Tutorial #42: How to Hold a Mic || YOU Can Beatbox
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Welcome back to YOU Can Beatbox. In todays episode, we're exploring different ways to hold the mic to let your beatboxing sounds its best, whether over a sound system or while recording. Before we begin, leave a comment below with a future tutorial that you'd like to see.
When looking to sound your best while using a microphone, there are a lot of factors that come into play, but 3 specifically that seem noteworthy to me: the mix, your equipment and what you're listening with. The mix and EQ of your system, with the balance of hi and low frequencies along with any effects is certainly going to have an impact on how you sound. The type and quality of mic and any equipment that you're using will also affect how you sound. And finally, if you're listening to yourself over headphones you'll sound different than if you're beatboxing in an event hall which will differ from how you sound at an outdoor event.
But assuming that those factors are either not critical or out of your control, how should you as the beatbox hold the microphone? There a two key factors to consider: sound and comfort.
By far the most important part of holding a mic is how you sound and anything else I mention in this video is meaningless if you dont sound your best. While holding a microphone, you need to make sure that all of your sounds are being picked up, that includes hi's, like snares and hi-hats, and lows, like bass drums and lip rolls. If you have any specialty sounds, you also have to make sure that your readjust the mic so that those get picked up as well. That means you may need to adjust when making sounds that come primarily out of your nose like some throat basses, or from one side of your mouth like lip rolls. The mic has to be close enough to hear everything you're doing no matter where it comes from.
There are different schools of thought on how to physically hold the mic to get this done. Some hold the mic between their middle and ring finger so that you're not cupping the back of the mic. Some people, like myself, just hold the mic right around the BALL (? what's it called). Other people cup the mic entirely or hold it by the stem.
In general, the more you cup the mic, the bassier and potentially more distorted the sound will be. However if you hold the mic by the stem, you may lose some of the heavier sounds like the bass drum or low frequency bass sounds and effects that you use. In general, I'd recommend the middle ground of not cupping entirely but also staying close enough that all of your sounds are picked up by the mic.
Naturally, all of this comes down to preference and is unique to each individual so find what's comfortable to you and sounds good to the audience and embrace it.
While discussing comfort, keep in mind that if you're going to be doing a longer set, you may need to stretch your hand to avoid cramping depending on your positioning of the mic, which has definitely happened to me when I do hour-long a capella shows or jams.
I think that covers everything that I wanted to touch on. Leave a comment below with how you hold the mic or leave a question if you need any clarifiers. And don't forget to subscribe. Thanks for watching YOU Can Beatbox and next time we'll be looking at how to beatbox for a capella music.