Beatbox by Rahzel

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Darren Foreman (aka Beardyman) is a Beatbox and Electronic Dance Music (EDM) artist from London. He is known for his ability to make an incredible range of sounds using only his voice. After seeing a performance by Rahzel, a pioneer in the world of beatbox, he became obsessed and went on to win the UK Beatbox Championship 2 years in a row. Later, he grew tired of the art form and its limitation of using only the human voice; he felt that it was a novelty at best, and realised it would be hard to sustain a musical career in beatbox alone (Beardyman Talks the BeardyTron_5000, 2013). This pushed him to start experimenting and incorporating technology into his live performance, such as loopers and audio effects, crafting the music he wrote around the technology he used. This technique inspired him to transition from beatboxer to musician/songwriter, and eventually would lead to the creation of his own music production platform called the Beardytron 5000. He began using live looping technology during performances with a friend in in café’s across London; looping beatbox, singing, and improvised lyrics over the top of a guitar. He states in an article in DJ Tech Tools that this was incredibly frustrating because the technology wouldn’t “play well with each other”, the loopers continually going out of time with one another mid-set (SWENSON, Kylee, 2012). After trying other looping technology such as Mobius and Looperlative, he realised the need for his live set up to be of a commercial standard. Non-commercial products were a problem for his live performance because the technology was unstable, unsupported, and kept crashing mid-set. Beardyman started looking towards commercial software such as Ableton Live, but found that, even though t... ... middle of paper ... ...foot controller to allow me to keep my hands free to play an instrument. Works Cited Beardyman One Album Per Hour: Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Online Video. Directed by THEAT29TV. Youtube. 2013. Beardyman Presents the Beardytron 5000. Online Video. Directed by BEARDYMAN. Beardyman. 2013. Beardyman Talks the BeardyTron_5000. Online Video. Directed by Roy ROONEY. London: Youtube. 2013. Beardyman: The Polyphonic Me. Online Video. Directed by TEDTALKS. TED. 2013. FOREMAN, Darren. 2013. London. SWENSON, Kylee. 2012. The Beardytron 5000 mkII: Building Beardyman’s Ultimate Live-Production System. [online]. [Accessed 11 March 2014]. Available from World Wide Web: RUSSELL, Shelly. 2009. Book Synthesis: An Introduction to Interactive Media Theory. [online].

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