[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
what up my name is Tom Thumb and I gotta
say it’s a pleasure to be back at TEDx
when I first stepped upon the Sydney
stage in 2013 as a starry-eyed boy from
Brisbane I had no idea that I was about
to deliver the most-watched TEDx
presentation ever
ah but you know I was stoked because it
was completely unexpected
however standing before you today as a
slightly inflated time battered version
of myself five years later I’m very
confident confident that I’m about to
deliver the most instantly switched off
and walked out on vomit inducing talk of
all time for those unfamiliar with what
I do I guess if you distilled it right
down to its essence you would call me a
and being a beatboxer it means that
professionally I am 100% reliant on the
flexibility of the unfiltered human
voice and for years my contemporaries
and I have been fielding questions like
oh my god that’s so cool when did you
figure out you could do that after I
practiced for thousands and thousands of
hours and what do you do for a real job
yeah for full time beatbox your honor
but there is one question that I get
quite a lot that’s a little bit more
difficult to answer and that is how are
you doing it how are you making those
noises and I mean I know muscle memory
dictates where I position my lips in
order to but I have no idea about the
inner mechanics of everything you know
all the flappy bits and kind of dangly
things and how they interact in in a way
that allows me to support metaphorically
I know how to drive I just don’t know
what’s under the hood so I decided to
find out and invite 5,000 captive
strangers a few uncomfortable cameras
everybody watching online in their
browser history into a place where not
even the most intimate of encounters
have been my throat and to help me do
that I’d like to introduce to the stage
a very specialist guests from the
Queensland voice Centre a man that’s
been in my mouth more times than I care
to admit a legend of the larynx ENT
doctor and laryngeal surgeons Matthew
thank you Tom thank you and very good
evening everyone it is a pleasure to be
here on the TEDx stage tonight warming
up his hands doesn’t get that intimate
we set out a little while ago to try to
go deep into the world and the throat of
this beatboxer extraordinaire to try to
understand how such a vast array of
sounds are humanly possible so this will
be a world first this will be the world
first live on stage nazo for ringo
laryngoscope ik analysis of IBD boxer so
when we make sound we take use the vocal
cords to take air from the lungs and
then turn it into a vibrating air column
in the throat if you think of it like a
trumpet we’ve got the mouthpiece
that’s the vocal folds and then the horn
section is the throat if we took your
head off took a bit of your neck off and
left you as a torso with just your vocal
folds vibrating this is what you’d sound
like
[Music]
pretty hard to communicate but
fortunately we’ve got a throat we’ve got
all the soft tissues and that actually
gives you all the incredible dynamics of
sound that you’ll hear tonight now this
is a rigid laryngoscope spicy boy ten
millimeters in diameter gives us the
highest resolution image of the larynx
we can get all right you ready
[Music]
so that’s the vibrating vocal folds
about a hundred and twenty Hertz means
they’ve collided a hundred and twenty
times a second just to make that sound
and we can also see that they’re
absolutely perfectly normal so all is
beatboxing all those sounds for years
with Tom’s way of doing it absolutely no
damage whatsoever that’s that’s really
remarkable well done okay so watch now
is the vocal cords go from high-pitched
a low pitch you’ll see them go from long
[Music]
and what you can see is that his vocal
range is so extreme much more extreme
than any other performer I’ve work with
the machine actually can’t capture the
really high pitches so now we’re going
to swap over to the flexible
laryngoscope so hold on to the stomachs
and let’s see what we can do so we’re
going to the back of the nose and there
you can see the soft palate a lot of the
sounds we make from day to day even the
simple ones are incredibly complex the
sound cut for example it’s the soft
palate sealing up precisely against the
back of the nose so if you say it loudly
five times feel your own soft palate
all right so this is what it looks like
when Tom does it cut cut a cacophony of
cackling kookaburras and cockatoos and
kakadu couldn’t quite quit tenorman
[Laughter]
now in the beatboxing world of course
they can use that for all sorts of
now we’re gonna slide down a little
further so what you can see there that’s
the base of the tongue the sidewalls of
the screen that’s the pharynx all muscle
walls and in the deep dark decks is the
larynx
it’s just his unique use of all the
muscles and soft tissues which lets him
do all these amazing sounds that you’re
going to hear so we will dissect some of
these sounds for you now
so what he’s doing is he’s changing the
shape and the length of the vibrating
air column using rhythmic contractions
of all the muscles to generate all those
and now there’s rhythmic movements of
the the arytenoid cartilages way down
there rocking back and forth to create
that different sound
we like to call this sphincter bass and
what you’ll see is that collapsing all
the tissue down allows a different kind
of really deep bass note alright so some
with local anesthetic on board a big
black hose in the nose we’re going to
let loose a sliver of his repertoire and
[Laughter]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
30 permits
pretty doing that
dude months have not been shut up –
I give a massive shoutout the Pentax
brought this cutting-edge equipment that
made this possible and for you guys
thank you so much for sitting through it
if you need a hug I’ll be crying in the
shower next time a performer asked you
to make some noise I hope you have an
intimate understanding of how to do it
thank you so much
[Applause] [Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
