Hi. I’m David Stackhouse. Most people call me Stack.
Vocal bands like Five O’Clock Shadow typically have a “vocal percussionist”, which is sort of like a beatboxer. In case you don’t know, “beatboxing” is the art of imitating a drum machine with your mouth. I think of “vocal percussion” more as the art of imitating a live drummer playing an acoustic drum kit; hence another term you may have heard, “mouth-drumming”.
But no matter how you think of beatbox and vocal percussion, what I do for FOCS is something a little different. While I lay down the beat with my mouth, I lay down the bass line with my voice. I call it BEATBASS.
People often ask how I do beatbass. It’s not easy to describe, but I’ll give it a shot. Think about it – if you were going to imitate a bass line, and you had to write it down in words, then you’d probably write “doong, doong, doong, doong”, or “boom, boom, boom, boom”. In either case, the “d” or “b” represents the “attack” of the note; that is, the moment that the bass string is plucked with a finger or guitar pick. It so happens that mouth-drum or beatbox sounds are generally consonants, though usually enunciated with more force, either singly (as in “k” for a rim shot) or combined (as in “db” for a kick, “tp” for a snare, or “ts” for a hi-hat). Therefore, if you replace the soft “d” or “b” attacks of your bass line with the harder-sounding attacks I just described, then the illusion is that of drums playing in sync with a bass line.
Too technical? Then come see for yourself! Now I must admit, I’m a little behind the times with YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and smart phones and apps and all that stuff… that all came about at around the same time I became a parent… so I’m sorry to say I don’t have a lot of quality beatbass demos online - not yet anyway. I guess you’ll just have to come to a show!
Also check out my own website, http://www.stackmusic.com. Cheers…
- Stack
