Friends… the time has come for your last homework assignment. We’ve laughed, cried, hugged, stabbed, and done a little improv, too. This week, as I said in class, we wanted to highlight freestyling. I think it’s important to always watch people that are better than you because it keeps you hungry. And I feel that the moment you think you don’t need to change anything, is the exact moment that you do. Shaun said, “I think the important thing to pull away from these videos are that freestyling is difficult even for rappers who we perceive as amazing”. Also this week, Shaun and I wanted to highlight some more beatboxing videos AND recap the work we went over last class! Please listen to at least 4 of the freestyling vide0s, 2 beatboxing videos. While you are listening to them please think about:
- Skills: How did their minds work? How did they get from couplet to couplet and topic to topic?
- Personality: How does their freestyle persona match/ change from their written persona?
- Beatboxing: Could you hear the sounds we worked on in class? What other sounds did you hear that you may want to learn?
- Diversity: What differences did you notice between the female rappers? Any similarities?
Freestyles:
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Beatboxing:
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WAYS TO SPEED UP/COMPLICATE THE BEAT include taking the sounds we have learned and combining them in a faster or syncopated pattern. When writing these sections we use lower case letters put together with no breaks.
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“tpk”- TOPEKA. Concentrate on accentuating the consonants
“pkt”- BIGGITY.
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Listening to scatter and Jazz will help a lot when trying to add flair and rhythmic timing to your beats.
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INTONING is achieved by humming with the back of your throat while making percussions sounds using the air inside your mouth. To practice, close your mouth and start humming. Send them hum sound out through your nose. If you pinch your nostrils while doing this it should mute the sound. While humming use “P” sound to practice using only the air in your mouth (as humming is taking up the rest of your instrument.
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“P”- stays the same as when we learned it
“F”- similar to “T”. It keeps your mouth in an easier position to intone while still giving you opportunity to breathe.
“K”- instead of pushing air out to achieve this sound you need to click your tongue against your back teeth.
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When intoning all sounds are naturally going to have less force because your air supply is busy with the humming sounds. Keep this in mind when practicing enunciation and force so there is not a clear drop off in sound during the transition from beatboxing to intoning.
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Videos:
As always, if you would like to leave comments below about your thoughts on the above questions and/or which tracks you liked/didn’t like and why, please do so below (not required).
January 25th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
Here’s another couple of Jean Grae tracks that are really great, (she’s in the women of hiphop compilation):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5enxTUA6cU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XCxKXbmW40&feature=related
January 25th, 2012 at 8:45 pm
Roy, great find!!! She goes hard! That 1st song/video was intense. Thanks for sharing!
January 27th, 2012 at 4:45 am
For those visual learners out there, here’s another take on beatboxing using “catbees”: http://youtu.be/Nni0rTLg5B8
January 27th, 2012 at 6:30 pm
Here are some great female MCs from the 1990s, I don’t know where they are now..
Yo-Yo “Ibwin wit my Crew” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTp4eWFhYOA
Boss “Deeper” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYjwGXoXI8A
Bahamadia “Uknowhowwedu” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyGUesyG7bU
February 17th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
When it comes to beatboxing, how can you exclude the MASTER and really the guy who brought it to the table. Rahzel!