InterSinging 2010 First Interdisciplinary Workshop on Singing Voice The University of Tokyo, Japan October 1-2, 2010

Para-Linguistic Mechanisms of Production in Human "Beatboxing": a Real-time Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Michael I. Proctor (1,2), Shrikanth Narayanan (1,2), Krishna Nayak (1)

(1) Viterbi School of Engineering; (2) Department of Linguistics; University of Southern California, USA

Real-Time Magnetic Resonance Imaging was used to examine mechanisms of sound production in an American male beatbox artist. The subject's repertoire was found to include percussive elements generated using a wide range of articu- latory con&# 12;gurations, and three of the four airstream mechanisms normally ob- served in human speech production: pulmonic egressive, glottalic egressive, and lingual ingressive. In addition, pulmonic ingressive production were observed, which appears to be used strategically as a means of managing breathing during extended beatbox performance. The data offer insights into the paralinguistic use of articulatory gestures, and the ways in which they are coordinated in musical performance.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Proctor, Michael I. / Narayanan, Shrikanth / Nayak, Krishna (2010): "Para-linguistic mechanisms of production in human "beatboxing": a real-time magnetic resonance imaging study", In InterSinging-2010, 23-28.