In the never-ending quest to make music relevant and exciting isn’t it great to stumble across something that really works? Now more than ever us educators need to use methods that show mainstream UK education how important asset music is to the curriculum. Figures for A-Level attainment are low, as is the general disdain/lack of confidence in our subject to generate learning figures over bottom line; That being said I would like to share a novel idea with you because I like you very much and thank you for taking the time to read this 🙂
Creating music using vocals or sounds simulated by the voice has always garnered my interest, in my late teens, I developed an obsession with Brian Wilson’s vocal arrangements and voicings and moving on some years appreciated the fantastic work of Jacob Collier and yes, Kanye West’s knack to produce his music with the voice as a centre point. As a teacher, I value the immediacy of the voice as an instrument to relay knowledge, which is why last year I decided to try out a scheme based on using the voice to layer a song via loop pedal.
Beatboxing legend as Killa Kela (pictured above), as well as Youtube stars like Tom Thum, that cute father/daughter duet and Ed Sheeran, make my job easy in selling the coolness of looping, no prior instrumental skills are needed other than to know how to make different sounds with the voice and when layering keyboard sounds, use of one finger to press a key, that’s it!
Well not quite, you see with using beatboxing and loop pedals students learn how to loop enforcing good timing, enforce how to playtime signatures, develop microphone technique and use of voice for sound effect and singing skills, songwriting in a strophic structure with use of textures to develop songs and introduces them to a less intimidating/more hands-on start to music technology.
The set up is quite simple too, all you need is:
- 1 loop pedal* (Boss RC-3’s are perfect as they have dual input, metronome and storage for saving loops)
- 1 microphone (SM 58 or similar)
- 1 XLR to jack cable
- 2 jack cables (one for the output and one input for guitar/keyboard et al)
- 1 headphone amp (Behringer MicroAMP HA400’s will do fine, make sure to buy plug adapters for these and be careful, some adapters won’t fit the socket to shop around)
- Headphones (normal 6.35mm size)
* Please note, for some reason the RC-3 won’t work with stereo jack cables so make sure to buy mono (single black strip) cables
If your budget won’t stretch for the pedals and you have a reliable DAW to use (just don’t use Soundation though 
You can record loops into it and layer as normal, in fact, that can lead on nicely to sound production with your students!
As for how I deliver this, I normally start them in small groups and cover the fundamentals of beatboxing, show some examples to get them hyped up. Then they practise and perform their work, first as a ‘human loop pedal’ then use the pedal for a class performance; we then move into other groups with the remit of creating a version of ‘Shape of You’ using voice and instrument with areas like setup of equipment, troubleshooting, use of sounds on the keyboard as well as practising to layer the song for the summative assessment.
Please do try this out if you are confident in leading beatboxing, if not you can always stick to using instruments, as for which year group to deliver this to year’s 8/9 will be fine.
Also attached is the worksheet I created for ‘Shape of You’ so please feel free to download and use (follow the link below)
Shape of You WORKSHEET – Full Score
Let me know how you get on with this, I would be fascinated to hear how you all approach looping and beatboxing, have fun!
Mike Wright Music Education 