Categories: Food & Wine

Beginner’s Guide: How to Beatbox

Do you like the style that many hip hop artists have now where they make little drum noises with their mouth? Or, perhaps, you are a fan of Greg Pattillo, the beatboxing flautist, and you want to try beatboxing with your own instrument. However, your problem is that you don’t even know where to start. This guide will help you learn how to beatbox.

The basic sound is known as the kick drum. This sound is made by expelling pressurized air through your mouth while making a mouth movement like you are going to make a sound, but not using your voicebox at all.

Shape your mouth as if you are going to make the sound of the letter “B” and do just that, but without letting any sound come out of your voicebox. Doing this will feel funny, but you will get used to it if you want to beatbox.

Vary the sound of your kick drum by putting different letters after the “B.” Try shaping your mouth as if you were going to make sounds such as “Bf,” “Bs,” and “Bsh.”

In order to make the hi-hat sound, clench your teeth together and expel air as if making the sound of the letter “T.” Keep your tongue lightly pressed to the back of your top teeth and the roof of your mouth. Then you can use your tongue to regulate the air flow. Experiment with the sounds and the airflow by making the way you expel your air longer and shorter by adding “S” onto the “T,” so you may have things like “Tss” or “Tssssss.”

To add in a snare drum, you build on the kick drum that you learned in the first part of this guide. Do exactly what was written except that instead of mouth the letter “B,” mouth the letter “P.” Of course, this also means mouthing things such as “Ps,” Psh,” Pf,” and even “Pssssshff.”

To imitate a crash cymbal, mouth the word “chish” while just expelling air through your clenched teeth. In order to imitate a duller sound, trying mouthing the word without the vowel sound.

To create a reverse cymbal sound, keep your tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth and behind your top teeth and inhale quickly.

Practice these steps until you feel comfortable doing these things and putting them together in random orders. After that, make sure that you listen to old school hip hop music in order to get the beat.

Once you feel comfortable with making these sounds and having beats, practice on your own.

Remember, this is only a guide to begin beatboxing. There is much more than can be learned. Experiment on your own or find other how-to guides and videos once you feel you have mastered the basics.

Michael Sanchez, How To Make Basic Beat-Box Sounds, Howcast