Thing 219 Beat Box

In the long, and by no means as yet exhausted list of things I'll never be good at, you will NOT find beat-boxing. I'm not saying I'm very good at it, yet. But considering the disaster of a time I had trying to whittle something, trying to bake, trying to kick rugby penalties (and this list goes on, but it's harmful to the ego, so I think I'll stop there), my first pop at beat-boxing wasn't half bad. See, I've been running my over exercised mouth since I was ten months old. There's pretty much no noise known to have come from a human that I haven't covered at this stage. It's just about putting those noises in the correct order.

To make this happen; introduce experts. Or at least one expert. Moley O'Suilleabhain, him of Size 2 Shoes fame. By the by, is that not an awesome name for a band? Well this guy is pretty cool. He teaches people to beat-box, and he pretty much taught himself. The weird ass noises that come out of Moley's mouth are hard to top... Link coming up, this was him beat-boxing this very evening (ugh, did I just type "this very evening"? The 1920's called, they want their parlance back. Double ugh. Did I just use the word "parlance" in a sentence.... shame).

MOLEY BEAT BOX NOISES

You can click on that bit up there if you like...

It's a hard thing to just start learning, I mean, there's no real way of ever knowing what a good starting point might be. Do I just start making strangled cat noises and hope for the best? Is it ever okay to pretend that your hand is scratching an invisible vinyl when you're making a scratch noise? Is there any possible way to make that scratch noise and not feel hugely self conscious. So many questions...

Moley, bless him, just broke it down to some individual noises. Make this noise. Make that noise. Put the first noise and the second noise together... Holy crap... I'm beat boxing.

After that, it's about practice and adding specific bits and pieces yourself to make your own style. It's also about controlling your breathing. Token Northy, The Canuck, The Frenchman all play guitar well (I still struggle). Surprise surprise says you. But I do love to get in on the sing song. It may be a little while before I break into beat box mode mid way through Paul Simon covers, but there's no way I'm passing up the chance to keep practicing this. Am I going to sound like an anus for the next few weeks? Sure. Will I keep Token Northy and The Frenchman up at night? Absotively. Will I become Ireland's beat-boxing champion... well, not likely. But I'm definitely going to get better at this...

Oh yeah, here's the video of me and Moley free-styling... God how much of an ass do I sound like? Free-styling? That's worse than the "parlance" blunder a few paragraphs ago.

CLICK HERE TO LAUGH AT A TOOL TRYING TO BEAT BOX

Give me a month or two and then I'll be available for bookings at parties and funerals.