What is beatbox and how to learn ?
What is Human Beatbox?
Human Beatbox is the art of producing music using the entire phonatory apparatus: mouth, throat, nose, vocal cords…
Whether you’re imitating any instrument to create a rhythm, adding a melody while singing along, or simply making sound effects, this discipline offers unlimited freedom of creation and expression, and all without the need for a physical instrument!
It’s an ongoing game of learning music through listening and imitation, accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime.
That’s right! Anyone can beatbox. In fact, even as a child, it’s highly likely that you had fun imitating car noises, birds, humming songs and so on. This gets lost as you get older, and yet these are your first steps in beatboxing.
However, there’s no secret to it: you need to train as you would for any other discipline.
To do this, you need to work on rhythm and build up your phonatory apparatus to produce increasingly original, clean and powerful sounds.
The most determined beatboxers manage to make a living from it, distinguishing themselves by their style and the emotions they convey through their shows: joy, surprise, sadness, anger…
Everyone is free to create the music they want, according to their own sounds, tastes and inspirations… That’s what makes Human Beatbox so rich.
OUR SENSEI RIVER’ | Grand Beatbox Battle 2021: World League Solo Wildcard | My Way
(Ranked 1st over 600+ participants):
KOSH – Beatbox Course at Montreux Comedy Festival:
MB14 (Top french beatboxer) at Britain’s got talent 2023 | Auditions:
What does Human Beatbox offer?
Beatbox is first and foremost a learning game. The aim is to have fun inventing and reproducing sounds from instruments or everyday life.
These sounds are then used to create and/or repeat the rhythms that make up a piece of music.
In this way, beatboxing appeals to the ear, learning by listening and miming.
Beatboxing is a great way to work on your musical ear and improve your listening skills.
It makes it easier to open up to yourself and to others, because when you share your music, you share your emotions.
What’s more, beatboxing offers absolute freedom of expression. Produce sounds with your mouth, nose, vocal cords, etc., and combine them: the potential for creativity seems limitless.
Learning beatbox is also about getting to know your body and how to use it as an instrument. You get to know your voice, its anatomy, its particularities… It boosts your self-confidence.
Last but not least, beatbox appears to be an excellent therapeutic remedy for people with cognitive, language and hearing disorders. In fact, beatboxing is a remarkable alternative to the classic vocal re-education exercises offered by speech therapists.
If you’re interested in the subject, I recommend reading the following article: “Troubles du langage : le beatbox délie les langues” (Aurélien Defer, 2018).
In short, beatboxing is an excellent tool for personal development:
As much for children’s musical awakening as for teenagers and adults in search of freedom of expression through the practice of music 🙂.
Beatbox-piano composition in 4 hours on the theme of Reinventing the Nantes Biscuit –
Performed in 4 hours with beginners | Festival Chtiiing 2022 (Nantes)
How do you learn to beatbox?
Chances are you discovered beatboxing on TV or on social networks, or even had the chance to attend a live beatbox performance.
In any case, the performance blew you away and now you want to learn seriously?
There are many ways to learn the basics of beatboxing:
The lucky ones have the chance to take part in live introductory and advanced workshops.
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of what’s on offer in some cities. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you live nearby:
Beatbox workshops available
International:
- Brussels (🇧🇪 Belgium): Belgium Beatbox Session (FootboxG or BigBen)
- Geneva (🇨🇭 Switzerland): ETM (Keumart)
- 🇳🇱 Netherlands: Boon Snap Clap (Timmeh)
- 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: 5th Element Agency (Hobbit) or BAC Beatbox Academy (Conrad)
🇫🇷 France:
- Bordeaux / Pessac (🇫🇷 France): L’équipe Pama (Bookie Blanco)
- Marseille (🇫🇷 France): 2 Da Streetz (Tressym)
- Montpellier (🇫🇷 France): Association Esperanza (KO-S)
- Nantes (🇫🇷 France): Lyrebird Beatbox School (DùJ’)
- Orléans (🇫🇷 France): Mélocratie (Jean Beatbox)
- Pau (🇫🇷 France): Paution (Jabe)
- Paris (🇫🇷 France): Paname Beatbox Hustlers (Scratchy)
- Quimper (🇫🇷 France): Association Hip Hop New School (Noah Roudaut)
- Rennes (🇫🇷 France): Growl Up (Mike Fly)
- Toulouse (🇫🇷 France): Association Human Earth (Kenôzen) or Underground Beatbox Battle (BenBen)
(If you know of any others, please get in touch so we can improve our list)
Attending to initiation workshops is a great way of learning the basics, meeting beatboxers of your own level and motivating yourself to progress together.
However, these workshops are limited (physical and geographical constraints) and don’t allow you to progress at your own pace (they are often collective).
You can also book private lessons with an experienced beatboxer if you’re lucky enough to know one, although this is financially out of reach for most people.
Nevertheless, each beatboxer’s pedagogy is unique, since their knowledge is not centralized.
Finally, you can learn the basics of beatboxing online with free tutorials. YouTube is a veritable goldmine of beatbox video tutorials explaining how to learn a sound, a technique or how to cover a piece of music.
In fact, if you’re interested in learning new beatbox sounds, we release one video tutorial a week on our Lyrebirdbeatbox YouTube channel!
The problem is that these tutorials aren’t always understood, they sometimes lack structure and only allow you to learn specific sounds.
Our innovative solution: Lyrebird Beatbox School
That’s why we created Lyrebird Beatbox School, the first beatbox school to share the learning methods of the masters of the discipline.
Through our video lessons, live masterclasses and artistic showcase events, we want to give anyone who loves beatbox the chance to learn and progress, whatever their level and wherever they live.
In fact, registration for our online programme for beginners is now open. If you’d like to be one of our students and learn beatbox with guidance, you can view details of our learning path by clicking here.
By the end of this programme, you’ll be able to beatbox and you’ll even be able to record your first beatbox freestyle or cover on video.
Joining our school also gives you the chance to meet, talk and jam (make music together) with the other students and teachers.
We attach a great deal of importance to keeping track of our students, thanks to our teaching tools (group lessons / masterclasses, dashboard, etc.) and our online and physical community events: great opportunities to get together and share your passion!
What about you? Do you know of any other alternatives for learning beatbox? We’d love to hear what you think in the comments!
In the meantime, thank you for reading, and I hope this article has been useful in helping you understand this increasingly popular art form.
See you soon for another article on beatbox ;)
DùJ’, co-founder of Lyrebird and beatbox enthusiast for 16 years.
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