What happens in your throat when you beatbox Tom Thum and Matthew Broadhurst
(Beatboxing) Yo, what up?
My name is Tom Thum,
and I’ve got to 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.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
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.
(Laughter)
Confident that I’m about deliver
the most instantly switched off
and walked-out-on,
vomit-inducing talk of all time.
I’m about to show you things
that I think you’ll find hard to unsee,
but all in the name of science.
First, for those unfamiliar
with what I do,
I guess if you distilled it
right down to its essence,
you would call me a beatboxer.
(Beatboxing) Yo, for example …
here’s a sample:
(Beatboxing)
(Rhythm changes)
(Hums a tune)
(Applause and cheers)
Thank you.
(Applause)
And being a beatboxer,
it means that professionally,
I am 100 percent reliant on the –
(Beatboxing) 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 –
(Laughter)
“And what do you do for a real job?”
“I’m a full-time beatboxer, 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 –
(Beatboxing)
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 –
(Laughter)
in a way that allows me to –
(Beatboxing)
To put it 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
and 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 guest
from the Queensland Voice Center,
a man that’s been in my mouth
more times than I’d care to admit,
a legend of the larynx,
ENT doctor and laryngeal surgeon,
Matthew Broadhurst.
(Applause and cheers)
MB: Thank you, Tom, thank you.
And a very good evening everyone.
It is a pleasure to be here
on the TEDx stage tonight.
(Laughter)
Whoo.
(Laughter)
TT: He’s not warming up his hands.
It doesn’t get that intimate.
MB: 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.
And what we found –
these are going in the mouth by the way –
and what we found
was something absolutely amazing.
Even after my two years
of laryngeal surgery
in Harvard Medical School
with world-renowned professor
Steven Zeitels,
we never saw anything
as extraordinary or fascinating as this,
and that’s what we’re going
to show you tonight.
(Laughter)
Alright, so for those of you
who might be a little squeamish,
the next 10 minutes or so
will get incrementally more graphic
and stomach-churning,
so let’s get into it –
TT: Feel free to use the bucket.
(Laughter)
MB: So when we make sound,
we 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.
(Flatulent sound)
TT: (High pitch)
MB: 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.
TT: Hmm, spicy boy.
(Laughter)
MB: I know, I know.
(Laughter)
10 millimeters in diameter,
it gives us the highest resolution
image of the larynx we can get.
And we teed up with a stroboscope here
and a trigger microphone.
The mic will pick up the frequency
and that will allow us
to show you how this all works.
So, if we can have the lights down?
TT: (Low pitch)
MB: Turn the light on here.
TT: (High and low pitches)
MB: So I’ve got the frequency of sound
matched with the stroboscope.
That’s the light you’re seeing
flickering in the cup.
TT: (Low pitch)
MB: And that’s at about 80 hertz or so.
So what we can do then is we can take that
and put the phase of the strobe
and the sound just out of sync.
That lets us capture real-time,
slow-motion activity of vibrating tissues.
When we apply that to the larynx,
we get this fluid, slow-motion
of the vibrating vocal folds.
So that’s what we’re going
to get on and do.
Alright, you ready?
TT: Yup.
(Laughter)
MB: OK, so here we go.
We’re going to have
a look at the voice box.
(Laughter)
It’s very hard not to gag with this.
Say, “e.”
TT: (Singing) E –
MB: So down the bottom
you see the vocal cords,
the little cord-like structures.
(Laughter)
And now just look at the skin on the neck
and you’ll see how strong
the light is to penetrate the skin.
Alright, so if you’ll have
the lights back on?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Alright, so just give us
a comfortable “e.”
TT: (Singing) E.
(Laughter)
TT: (Singing) E.
(Audience gasps)
MB: So that’s the vibrating vocal folds;
about 120 hertz.
Means they’ve collided 120 times a second
just to make that sound.
And we can also see that they’re
absolutely, perfectly normal.
So all his beatboxing,
all those sounds for years
with Tom’s way of doing it –
absolutely no damage whatsoever.
That’s really remarkable.
Well done.
OK.
TT: (High pitch)
We’ve got this.
