testament beatboxing

4Th of October. This was part of black history month. Teatament is a hip hop artsit with fantastic skills in human beatboxing, singing and rapping. the purpose of the workshop was to teach us about the awareness of racism and how we can try and stop it using song and rap.

First we went into the hall and we met Testament, here we asked him a few questions:1. What type of audience do you appeal to?
a. How do you go about pleasing them?
2. How has technology influenced your work?
a. Have you introduced new ways of advertising in recent years, for example facebook and twitter sites?
3. How do you connect to the different communities within Leeds and beyond?
a. This workshop is free and because of this how do you fund your projects?
4. What creative process is involved in creating one of your projects?
a. How do you decide what its going to involve?
b. How do you decide where and why your projects will be held?
c.How many different people from different agencies would be involved in creating one of your projects?
5. Do you have any merchandise or posters etc... to promote your projects? If not how do you get people involved?
6. How would you arrange a project/ Workshop?
a. Do you have an age limit?
How do you decide what to run a project or workshop on?
b. Do you charge?
c. What is the reason for the no charge/ the price in which you charge?
7. How do you know when a workshop/ project is a success?
a. What do you class as a failed workshop/ project? 

Unfortunately we did not get these answers on paper but we do have video evidence which tells us what he answered. 

After this we then got on with the workshop. He started off telling us about him and his family and how it was considered wrong for his black mum to marry a white man, and he told us that his family called him harmony because he is neither black or white but a bit of both. he then went on telling us about how hip hop came about. He told us it started off with a little boy called Clive in the Bronx area of New York. this little boy became a hip hop legend, he was the first DJ to buy two copy's of the same record and only play the best parts of them. He also added that Jimmy Saville was a big contribution to hip hop as he was the first person to use two turntables. because of hip hop music has evolved into such genres as Dub-step, R&B, Rap and many more. Clive became a hip hop legend called DJ Cool Herc.

Testament then showed us some examples of his cool skills. Like Michael Jacksons Billy Jean, it was really clever how he added his humming voice to the sound made by his lips.

He then taught us how to recreate this melody.

The first sound was like the letter P but exaggerated to recreate a bass drum or bass sound.

The next sound was like the letter K but exaggerated to recreate a snare drum sound.

The final sound was like the letter T but put to the very tip of the tongue to recreate the high hat. 

We then put it in a sequence like this: P-T-K-T

We looped this and did some humming to the back of it, the tricky bit was trying to put the sounds and humming together.

We then spoke to Giles who is part of the co-operative, he told us about how the co-operative is now part of the Brigshaw federation and how the co-operative have funded the workshop for us. We then spoke about democracy, equality and equity and other issues.

At the end of the fun filled day we wrote some raps and we rapped them to the others in the room with some people doing beat-boxing as a backing track