Lesson video

Hi there everybody, and welcome to this lesson on improvising using beatboxing techniques and vocal sounds inspired by nature.

This is from our Playing Together unit, Discovering Different Vocal Timbres.

My name's Mr. Krohn, and alongside our wonderful beatboxer and vocal percussionist, Jason Singh, we are going to be working together to create some sounds of nature.

Are we ready?

Let's begin.

In this lesson, you will mimic sounds of nature and use these to improvise stylistically using beatboxing sounds.

Let's begin by looking at today's keywords.

We're gonna start with improvise.

To improvise is to create music in the moment using voices or instruments alone or with others.

Texture, the combination of different layers of sounds.

Mimicry.

Mimicry is imitating something like the sound of an instrument.

And timbre, the description of the sound or tone of an instrument or your voice.

It's important to warm up our voices and body for every music lesson.

We know that we want to focus on our breathing, we're gonna warm up our mouth and our tongue with some tongue twisters, gently stretching our vocal folds with some exercises to keep our voices feeling strong and healthy.

So I would like you to follow along with these warmups so you are ready.

Here they come.

<v ->Join in with this breathing warmup.

</v> Imagine we are blowing out candles on a birthday cake.

Take a deep breath in and blow.

Let's do that again.

<v ->C.

</v> <v ->C.

</v> <v ->C, C.

</v> <v ->C, C.

</v> <v ->T.

</v> <v ->T.

</v> <v ->T, T.

</v> <v ->T, T.

</v> <v ->T, T, T.

</v> <v ->T, T, T.

</v> <v ->Mmm.

</v> <v ->Mmm.

</v> <v ->V.

</v> <v ->V.

</v> <v ->F.

</v> <v ->F.

</v> <v ->C, P, T.

</v> <v ->C, P, T.

</v> <v ->F, F, F.

</v> <v ->F, F, F.

</v> <v ->Mmm, C.

</v> <v ->Mmm, C.

</v> <v ->V, T.

</v> <v ->V, T.

</v> <v ->F.

</v> <v ->F.

</v> <v Tutor>Repeat after me.

</v> Gobbledegook, gobbledegook.

Hobbledy, wobbledy, bobbledegook.

Jump up and down all about town.

Round and around and around and around.

<v ->Very well done.

</v> We're gonna finish the warmup now by dividing into three groups and performing your arrangement of "Build Me Up.

" Now we remember that this song as we're putting it together helps us understand texture and it focuses our listening.

So have a pause, pop yourself into three groups, make sure you know which group is doing which part, and then use the backing track to support you.

Off you go.

All right, well done.

Are we ready to make some music?

If you are, your body's likely feeling relaxed and ready, your voice is warm and you are feeling more focused.

There are two learning cycles in today's lesson.

The first one, vocal percussion sounds inspired by nature, and then the second to improvise sounds to create vocal textures.

Let's begin with some vocal percussion sounds inspired by nature.

Now beatboxing is not always rhythmic drum machine mimicry.

So artists like Jason Singh often combine other sounds into their work.

Let's have a watch of this.

You're going to listen carefully to Jason recreating sounds of the sea.

<v ->The sea.

</v> <v ->Brilliant.

</v> So Jason is using vocal percussion to mimic the sounds of the waves.

He changes the 'sh' sounds to mimic the different sounds and motions of different waves.

You are going to have a go now and discover your sound to mimic the sound of the waves.

Couple of top tips Lucas suggests if you keep the sounds really quiet and atmospheric, then that helps.

And Sofia says, exploring 'sh' sounds and timbres by moving your lips closer and rounder, sh, and then wider and further apart, sh.

And that's gonna help give us a range of timbres to mimic the sounds of different waves.

I'll put the video on again and you can join in along.

Here it comes.

<v ->The sea.

</v> <v ->Jason also mimics the wind</v> by vocalizing breathing in and out, have a watch.

<v ->So now I'm gonna make a backing track,</v> which is made up just of breathing in and out.

Check this out.

<v ->So now you are gonna have a go</v> and discover your sound to mimic the wind.

Sofia suggests, can you control the flow of air to create gentle and stronger wind sounds?

Pause here and give that a try where you are.

Very good.

A quick listening check-in for you then, what sounds are being mimicked here?

Is it sounds of the sea, sounds of the wind, or sounds of birdsong?

Have a listen.

Here it comes.

Fantastic listening, did you get it right?

It was indeed, yes, A, sounds of the sea.

Jason sometimes creates new sounds and here he's combining wind and sea to create what he calls Starburst.

Laura says the sounds are performed forwards and backwards, and Aisha says, listen to how the sound is thrown and caught.

See what you make of this.

<v ->So this next sound is what I call a starburst,</v> and it's basically throwing a sound and catching a sound.

So it goes And the other way around.

<v ->I'd like you to pause here</v> and try recreating the starburst sound yourself.

Off you go.

Nice work people.

