One Sound To Sound Like A Pro Beatboxer

Beginner beatboxers.

I'm going to show you how I started sounding like a beatbox pro by learning just one sound.

Yes.

When I started beatboxing, I had learned the bass drum, the hi-hat and a simple K snare. I started to put them down into beats. And it wasn't until I learned one professional sounding snare drum sound, yes just ONE pro snare to start sounding, not a beginner, but like a pro!

If I do a beat and I'm going to do a simple K snare, it will sound ok.

If I change nothing but the snare drum, for example if I use the inward K snare instead of the ‘K Snare’ you are going to hear a huge difference. All by changing just one sound.

Cool, right?

I'm going to show you four snare drums right now very quickly, and you can see which one you are sounding closest to getting, whichever one that is. Make it your goal to learn that snare drum and start sounding like a pro.

First we have the Pf snare. It's made by making a /p/ sound and an /f/ sound. And so put them together to get the ‘Pf’ sound.

If you can get close to that sound, maybe this is the snare drum for you. If you can at least get the kind of punch behind the

, this might be the snare for you, because you only have to add /f/ to the end of it.

The next snare drum we’re going to look at is the inward K snare. Now there's loads of ways that you can learn this one. There are different methods to learn it.

One of my favorite ones is by thinking about imagining that you are ‘slurping’ a drink.

If you can get that slurping sound going, it should put your tongue in the correct position. What you need to do then, is press your tongue to the roof of the mouth so you can't breathe in any more. When you're in this position, you might feel a little bit awkward, a bit uncomfortable. You can't breathe in, but you're trying to. This is the position you need to be in in order to make that inward K snare sound.

So once you've got yourself in that position, you then just release the tongue away while breathing in continuously the whole time. So you’ve got your tongue applied to the roof of the mouth (the back part of your tongue against the back part of the roof of your mouth) and release.

If you're sounding like you're close to getting this snare, maybe this is the one that you should set your sights on.

The third snare is the rimshot snare. Now, this is very closely related to the inward K snare. The difference is you don't breathe air down into your lungs. So the inward K snare will show you the position of your tongue and what's actually happening inside the mouth to make that clicking sound. And you basically just do that exact same technique without breathing air into your lungs.

If you're getting close to this, well, maybe this is the one for you.

Fourth and final snare is one of the originators when it comes to beatboxing, and it's the 808 coming from the Roland TR-808 electronic drum machine.

The key to making this sound is getting a high-pitched sound from the top of the throat. You can do the exact same technique to create a lower sound too (kind of like a cough). If you can make this high-pitched sound, it's actually a gateway to loads of other cool sounds, including plucked stringed instruments and even bowed stringed instruments.

Really, really cool stuff.

Once you've got that, if you can make that sound, you can definitely do the 808 snare because all you need to add then is a “Shh” sound. Put them together and you have the 808 ‘Ush’ sound.
There you have it guys.

There you have four snare drums for you to try.

There are loads of other ones, but these four I think are quite easy to get.

Try them out.

Whichever one you feel you are closest to getting, set your sights on that one. Practice, practice, practice, learn a pro snare sound and start sounding like a pro beatboxer.

Guys let me know in the comments. Which snare drum are you closest to getting? If you already have a pro snare, which one is it? If you've got more than one pro snare, which one did you learn first?

I find it really interesting which snare drum people learn first because it's different for everyone.

Awesome stuff, guys.

Please watch the video on this page showing you how all these four snares sound.