{"id":61848,"date":"2023-05-07T20:46:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T20:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/essays.homeworkacetutors.com\/2023\/05\/beatboxing-how-it-works-in-the-brain\/"},"modified":"2023-05-07T20:46:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T20:46:56","slug":"beatboxing-how-it-works-in-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colapapers.com\/us\/beatboxing-how-it-works-in-the-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Beatboxing & how it works in the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Introduction<\/h3>\n

As I was surfing through the internet, a viral video had caught my attention. At the time, it had roughly one million views and thus sparked my interest, so I watched it. In this video, a fairly large man began to move his lips and multiple sounds came out. He starts out slowly by setting a bass foundation and eventually adds a rhythmic part to the foundation. To the rhythm and foundation, he then adds a melody. Within the first 15 seconds, I recognize that he is indeed playing Bille Jean by Michael Jackson and it caught 100 percent of my attention. This man made me wonder how a human could possibly play 3 different parts of a song and how was he able to accomplish this feat. Now what was he doing in this video exactly? This man was beatboxing. Beatboxing is the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one\u2019s mouth, lips, tongue, voice, nasal passage and throat.[i]<\/a> Thus this video had caused me to further examine beatboxing and try to answer the question: how is this man able to play multiple different parts, when the only source is him? To attempt to even answer this question, this paper will first give a brief history on beatboxing to give the reader a basic understanding on the concept of beatboxing before exploring how this type of music interacts with the brain. The video clip will then be analyzed to form a conclusion based on the analysis.<\/p>\n

The Link: http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ayzoj7YB7IA<\/p>\n

History of Beatboxing<\/h3>\n

Prehistory of Beatboxing<\/h3>\n

The root of beatboxing is vocal percussion and it has been a part of human history for hundreds of years and can be traced back to Africa. As part of African ritualistic music, vocal percussion patterns such as, \u201chup, hup, hup, hup\u201d and \u201cCh Ka Ch Ch\u201d were used to help performers become induced into a trance like state, in addition to using clapping and stamping to maintain rhythm. Then during the 17th Century, when African slaves were taken to plantations, African music was blended with European folk and brass band music becoming jazz and blues. These black slaves were generally poor and usually couldn\u2019t afford musical instruments and so improvised with their bodies and voices to create music. <\/p>\n

\u201cClaps and clicks became the drums, and low hums because the double bass; the two back bones of blues and jazz music. One would hum, one would clap, stick and hit things as the drums, and one would sing. This would eventually evolve into imitating many sounds, such as the \u2018shhchh\u2019 of a soft snare and the \u2018tssa\u2019 of the hi-hat being played with brushes. Blues groups found a way to make their music with nothing but their voices\u2026Immediately, this form of vocal percussion became a staple of urban culture, that is, culture of the street.\u201d[ii]<\/a><\/p>\n

Old Skool: The Beginning of Beatboxing<\/h3>\n

Beatboxing, like graffiti, seems to have begun as an urban art form. It appears with the beginning of hip-hop, which gets its start from DJs spinning records, while MCs are rapping. MCs could also be seen rapping over drum machine (also known as the beat box) beats. Since these drum machines couldn\u2019t have been purchased in the ghettos (aka poor urban cities), people began trying to imitate these drum machines with their mouths and thus became human beatboxers.<\/p>\n

New School: Beatboxing As We Know It Now<\/h3>\n

During the 1990s, a new type of beatboxer appeared that developed new sounds and techniques. A great example of this is a beatboxer from 1999 called Rahzel, who used a method called auditory illusion to make listeners believe that he is indeed singing and beatboxing at the same time. The beatboxing song that Rahzel first revealed this new sound and technique with was \u2018If Your Mother Only Knew\u2019 which was reconfigured from Aaliyah\u2019s 1997 song \u2018If Your Girl Knew\u2019.<\/p>\n

How Does Beatboxing Work in The Brain?<\/h3>\n

Auditory Continuity Illusion<\/h3>\n

Audio continuity affects whether a frequency component is thought of as being continuous in time or if a frequency component contains gaps. Our brains can perceive a song as being continuous, even if it is not. Auditory continuity works by filling in these missing gaps with a different sound, which our brain then \u201cfills in\u201d the missing portions of the song, even if they aren\u2019t there. Our brain is thus producing a perception of a sound that is not truly there because it thinks that the two sounds are taking place at the same time. This is how Rahzel is able to make one believe that he is singing and beatboxing at the same time in the \u2018If Your Mother Only Knew\u2019 song. What listener does really hear is this pattern:<\/p>\n

B[iff] your Pff[mother] B B[on] B[ly] B[knew] B[knew] B B B Pff B = Classic Kick<\/p>\n

Pff = Classic Snare although the brain actually interprets this pattern as 2 different streams. A link to this song is:<\/p>\n