13 Levels of Beatboxing: Easy to Complex | WIRED

my name is butterscotch I'm a singer beatboxer first female beatbox world champion and you may have seen me on America's Got Talent and today we're gonna break down 13 levels of complexity and beatboxing beatboxing is the art of vocal percussion so every sound you make is only using your mouth it's one of the most unique things that you can do because everyone is different so we're all gonna have some sort of different style that we add so remember this is my version of what makes beatboxing complex level one bass drum so we're gonna start with the simplest sound which is the bass drum and this is the heartbeat it sets the tempo and the tone for whatever beat you're gonna do so the perfect way to get this sound is to really accentuate your lips and the air pushing through and so what you're really doing is forcing the air out of your mouth it's gonna take time to build up that muscle in your lips but once you get the strength then it's gonna be a clean hard so we have the bass drum but now we need another percussive element to help drive that beat level two snare so we're gonna take the bass drum and add a snare to it this is what actually makes the beak it's not just a heartbeat the easiest and quickest way to beatbox is just to say boots and cats together boots cats saying these two words together are prepping your mouth for the right form to the box suit what's the right chance so when you say these two words together kind of creating a very simple rhythm that people can play over or rap over or jam over cats boots level three hi-hat so we got the bass we've got the snare and now we're adding the hi-hat and this is completing the elements of the basic sounds of a drum kick everything else and beatboxing they're just embellishments and if you want to see the core elements here's a drum kit you've got your base you've got your snare and you've got your hi-hat but the hi-hat you really want to make these sounds tightened and this is what makes the rhythm move it pushes it and it sounds almost like a sprinkler - you don't want it to be too loose because then you're gonna you're gonna lose the technical sound that you want that's just not going to hit it you just gotta make it clean high hats can be closed or they can also be open so now that we have our core sounds let's introduce a basic beat so beats can be anything but this is the simplest most basic hip-hop beat so I'm taking the bass I'm taking the snare and I'm taking the hi-hat and I'm gonna put them in this order so I can throw in another bass drum which makes the rhythm in the pattern sound a little bit more exciting it's one thing to just make those sounds but over time as you practice and your lips get stronger you're gonna sound like this so this is super simple it's basically the mary had a little lamb' of hip-hop beats if you listen back to ladi Dadi Dougie fresh the original human beatbox this is the beat that's behind it so this whole time the snare I've been using it can become kind of monotonous if you're just always using the same type of snare even just within a song so what happens when I change it up and make things a little bit more complex I can interchange the snare with a bunch of other different sounds and that's what makes it more dynamic I can do sounds so combining the Shh you can mix them all up and come up with all different kinds of snares the post sounds are more like hitting the snare or drum machine whereas the sound is like a rimshot you don't want to use all the sounds all at once it'd be like having a drummer just play every single drum and it's not really making a beat it's just sound so when you first start beatboxing you're pretty much gonna have to plan out your breaths most of the snares that I'm using I'm breathing outward so this is what it looks like when all the sounds that I'm using are breathing out I run on a breath because there's no time to even catch my breath whereas if I'm breathing inward I can go faster I can breathe while I'm actually beatboxing I can just interlace my breathing with the beat itself after a while then it just becomes second nature and you can just breathe within the beat so when you're a drummer sometimes you make two sounds at once I only have one mouth so this level of complexity is taking two of the core elements of the drum kit and putting them together so here's my bass and here's my hi-hat and I'm just going to combine them so this is me doing it normal and this is me adding the bass and hi-hat together you can add multiple sounds at the same time but we're gonna save that for a couple levels later everything we've been doing up to now has been percussive but now level seven adding a bass line I don't have the vocal range to go super low but what I can do is vibrate my lips and get this certain frequency that creates this tone in this pitch so with this lip bass and basically just vibrating my lips but this is getting a tighter form and you're actually making pitches and tones so I'm gonna take this bass sound and add it to the beat this is the limit of what I can do with the bass sound since I don't have the vocal cords that stretch that low but with other beatboxers like inertia super super low that create this like subwoofer bass all levels up to now have been using my mouth but now we're gonna add another level of complexity by using my throat level eight humming humming and beatboxing is one of the most difficult things because you're using different parts of your mouth and your throat and your lips all at the same time so you want to get that humming sound more kind of nasally and then throw the beat on top of that so when you're first starting out just hum and then make the bass drum noise at the same time hardest thing is adding the snare on top of that because a lot of people want to go but that doesn't