Now to create effective vocal percussion, you might change the shape of your mouth, use your tongue and your lips, use different dynamics, combine two sounds together, change the flow of air, and use different vocal sounds or timbres.

All of these are really useful to have in our toolkit when we're trying to mimic sounds.

True or false, beatboxing artists only use rhythmic patterns in their music.

Is that true or false?

If you're a beatboxer, are you only using rhythmic patterns in your music?

What do we think, true or false?

Give me a thumbs up if you think it's true, thumbs down for false.

And I'm going to say it's false, and this is because beatboxing isn't just about drum machine mimicry.

That artist like Jason Singh combine other sounds into their recordings.

In pairs now, you're gonna practice vocalizing different sounds of nature.

Here's how it's gonna happen.

You're gonna make quiet wave sounds and wind sounds.

You're going to explore changing the shape of your mouth and lips, and changing the flow of air to make those sounds more effective.

How closely can you mimic sounds in nature?

I'd like you to practice making the starburst sound both forwards and backwards, and create a new vocal percussion sound too that you can add in inspired by nature.

Remember, you're working in pairs, so pause here, work through those steps, and see what you come up with.

Great stuff, really creative.

Now, how did you use mimicry in that improvisation?

Andeep says that he used gentle blowing sounds in and out to represent the wind.

Aisha says, "I changed the flow of air "to mimic the movements of the waves.

" So imagine what those waves are doing and then creating those sounds accordingly.

And Jun, "I changed the shape of my mouth "to try and make my sound as realistic as possible.

" If you'd like to, you can pause here and discuss some top tips for each other.

Otherwise we're ready to move on to the second learning cycle in today's lesson, which is improvising sounds to create vocal textures.

Listen to Jason.

He's building up a vocal texture using beatboxing sounds.

Here it comes.

And you might notice there he's using a loop station to record those initial beatboxing sounds.

So a loop station allows musicians to record, play it back, and layer up musical phrases, and multiple layers create a texture.

We can layer our wave and wind sounds to create our own interesting vocal texture.

So in pairs, you're gonna create a vocal texture of two layers over the audio.

Partner one is going to use quiet 'sh' sounds to mimic the waves and partner two, those gentle 'whew' blowing wind sounds.

Pause here because you can use the track to add more layers to when you're working in your pairs.

Pause here, see you when you're done.

Lovely, great stuff.

Now, when Jason performs, he improvises, he's creating music in the moment and he's using his voice inspired by visual images, movements, and sounds of the natural world.

Now the timbres created by the voice are what we could describe as programmatic, they describe or create a sound picture.

Have a watch.

<v ->The sea.

</v> <v ->All right.

</v> So if you are now going to improvise effectively, you're going to decide which sound, the sea or the wind, is more prominent.

Which one's heard more clearly towards the front.

You're going to vary the dynamics, getting quieter and louder.

This keeps it more interesting, but also more realistic 'cause you're responding to how the waves might be moving and the strength of the wind.

And then use your tongue and your lips to alter the timbre.

In your pairs, create your sea and wind vocal texture again and this time practice those improvising skills.

Perhaps you're imagining in your head what those waves might be doing and what the wind might be doing.

Give it a try, see you in a bit.

Lovely stuff, great improvising.

So when we're improvising, we can't prepare anything in advance.

Is that true or false?

When we improvise, we can't prepare anything in advance.

True, thumbs up, false, thumbs down.

Let me know what you think.

Hmm, I'm gonna say false too, and that's because when we improvise, we can bring musical ideas that we've rehearsed beforehand to help us when we're creating music in the moment.

You're now going to divide into groups to improvise using all of the sounds you've rehearsed to build a vocal texture.

This is how it'll work.

The different layers of that texture are going to be the starburst sounds, both forwards and backwards.

Wind sounds, sea sounds, your own sounds that you've created, and then the fifth layer is Jason's backing played as a line underneath the improvisation, okay.

So remember in your groups, different people might be responsible for different layers of sound that you'll be bringing together using Jason's backing track.

So pause here, let that backing track play so that each group can continue to work through that thicker textured improvisation.

Off you go.

Great, I'm wondering how realistic that's starting to sound and how your group is working together, not only to build that texture, but to vary the dynamics and see which sound begins to become more prominent at different times.

How was your improvisation successful?

Well, Sam says we focus quite a bit on changing the shape of our mouths, using our lips and our tongues to help create different timbres.

Laura says, we tried using different dynamics, that was to really mimic the sounds of nature.

Waves aren't always loud, for example.

And Andeep says, "We layered our parts in different ways "to create interesting textures.

" This is great, I hope you had success doing that where you are too.

That's all we have time for for today.

So a quick summary of our learning.

Sounds in nature can be mimicked using the voice.

Sound effects such as altering the direction of sound can be used to create interest and contrast.

We can create music in the moment using our voices or instruments, alone or with others, and we call it improvisation.

Building up a performance of different textures requires some rehearsal, some evaluation, and some improvement.

I hope you've had time for all of those things today and I look forward to seeing you next time.

Well done, bye for now.