Vocal percussions inspire student

Dubai: Talented musicians often play more than one instrument, have lessons from a young age and practice for hours a day. Ray, the 20-year-old human beatboxer, can probably play every instrument ever invented — with his mouth.

Ray (real name Uday N. Soni) is studying Business Administration at Preston University, Ajman, and lives in Sharjah. He has only been learning how to beatbox for the last two and a half years.

"I just started by making random sounds with my mouth. Then I watched some beatboxing on YouTube. I looked at the tutorials and some of the famous beatboxers… so I got mesmerised and started learning through YouTube tutorials," he told Gulf News.

Ray's family is Gujarati; while he was born and raised in the UAE, he left for a while but has been living back in the Emirates for the past five years.

Beatboxing can be described as ‘vocal percussion', where performers imitate the sounds of instruments with their mouth. Professional beatboxers can imitate many sounds at once, making the different imitations sound layered like a music track.

He has performed at a number of venues in the UAE to date, including Emirates Palace and The Shelter at Al Quoz.

Shy boy

The shy student laughed that his plan before beatboxing was "just school, college, work, die", having not even known what the skill was a couple of years ago.

One of the hardest things about beatboxing, he continued, is not to make the sounds — for instance thesound of a drum - but actually to make music.

"It's hard to make people groove to the music, some people will just stare at you, when they should groove it!" Ray said.

Although he can ‘play' lots of instruments with his mouth, he's never had any music lessons, and playing the guitar "didn't really work out".

Onstage, Ray uses mime to imitate the sounds he's making and to emphasise special parts of a song.

So how has beatboxing changed his life? "It was all pretty normal before beatboxing. When I show people they're like "wow".

"Now I'm popular at school and things like that," he laughed.

Fact : What is beatboxing?

Beatboxing can be described as "vocal percussion", where performers imitate sounds of drums and other instruments using their mouths only. The word "beatbox" was originally used to refer to ghetto blasters in the 1980s. Beatboxing is closely linked, but not just linked, to hip hop music.

Do you understanding what beatboxing is? Do you enjoy it? Do you know anyone who does it?