really sound that great if you go and then that's a little bit cleaner so I'm gonna take that bass sound and add another note on top of it which gives it a richer sound one of my favorite beatboxers is the current world female beatbox champion Kayla m'lady and she adds these musical elements to make her beatboxing stand out so far everything we've done has been instrumental so let's add some lyrics the easiest way to begin is to start with B words because you're already saying the with the bass drum so you can say banana banana you can say beat box beat box beat box you can also use it with P because that's the same shape that your mouth is already making for those sounds pop tart pop tart pop tart pop tart so with other continents that's a little bit harder crunchy taco crunchy taco there is a split second like say if I'm saying zebra I'm just saying a split hair after I do the bass drum so it's zebra zebra zebra but if I'm doing it so fast it sounds like I'm doing it at the same time zebra zebra zebra or if you have a gust sound which sounds almost impossible to do a in a good sound at the same time but once you've been doing it a long time pretty much any word is possible gorilla gorilla so the most exciting moment in beatbox history for me is when rozelle beatbox and sang at the same time he's saying if if you wouldn't normally think of bass drum and if would go at the same time if yo mother mother at the same time that's that's crazy too if yo mother only knew [Music] before that people had wrapped in beatbox maybe did a little singing a beatbox but it wasn't as cohesive and clean and it blew people's minds that's one of the reasons I'm beatboxing today there's a form that's kind of taking off as well that kid lucky started and amazing beat boxers like Kayla m'lady are doing it doing so now we're gonna get more complex by adding different sound effects this is where you find your style and what really makes you stand out so these are different sounds that I've been developing over the years I have two lip base tongue base growl base slizzer roll trumpet scratching yeah when I was younger I used to bark like a dog I won't do that in class and fire people you don't have to be good at all these different sounds to be a good beat boxer just find the sounds that you love and that represent you and that's your style I would say my trumpet is one of my most unique and signature sounds it brings out what makes my music me I'm inspired by people like Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie I love jazz and that's what I grew up with I love classical music so I'm trying to get better at making a nice violin sound [Music] emulating real instruments are probably the hardest because this is what people are most familiar with when you're trying to make the same sound you gotta have it pretty spot-on before we move on to level 11 here's the first 10 levels all together be a beatbox for this next level we're gonna go just back to the beat but this time it's all about new-school level 11 intricate beats so I'm starting with a drum and bass beat you can hear all the things that I'm doing which sounds simple but as I go faster it sounds a bit more complex this level is more complex because your brain has to catch up with what your mouth is doing or your mouth has to catch up with what your brain is trying to do but everything starts with a very simple beginning and you can just like work it up and go as fast as you can you can take it to the exponential level with how fast you can go with how many sounds you can do within a certain beat it's incredibly technical so complexity isn't just about going for speed for me it's about being multi-dimensional for level 12 I'm doing a classic song swing low Sweet Chariot and I'm singing beatboxing and playing the guitar at the same time so it's complex because my brain is having to operate at a different level trying to do the beat and play and saying swing low Sweet Chariot so I added trumpet at the beginning to give it kind of a jazzy Flair that just sets up the song and in this way so it could be other instruments but I love playing guitar I love taking classics and just flipping them and making them sound more new swing low Sweet Chariot comin for to carry me home swing low Sweet Chariot comin for Gamescom and its last performance I'm gonna be live looping which is overdubbing all the instruments that you see I have my keyboard my guitar my Loop Station beatbox vocals different sound effects and the classic trumpet sound so I sing beatbox or play into the Loop Station and it creates different layers that overdub it's complex because I'm combining so many different elements different instruments there's no room for error because every sound has to be on the beat because it's looped [Music] swing low sweet coming for me round sweet baby come upon carry me home swing I love beatboxing because it's completely unique you're able to do so much just with your own body there's all sorts of levels and intricacies of what makes beatboxing multi-dimensional it's portable it's fun and it's a pretty damn special so I hope you enjoyed it and thanks wired [Music] [Applause]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,969,843

Rating: 4.9005866 out of 5

Keywords: beatboxing, butterscotch, butterscotch beatboxer, beatboxer interview, beatboxing wired, levels, levels of beatboxing, easy to complex, easy beatboxing, complex beatboxing, easy beatboxing wired, hard beatboxing, expert level beatboxing, expert beatboxing, beatboxing tutorial, learning to beatbox, levels beatboxing, beatboxing levels, wired levels, beatboxing drums, beatbox bass, beatbox, beatboxer, beatboxers, best beatboxer, butterscotch beatbox, antoinette clinton, wired

Id: Efk_z9kg2MU

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/winnipegcd]

Oh thank goodness I am not the only one!!