what up my name is Tom Thumb and I gotta
say it’s a pleasure to be back at TEDx
when I first stepped upon the Sydney
stage in 2013 as a starry-eyed boy from
Brisbane I had no idea that I was about
to deliver the most-watched TEDx
presentation ever
ah but you know I was stoked because it
was completely unexpected
however standing before you today as a
slightly inflated time battered version
of myself five years later I’m very
confident confident that I’m about to
deliver the most instantly switched off
and walked out on vomit inducing talk of
all time for those unfamiliar with what
I do I guess if you distilled it right
down to its essence you would call me a
and being a beatboxer it means that
professionally I am 100% reliant on the
flexibility of the unfiltered human
voice and for years my contemporaries
and I have been fielding questions like
oh my god that’s so cool when did you
figure out you could do that after I
practiced for thousands and thousands of
hours and what do you do for a real job
yeah for full time beatbox your honor
but there is one question that I get
quite a lot that’s a little bit more
difficult to answer and that is how are
you doing it how are you making those
noises and I mean I know muscle memory
dictates where I position my lips in
order to but I have no idea about the
inner mechanics of everything you know
all the flappy bits and kind of dangly
things and how they interact in in a way
that allows me to support metaphorically
I know how to drive I just don’t know
what’s under the hood so I decided to
find out and invite 5,000 captive
strangers a few uncomfortable cameras
everybody watching online in their
browser history into a place where not
even the most intimate of encounters
have been my throat and to help me do
that I’d like to introduce to the stage
a very specialist guests from the
Queensland voice Centre a man that’s
been in my mouth more times than I care
to admit a legend of the larynx ENT
doctor and laryngeal surgeons Matthew
thank you Tom thank you and very good
evening everyone it is a pleasure to be
here on the TEDx stage tonight warming
up his hands doesn’t get that intimate
we set out a little while ago to try to
go deep into the world and the throat of
this beatboxer extraordinaire to try to
understand how such a vast array of
sounds are humanly possible so this will
be a world first this will be the world
first live on stage nazo for ringo
laryngoscope ik analysis of IBD boxer so
when we make sound we take use the vocal
cords to take air from the lungs and
then turn it into a vibrating air column
in the throat if you think of it like a
trumpet we’ve got the mouthpiece
that’s the vocal folds and then the horn
section is the throat if we took your
head off took a bit of your neck off and
left you as a torso with just your vocal
folds vibrating this is what you’d sound
like
[Music]
pretty hard to communicate but
fortunately we’ve got a throat we’ve got
all the soft tissues and that actually
gives you all the incredible dynamics of
sound that you’ll hear tonight now this
is a rigid laryngoscope spicy boy ten
millimeters in diameter gives us the
highest resolution image of the larynx
we can get all right you ready
[Music]
so that’s the vibrating vocal folds
about a hundred and twenty Hertz means
they’ve collided a hundred and twenty
times a second just to make that sound
and we can also see that they’re
absolutely perfectly normal so all is
beatboxing all those sounds for years
with Tom’s way of doing it absolutely no
damage whatsoever that’s that’s really
remarkable well done okay so watch now
is the vocal cords go from high-pitched
a low pitch you’ll see them go from long
[Music]
and what you can see is that his vocal
range is so extreme much more extreme
than any other performer I’ve work with
the machine actually can’t capture the
really high pitches so now we’re going
to swap over to the flexible
laryngoscope so hold on to the stomachs
and let’s see what we can do so we’re
going to the back of the nose and there
you can see the soft palate a lot of the
sounds we make from day to day even the
simple ones are incredibly complex the
sound cut for example it’s the soft
palate sealing up precisely against the
back of the nose so if you say it loudly
five times feel your own soft palate
all right so this is what it looks like
when Tom does it cut cut a cacophony of
cackling kookaburras and cockatoos and
kakadu couldn’t quite quit tenorman
[Laughter]
now in the beatboxing world of course
they can use that for all sorts of
now we’re gonna slide down a little
further so what you can see there that’s
the base of the tongue the sidewalls of
the screen that’s the pharynx all muscle
walls and in the deep dark decks is the
larynx
it’s just his unique use of all the
muscles and soft tissues which lets him
do all these amazing sounds that you’re
going to hear so we will dissect some of
these sounds for you now
so what he’s doing is he’s changing the
shape and the length of the vibrating
air column using rhythmic contractions
of all the muscles to generate all those
and now there’s rhythmic movements of
the the arytenoid cartilages way down
there rocking back and forth to create
that different sound
we like to call this sphincter bass and
what you’ll see is that collapsing all
the tissue down allows a different kind
of really deep bass note alright so some
with local anesthetic on board a big
black hose in the nose we’re going to
let loose a sliver of his repertoire and
[Laughter]
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
30 permits
pretty doing that
dude months have not been shut up –
I give a massive shoutout the Pentax
brought this cutting-edge equipment that
made this possible and for you guys
thank you so much for sitting through it
if you need a hug I’ll be crying in the
shower next time a performer asked you
to make some noise I hope you have an
intimate understanding of how to do it
thank you so much
[Applause] [Music]
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