Language and Music, Speech and the Human Beatbox: Theoretical Issues for Research in General and Applied Linguistics

Overview

Beatboxing is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of mimicking drum machines, using one's mouth, lips, tongue, and voice. It may also involve vocal imitation of turntablism, and other musical instruments. To produces the different sounds, the Beatboxers use their vocal apparatus in a much wider and more complex way than its use in speech. This allows them to acquire a panel of rich and varied sounds. The Human Beatbox (HBB) is a very recent subject of study in phonetics. This study offers an exploratory study of pharyngolaryngeal articulatory behaviors using nasofibroscopy and electroglottography and an aerodynamic study in order to better understand the articulatory capacities and limits of the vocal tract.

HBB is characterized by two very interesting aspects (1) the complexity of the oro-pharyngo-laryngeal joints and the articulatory precision of the beatboxers and (2) the respiratory management which allows the artists to beatbox continuously without interrupting their performance. These two points, very characteristic of this technique, allow them to best imitate diverse and varied musical tones. The Human Beatbox is still little studied and the literature on this subject is quite limited. Percussive sounds (for example imitations of bass drums, hi-hat or snare) seem to be characterized by articulatory strategies, melodic sounds (for example wind instruments, strings) seem to be based on both articulatory and phonatory strategies, and finally, electronic sounds seem to mainly use complex phonatory strategies. Our objectives are to better understand the articulatory capacities and limits of the vocal tract at different levels (articulation capacities, sound production mechanisms, muscular and acoustic temporal relationships, strategies of efficiency...). It is possible to find clinical applications of the Human Beatbox in the context of congenital speech disorders (for example dyspraxia) or acquired (for example oro-pharyngo-laryngeal surgery of the partial glossectomy type).