Almost everything looks cooler when it’s filmed in slow motion, right? Explosions, athletic feats of achievement, glass breaking, water pouring, fireworks shooting, highlights happening, fighting and pretty much everything else in the world. Except one thing. Beatboxing. It looks positively explicit in slow motion.
YouTube star Flula showed himself beatboxing in slow motion and well, um, uh, yeah. It gets pretty weird. The mouth can make some awfully contorted shapes and look incredibly goofy. Just check this out:
Unsettling, to say the least. Flula also teamed up with Destin from Smarter Every Day to help explain what’s happening. Destin filmed Flula beatboxing at 1500fps to dig deeper beyond the apparent ridiculousness. Using a spectrogram of the beatboxing noise, Destin was able to show where the timbre is coming from, how the lip closing effects his bass and how it all creates a unique sound signature. It’s really fascinating stuff that’s worth a watch. Beatboxing, it can be understood through science!
Here’s Flula beatboxing in slow motion:
Here’s Smarter Every Day explaining what’s happening:
