beatboxing

The tradition & historical record

Beatboxing (also, and sometimes, called beat boxing) is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of mimicking drum machines (usually a TR-808), using one's mouth, lips, tongue, throat, and voice. 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. The term "beatboxing" is sometimes used to refer to vocal percussion in general. ¹

Techniques similar to beatboxing have been employed in diverse 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. ¹

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 — predominantly 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. 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" (1970) includes vocal percussion. Pink Floyd's "Pow R. Toc H." (1967) also includes vocal percussion performed by the group's original 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. ¹

Modern beatboxing first began as a way to assist or backup the MC. When drum machines were unavailable or unaffordable, communities in the inner city of New York began to mimic the sounds with their voices in ciphers. The term "beatboxing" is derived from the mimicry of early drum machines, then known as beatboxes, particularly, and specifically, the Roland TR-808. The term "beatbox" was used to refer to earlier Roland drum machines such as the TR-55 and CR-78 in the 1970s. They were followed by the TR-808, released in 1980, which became central to hip hop music and electronic dance music. It is the TR-808 that human beatboxing is largely modeled after. "Human beatboxing" in hip-hop originated in the 1980s. Its early pioneers include Buffy, the first "human beatbox"; Swifty, the first to implement the inhale sound technique; Buffy, who helped perfect many beatboxing techniques; 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, 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, and Emanon, an early protegee of Doug E. Fresh associated with Ice T and Afrika Islam. Many refer to beatboxing as the unofficial 5th element of hip-hop. ¹

The Internet has played a large part in the popularity of modern beatboxing. Ronon Haddow (aka Sleak-jr) started his first tournament in 2025 on July 5th and went on to winning in 1st place and earning £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, American beatboxer of Hawaii Chinese descent Jason Tom co-founded the Human Beatbox Academy to perpetuate the art of beatboxing through outreach performances, speaking engagements and workshops in Honolulu, the westernmost and southernmost major U.S. city of the 50th U.S. state of Hawaii. 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. Engaging different articulators like the tongue and lips in rapid succession creates the illusion of hearing multiple sounds performed at once. ¹

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 44: 𝄆b-ts-k-ts-b-ts-k-ts𝄇). Standard Beatbox Notation (SBN) was created by Mark Splinter and Gavin Tyte of Humanbeatbox.com Archived 2009-09-10 at the Wayback Machine in 2006 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. ¹

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 voice box that give intensity to percussive sounds. The "p", "t", and "k" sounds can all be made into ejectives,. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Beatboxing”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

beatboxing is vocal percussion involving imitation of drum machines, turntablism, and other musical instruments using one's mouth, lips, tongue, and voice, connected with hip-hop culture, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 20 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²