Watch: What is body percussion?
Body percussion is a quick, easy and creative way to get improvising and composing.
There’s lots of contemporary artists and composers who use body percussion to compose music.
Watch as YolanDa shows us what’s possible.
Yolanda: Hi music lovers, Yolanda here.
You know music is all about creating different sounds and more often than not you have different musicians or instruments around to help you make those sounds.
But what if you don’t have different instruments with you?
I wonder if you could make music just using your body and voice. I think I am going to try and give it a go.
Makes sounds using voice and body
What did you think? I mean not bad considering it was only with my body and my voice.
Why don’t you try and give it a go and see what sounds you can create?
Watch: Connect It by Anna Meredith
Anna Meredith is a Scottish composer who writes electronic and acoustic music.
Anna works with orchestras, bands and choreographers to create music that uses clapping, stamping, shouting and beatboxing instead of instruments.
Anna Meredith and Dev introduce her body percussion piece Connect It. From BBC Ten Pieces.
Narrator: Classical music and composing isn’t something that only happened in history, new music is being created in our time, today.
In fact, one of our ten pieces has been written especially for you.
[Beatboxing]
Dev: This is Anna Meredith.
Hey Anna, how are you doing?
Anna: Hey Dev, I’m just trying out some musical ideas.
Dev: Where are the instruments?
Anna: Your looking at them. My piece is made up only using the sounds from our bodies and our voices.
Dev: Ahh so we are the instruments?
Anna: Exactly. I’ve worked with a dancer called David to create musical patterns, and the piece starts with a big push like this.
[Swooshes]
Dev: Can I have a go?
Anna: Sure
[Swooshes]
and that’s just one movement. When you build it all up together, you get a pattern like this.
[Swooshes]
Dev: Oh wow, and suddenly I can hear a rhythm, it’s like energy being passed from one person to another.
Anna: And when you get lots of people performing the movements and patterns, you can create all sorts of shapes and musical rhythms, rippling waves, cogs and spokes. Handel and Mozart and Beethoven are all incredible composers, but music is a living art form, and I’ve discovered it something that we can all be part of.
Dev: Yeah
Anna: And that’s how my piece ends with a sound like this, yeah!
Dev: Yeah
[eerie music plays]
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah
In Anna’s body percussion piece Connect It, a variety of rhythmic sounds and movements are passed between the performers. This musical effect is known as a canon.
A canon is where two or more instruments, voices or sounds play the same music but start at different times.
Re-watch the whole performance of Anna’s piece. Look and listen carefully for the shapes and sounds being passed between the performers – the canon.
You can learn more about Anna with BBC Ten Pieces.
What is beatboxing?
Another exciting type of body percussion is beatboxing.
This is when an musician uses their voice to create beats by making different sounds, including the sound of percussion instruments like the drum kit.
Beatboxers don’t just imitate the sounds of instruments. They can do a whole lot more too.
There are even championships where beatboxers can show off their skills.
Watch: Have a go at beatboxing
You can learn some simple beatboxing quite quickly. Join in with Katie as she learns how to beatbox.
Mr Brown: As clogs said we’re going to make music with out voices and bodies today. Let me introduce to you a professional beatboxer and he’s going to show us how. Welcome Lee Gibling! Hi Lee.
Lee: Hi Guys.
Katie: Hi Lee. First, can you tell us, what does beatboxing involve?
Lee: Beatboxing involes using our voice to recreate sounds that we hear on percussion instruments like a drum kit.
Katie: Ooh!
Lee: The best way to understand is for me to show you.
Katie: Yay. That was so good. How good was that? I now see why Clogs said that our voices are music instruments. It sounded like they were music instruments. That was amazing, can i have a go?
Lee: Of course, anyone can beatbox. Let’s star by learning some simple sounds that we can use to beatbox. Here on the screen is an image of a drum kit. It’s important to know a big part of mimicking sounds is listening carefully.I’m going to play you some different sounds that it can make and see f you can copy them with your voice.
Katie: OK, i’ll give it a go.
Lee: The big circular drum in the middle is called a kick drum. It has a low, deep sound like this.
Mr Brown: Can you try to copy this kick drum sound with your voice? Think about what your tongue lips and mouth need to be doing to make it.
