13 January 2010

Practice from 5-8pm today. It’s the first lesson with Dharni and it’s been a fruitful day no doubt.

Of course, we get to know each other first. Not like we don’t know each other. There were only three of us in the first hour. We then did our basics. We showed off our basic beats and none of us were perfect.

We were then corrected. First we did the kick drum, making it as low as possible and the hi-hat as high and sharp as possible. There are so many different basics to remember. The trick is to make the beat clean and in rhythm.

The we were told that every beatboxer has different snares. Probably due to the shape of our tonuges and the position we stick our tongues out when we do our snares. We’re all unique individually and there’s no right or wrong in our snares. As long as it sounds crisp, it’s a snare.

Then we were taught baselines. Again, there are many baselines in the world of beatbox. Vocal, nasal, and humming. Baselines vary in a really huge range of scale. The hardest one we learnt yesterday was vocal baselines.

And we were told that bananas and chocolates will improve our vocals. Whether it’s singing or doing baselines in beatboxing, they help a lot. Oily food makes it harder to do baselines.

About 6pm two more students came in and then we were taught how to improve our basics. Individually we were given a beat to memorize and practice at home.

Then we shared what covers we wanted to learn. Then that’s the end.