Greg Pattillo Shares His BeatBoxing Flute Tips
How the Beatbox Flute Player Adds a Drum Track While Playing Flute
Sep 1, 2009
There’s an indescribable amount of sounds the mouth is capable of making, Greg Pattillo comments, “But I find I use around 12 specific sounds from about three different parts of the face.”
In his new book, “Introduction to Beatbox and Playing the Flute” Pattillo discusses each sound methodically then offers exercises and tips to help musicians understand how each sound is created, how to increase speed, and how to apply these sounds to flute playing.
Beatboxing Tips From Greg Pattillo
Pattillo has developed a wonderful pneumonic system for teaching people how to beatbox. “It’s words, just words everyone knows,” he explains, “But what you do instead of saying words is go nuts on the consonants or sometimes the vowels your mouth is already saying.”
Pattillo’s enthusiastic instruction hooks beginning beatboxers from moment one. “Okay,” he begins, “let’s talk about some musical sounding words. One of those is 'boots'; everyone say 'boots'. And another of those is 'cats'. Everyone say 'cats'. And if you put them together you get: boots, cats, boots, cats.”
Then Pattillo demonstrates how to drop the vowels and over articulate the consonants. All of a sudden, he’s no longer saying “boots” and “cats.” Instead, his mouth is simulating the bass kick, snare, and cymbals of a drum set.
Tips for Making Drum Set Sounds With Beatboxing
“Beatboxing generally mimics a drum set,” Pattillo explains. “I think in three categories. There’s snare, which is a punchy middle sound. Then the kick drum, which is loud and low. And then there’s the high hat. So when I think 'boots, cats', the 'B' is the kick drum sound, the 'TS' is the high hat, and the 'C' is the middle sound. In this case, it sounds more like a rim shot, which is when you use a stick to hit the side of a drum. A snare can be made with an inhaled 'PS' sound.”
Hearing two simple words like “boots” and “cats” transformed into an effortless percussion track, makes beatboxing seem pretty doable. And that’s precisely Pattillo’s goal.
So, just how does that transformation take place? Once the vowels of “boots” and “cats” are gone, musicians are left with three distinct consonant sounds, “B”, “C’, and “TS”. Pattillo describes the first and most difficult this way, “I do like a flutter tongue into my lips. Basically, it’s a lip sound. It’s both the lips popping apart in a loud “P” or “B”. With practice, Pattillo has learned to make identical bass kicks with the tip of his tongue, the back of his tongue, and glottal in the back of his throat.
Once musicians master a hard, popping, “B” sound, the “C” and TS” sounds come fairly easily. To make the “C” come out as a rim shot, musicians exaggerate the consonant with a percussive crack that resonates through their entire mouth. An over annunciated “TS” becomes a high hat cymbal on the off beats.
In this case, hearing is believing. Examples of techniques described in this article are easy to pick out from Pattillo’s featured videos on You Tube such as his beatbox Inspector Gadget Remix or his Super Mario Brothers Theme.
More Tips From the Beatbox Flute Player
For those musicians who like the pneumonic method, Pattillo has quite a stash. Another favorite involves the word “Barbecue.” When the vowels are removed, beatboxers are left with three consonant sounds: two of the “Bs” (or bass kicks), and one “C” (or rim shot).
Pattillo speaks the simple word “barbecue” a few times then over articulates the consonants to create a fun and recognizable rhythm. “If you really pronounce the front of those syllables,” he remarks, “it’s like the beginning of that Queen song, We Will Rock You.”
Tips for Putting Pattillo’s Beatbox Sounds Together
Another of Pattillo’s fun pneumonic devices helps beatboxers get into a rhythm. This time, beatboxers ask the question “Is it a…?” When sped up, musicians come out with a quick “isida” or triplet drum roll.
The next step for beginning beatboxers is to take these words and put them together in all sorts of rhythmic combinations. Pattillo demonstrates, “Is it a boots? Is it a cats? Is it a boots, cats, barbecue?”
As a child who searched long and hard for bootlegged tapes of jazz flute musicians to emulate, Pattillo views the internet as something of a musical candy store. Musicians looking for more beatbox sounds and rhythms have a world of resources right at their fingertips. “It’s as simple as typing beatbox into You Tube,” he says. “There are so many different beatboxers on line. Sometimes, it’s guys right in front of their computer camera letting you watch exactly what they’re doing with their mouths. The fun is deciding--geeze, are they inhaling or exhaling? Where the heck is that sound coming from?”
Readers can find out more in related articles covering a lesson on mixing flute playing and beatbox, how Pattillo got his start as a professional flute beatboxer, and how he picked up beatboxing as a kid.
Quotes taken in conversation with Greg Pattillo, August, 2009.
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