take place at the Battersea Arts Centre: http://www.bac.org.uk/get-involved/programmes/beatbox-academy/. Sounds like it’s just the thing for you, if you’re in London. It would be great to hear from the performers themselves about how they do it.

Good luck with the practice!