Beardyman – Beatbox Superstar

Beardyman, the Korg-powered beatboxing icon talks about his ever more inventive, increasingly successful career

Today, the artist known to the world as Beardyman is merely a slightly stubbly fella, one who’s still weary from the last night’s gig at London’s South Bank Centre.
“Yeah, it went well,” he mumbles, before rubbing his chin and reflecting, “Sometimes I can’t believe that I’m able to do what I’m doing, just getting up there and being stupid.”
His current show, Beardyman’s Complete And Utter Shambles, is his most ambitious yet, a kind of improv-driven comedy-music extravaganza.
“The audience will ask a question and that sets you off on a particular tangent,” he explains. “Essentially, it’s talking b****cks with the audience. I love the fact that you’re flying by the seat of your pants. The best thing is that each show is different, cos you can control the chaos but the chaos is kind of the show. Although sometimes you controlling the chaos is the show, also.”

Beardyman’s Triple-Threat

For the uninitiated it’s hard to neatly sum up what exactly Beardyman does. More than just a musician or an MC, he loiters in the rarely traversed hinterland where hip hop, performance art and comedy meet. Essentially, he uses his voice, a mic and a whole raft of looping technology to amuse, amaze and provoke. If you’ve ever seen him live, you’d be unlikely to forget him. If you haven’t, check out his hilarious Nigella Lawson-goes-beatboxing Kitchen Diaries on YouTube – some three million already have.
Originally, Beardyman was merely a young hip hop head named Darren Foreman.
“I got into doing what I’m doing cos I saw guys like MC Xander, who was doing beatboxing while he was doing looping.”
Another inspiration was Rahzel.
“He was the first person to do beatboxing and singing at the same time and do it really well. It was amazing that one man and his gob could keep a crowd rocking for an hour.”

Going Beyond Beatboxing

Darren won the UK Beatbox Championship in both 2006 and 2007 but, by the time of his second victory, was already moving beyond the strictures of the competition, with its ‘no technological assistance’ rule.
“It’s a weird, purist thing, that idea that you’re somehow cheating if you use technology to enhance what you do. That’s what they said to Bob Dylan, isn’t it?”
At first, he used a Line 6 DL4 modeller.
“It’s not got a very long delay time, though,” he recalls, explaining, “I’d get a short loop and record it, plus whatever I was doing on top, into a longer loop. There was another one I used called a Looperlative, I’ve still got one in my basement. But even though it was a really good unit, it was a bit bug-y.”
“This is what happens with a lot of looping equipment,” he opines. “The market is smaller than the people who make them and the company ends up going under.”

Out Of KAOSS…

Bearing these experiences in mind, Darren was lucky to alight upon Korg’s KAOSS Pad KP3, four of which form the backbone of his current set up.
“I have one KAOSS Pad going into a Boss RC50,” he explains, “I’ve got a mic that goes into a mixer that then goes into a digital mixer, through some compression, which then comes out of the mixer into a KAOSS Pad. That then goes back into the mixer, which then goes into the RC50, which then goes into two other KAOSS Pads. The output of the first KAOSS Pad bypasses the RC50 and goes into the second KAOSS Pad.”
“It’s not the easiest way to make music,” he concedes, “but it’s a pretty good looping system. All four of the KAOSS Pads clock pretty well to the MIDI that’s sent out by the RC50. I’m still learning how to use it and all the tricks that I can do with it.”

Enter The KAOSSILATOR

As you might expect, Darren is something of a gearhead.
“I tend to check out any new stuff that comes onto the market,” he concedes. “I’ve bought way more than I should. I think I keep some technology companies afloat.” One of the synths he keeps meaning to explore further is the Korg KAOSSILATOR. “That’s really intuitive to use. There’s no knobs or anything – literally one finger and you can change so many parameters at a time. It’s incredible, although I haven’t really used it to its full potential yet.”
Armed with all this technology – and a quirky sense of humour – you wonder where Darren might next take his act. His YouTube success suggests that, should he desire it, TV fame could be there for the taking, but Darren also talks about getting into his studio and making some “sick” tunes.
“I do have some pretty groundbreaking ideas,” he reveals. “But I’m not going to say what they are, cos people have already started to nick what I’m doing. I can name beatboxers who, after seeing me, went and bought a KAOSS Pad. So it’s something that I’m going to try to keep under wraps.”
“But,” he adds conspiratorially, “whatever it is, the KAOSS Pads and Korg gear will be absolutely central to it.”

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Meet The microSAMPLER

Beardyman checks out Korg’s latest groundbreaking piece of gear, and gets more than a few ideas…

Beardyman gazes at the Korg microSAMPLER and you can already see the creative cogs whirring inside his head.
“It looks cool,” he smiles. “I suppose the best thing about it is how quickly you can sample in audio and play it back. I like the fact that it’s battery powered, too – that’s good. I might actually use this in this ’Shambles thing that I’m doing. It could be good for studio stuff as well.”
“Some of the ideas that I’ve had for ways to make music have been very lengthy in process,” he explains. “If I’m doing the beatbox stuff, sometimes it builds up into a whole multi-sampled, layered thing and it sounds really good, I’m glad of the weeks it took making it.... but the microSAMPLER could be good for much quicker, more intuitive stuff. For me, it’s the best way of making music. Some of the best tunes have been written in half an hour. Every producer says that the things that have been most successful for them were the ones where they thought nothing of it, when the brain was working intuitively.”