Katie: OK, is it like this? Pfft.
Lee: Try it more like this. Puh, puh, puh.
Katie: Puh, puh, puh. Puh, puh, puh.
Mr Brown: Oh, nicely done. Now, another part of the drum kit is the high-hat, which makes a sound like this.
Katie: Tss
Lee: Yep, like this. Tsh, tsh, tsh,
Mr Brown: Good, good listening Katie. And the last drum sound we’re going to make with our voice is from the snare drum. They have a very different sound to the other two. Have a listen to this.
Katie: Ck, ck, ck.
Lee: Yep, a little bit shorter. Ck, ck, ck.
Katie: Ck, ck, ck.
Mr Brown: That was perfect, well done Katie. Now we can combine these three - puh, tsh, ck sounds and give them a bit of rhythm.
Katie: Oh, that was so cool.
Mr Brown: Wow.
Lee: Now it’s your turn to put them together.
Katie: You want me to beatbox?
Mr Brown: Don’t worry bout making mistakes Katie, just focus on making the correct sounds and just have fun with it.
Katie: Let’s do this then.
Lee: Hey.
Mr Brown: Oh, you cracked it with the sounds Katie. Now, let’s turn this into a beatboxing rhythm by combining three different sounds from the drum kit. I’m going to count a pulse to get us started off.Are we ready?
Katie: Yes
Mr Brown: One, two, three, four.
Lee: Now i put the kick-drum sound one beat one.
Lee: One, two, three, four.
Lee: Puh, two, three, four.
Lee: Puh, two, three, four.
Lee: Puh, two, three, four.
Lee: Puh, two, three, four.
Lee: Now lt’s add the snare-drum beat on beat number three.
Lee: Four. Puh, Two, cah. four.
Lee: Puh, two, cah, four.
Lee: Puh, two, cah, four.
Lee: Now we’re going to fill the other numbers with the high-hat sound. Here we go
Lee: Puh, tss, cah, tss. Puh, tss, cah, tss. Puh, tss, cah, tss.
Katie: Yay
Lee: Very good
Mr Brown: OK, now let’s speed up the tempo.
Katie: What - are you going faster than that?
Lee: Bring it on.
Mr Brown: And a-one and a-two and a-one, two, three, four.
All: Pff-tss-cah-tss
Mr Brown: I’m impressed Katie you’re a natural.
Katie: That is exhausting. It’s a lot more difficult when it’s really fast. That was so fun though, thank you so much Lee. And thank you Mr Brown.
Did you know?
Beatboxing is a great way to create sounds with your voice. This can be accompanied by other body percussion to help create your musical compositions.
Improvising with sounds is an important part of the composition process.
By experimenting, you’ll make incredible sounds to use and arrange in your own musical compositions.
Can I use technology to help me compose music?
Recording yourself is an important part of composing.
You don’t need anything too fancy to do this. Any device with a microphone that will allow you to record audio files will work.
If you want to begin layering your ideas together, to create musical compositions using your body percussion or beatboxing sounds, then you’ll need some software.
Yolanda: Hi, everyone Yolanda here. Now as a musician I love to make music with various instruments of different shapes and sizesand sounds, but sometimes it's quite handy to carry around a digital band and orchestra in my bag.
So let me show you something that I've been making.
I like to start with the drums. Here we go.
So they're great.
Now I think we should add some bass to the mix. Here we go.
Feels like the bands here with me.
Isn't it great?
All right, let's bring in some acoustic guitar now.
That's nice.
OK, I think some electric piano would do.
Oh, that's good.
Now I really want to make this feel like a rock song so here's some rock guitar.
And there you have it. That's something that I put together with the instruments that I wanted to choose. But remember you can add tracks, choose your own instruments or even create your own sounds too.
There are so many apps and computer programs that you can make music on.
So what are you waiting for? Get creative and get producing!
Music software allows you to:
- put your recorded sounds together on a timeline
- edit sounds in different ways including looping and repeating them
- add different effects
There's lots of free, powerful music production software and apps available for all computer platforms including mobile and tablets. Ask a trusted adult to help you find and download some to try.
Like any new tool, it may take you a little while to get to grips with how it works but it's worth the effort.
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