MB: So watch now as the vocal cords
go from high pitch to low pitch.
You’ll see them go from long
and skinny to short and fat.
Really think “e.”
TT: (High to low pitch) E.
MB: Right.
TT: (High to low pitch) E.
MB: And what you can see
is that his vocal range is so extreme –
much more extreme than any other
performer I’ve worked with –
the machine actually can’t capture
the really high pitches.
TT: (High pitch)
MB: So we know that whistle register
is somewhere around 2,092 hertz.
That means the vocal cords,
well over 2,000 times a second,
are banging together
just to make that sound.
That’s really extraordinary.
If you think about them,
they’re only 15 millimeters long,
so that’s barely the width of your thumb.
That’s incred –
(Laughter)
That’s amazing this organ
can do such a thing.
So now we’re going to swap
over to the flexible laryngoscope.
This is a little more graphic.
TT: He bought it at SEXPO.
(Laughter)
MB: That wasn’t in the script.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
TT: Secondhand.
(Laughter)
MB: Now, we’ve had to time
this bit perfectly
because of the requirement
for local anesthetic.
You’ve got to numb the nose,
get the camera in.
It doesn’t help for producing
a lot of the sounds,
but it gives us a really cool view
of what’s happening.
So hold onto the stomachs,
and let’s see what we can do.
(Audience gasps)
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 “kh” 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
snapping against the back of the throat.
Kh, kh, kh, kh, kh, kh.
Alright, so this is what
it looks like when Tom does it.
TT: Kh, kh, kh, kh, kh.
A cacophony of cackling kookaburras
and cockatoos in Kakadu
couldn’t quite quit ketamine.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
MB: Alright, now in the beatboxing world,
of course, they can use that
for all sorts of different effects.
I can help you.
TT: This is fine, we’re professionals.
(Laughter)
(Beatboxing)
MB: Alright.
(Applause and cheers)
Now we’re going to slide down
a little further.
If you’ll just have the lights off
and just see if you can see
the light in the mouth somewhere.
You’ll be able to see exactly
where the camera is at.
(Laughter)
TT: (Singing)
Surprise.
(Laughter)
MB: Alright.
(Audience gasps)
So what you can see there,
that’s the base of the tongue.
The side walls of the screen,
that’s the pharynx.
All muscle walls,
and in the deep, dark decks is the larynx.
TT: Oh, should we have the lights back on?
I think it’s a good idea.
It’s getting a bit creepy with them off.
MB: Turn the lights on, thanks.
Good.
Now having examined over 15,000
larynxes and throats in my time,
I can tell you that Tom’s
is as anatomically normal
as anyone else’s.
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.
TT: It’s in there really. Definitely.
(Laughter)
OK.
(High-pitched sounds)
(High-pitched sounds)
(Hooting)
MB: 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 sounds
that you’re hearing.
(Beatboxing)
(Laughter)
(Low pitch)
MB: And now there’s
rhythmic movements of the –
they’re the arytenoid
cartilages way down there,
rocking back and forth
to create that different sound.
TT: (Low pitch)
MB: And we like to call
this “sphincter bass.”
(Laughter)
And what you can see
is that collapsing all the tissue down –
(Laughter)
allows a different kind
of really deep bass note.
Alright, so with local
anesthetic on board,
a big black hose in the nose,
we’re going to let loose
a sliver of his repertoire
and see all this in play.
And we’ll move –
careful.
TT: Can you pull it up just a smidgeon.
(Laughter)
TT: (Beatboxing)
Maybe just a little more –
(Laughter)
Alright, cool, I think we’re good.
(Beatboxing) To all my peeps
who came to get deep,
deep as the abyss –
check this.
(Beatboxing)
(Cheers)
(Applause)
(Beatboxing)
We start from the basics
and build from scratch.
(Record scratch)
Yeah, like that.
(Beatboxing)
(Trumpet sound)
(Beatboxing)
(Beatboxing) Back to basics.
(Beatboxing)
(Beatboxing) You know the sound.
(Beatboxing) Make some noise.
(Applause and cheers)
(Whistling)
(Applause and cheers)
TT: Thank you so much.