Thinking outside the (beat)box: Primary school beatboxing unit
Akshay Sharma
Friday, July 1, 2022
Having created a beatboxing unit for primary schools with Leicestershire Music, Akshay Sharma unpacks how this art form is a fun and accessible option to explore in your music classroom.
Joyce Nicholls
Beatboxing was made popular in Hip Hop culture during the ‘70s and ‘80s. The Bronx, New York was the birthplace of artists mimicking drum machines or ‘beat boxes,’ solely using their mouths. In the early days, the role of the beatboxer was to provide a percussive beat for rappers to flow over. Fifty years later, beatboxing stands alone as its own art-form, with international competitions taking to mainstream stages. This year, beatboxer DVK won India's Got Talent as part of a beatbox and flute duo.
Recognising the rapid growth and integrity of beatboxing as a form of musical expression, I was asked to write a 10-week beatbox unit aimed at primary schools, as part of Leicestershire Music's Music Technology & Contemporary team. It was an honour to create this piece of work for a music service that is working hard to innovate an educational offer that truly reflects today's wide ranging musical landscape. After hearing about the success of their previous turntablism whole-class instrumental schemes, I was in!
Building blocks
We decided to approach the unit from the ground up. Students learn basic sounds such as the kick, snare and hi-hat and combine sounds such as the humming bass and kick drum, along with techniques such as breathing and mic control. Throughout the 10 weeks, pupils get the opportunity to create and perform their own beatbox compositions in solo and paired pieces, as well as sight reading and performing differentiated beatbox compositions. The unit integrates music technology by revolving the pupil's beatbox practice around a mixer, mic and headphone set-up, which ensures direct audio monitoring without disrupting the rest of the class. This also opens a learning opportunity for signal flow and good practice for handling music tech equipment. When sharing, pupils beatbox through a speaker, amplifying the bass tones as you would on a stage in front of a live crowd. This gives the students a truer to life experience when performing their routines and opens a conversation around sound frequencies.
Beatboxing in and beyond the classroom
So, how does beatboxing meet the requirements of formal music education? We worked closely with the aims and outcomes of the primary music curriculum, exploring key music vocabulary such as dynamics, pulse, rhythm, pitch and so on, in addition to providing opportunities to compose, play and learn graphic notation. Assessment and evaluation are facilitated by the teacher alongside peer appraisal, feedback and self-assessment opportunities. Once the unit has been piloted (with trials starting in the summer term) and checked for quality, with feedback from schools and young people, Leicestershire Music will focus on building progression pathways for schools and national music service music technology partners. Progression offers will include low-cost hire of equipment, resources, and further repertoire for schools to deliver their own extracurricular groups.
The wider vision is to carry the culture of beatboxing beyond the classroom by establishing termly regional and national competitions, allowing young people to compete and aspire to win one-to-one masterclasses with professional beatboxers, and to encourage community music partners to deliver regular beatbox clubs in Leicestershire county and Leicester city.
Fascination and eagerness to learn
The best part of teaching beatboxing in schools is seeing the look of disbelief on the faces of children who shout, ‘that's not real!’ and accuse me of hiding a tiny beatbox chip in my mouth which plays audio through the microphone. Well, it's less about the look of disbelief and more about the fascination and eagerness to learn how such ‘real’ drum sounds can be created with the human mouth. The effect is tenfold when the child is hearing beatbox through a speaker for the first time. An obvious thing to state is that beatboxing is an extremely accessible art form and is budget friendly. If you have a mouth, you can beatbox. Children can take their practice home without worrying about hiring instruments. Disclaimer: your children may be obsessed with the phrase ‘boots n’ cats’ for a while.
Our beatbox unit fits within a bigger picture of music tech offerings. In June 2022, Leicestershire Music hosted a Tech Festival, which was attended by schools that had completed one or more of our tech units. These include Turntablism, iPad GarageBand Live Loops, Sampling & Sound Exploration and our newest addition, Beatbox. The aim is for schools to experience new tech units and to extend their current skills, to continue progressing with music technology in their settings.
As an educator in music technology and contemporary music forms, it's important to light the way for those who are not so confident within the field. Alongside the rapid growth of music tech, there's the rapid growth of technophobia. When creating all of our units, it's important to keep this at the forefront, not only in terms of the experience of the pupil, but also the teacher.
Employing modes of technology
In order to minimise stress for the teacher, our units are heavily video led, with tutorials breaking down each technique, how to set up and pack down equipment, along with call and response activities and warmups. Not only can the teacher learn alongside the pupils, but the students can also be taught in a YouTube-esque format, which fits in with our tech-native generation's language of learning. YouTube is a gold mine for tips and research when it comes to beatbox and music tech. It's good practice for teachers to be transparent with their pupils and to accompany them on their learning journey. This is a great way to immediately break down barriers in the classroom and to remove the pressure of having to know everything about a new subject.
From the beatbox pioneers of the ‘70s, the torch is being passed to the next generation and Beatboxing has the power to break down barriers and open new doors to modern day music making.
