Ventilatory dynamics in human beatboxing: is it similar to speech and singing?

Breathing (ventilation) constitutes the support for oral communication and human vocalization in general. The speaker, and more so the singer, are constantly optimizing the control between their vocal production and their breath support. Only a few studies have investigated the ventilatory behavior in speech and singing (classical singing: Salomoni et al., 2016; Thorpe et al., 2001; Thomasson & Sundberg, 1999; belting: Sundberg & Thalen, 2015) via Respiratory Inductance Plethysmography (RIP). They reveal some differences between speech and singing, but overall the same pattern is observed, i.e. a breath group, with a short inhalation period followed by a longer exhalation supporting vocalization. In this paper, we investigate the ventilatory behavior during a new artistic expression: human beatboxing. The RIP technique was used to assess the ventilatory dynamics of a beatboxer producing the same sentence in a continuum from speech to beatboxing. Our aim was to explore whether the ventilatory patterns of spoken and beatboxed sentences are similar when the beatboxed sentence results from devoicing a spoken sequence. Our data show that the ventilatory behavior associated with beatboxing can be very different from that of speech. While speech production is associated with a continuous exhalation phase following the inhalation, beatboxing is characterized by an alternation of shallow inhalations and exhalations all along sentence production. Importantly, during beatboxing, speech sounds can be produced even during the inhalation phase, using an ingressive airstream. This makes the notion of breath group not suitable to describe the ventilatory dynamics of beatboxing. Further, because inhalations and exhalations were so rapid and frequent, the ventilatory-volume variations usually span over a limited range. Our results, therefore, suggest that beatboxing production is possible over a relatively long period of time without long pauses for air intake, mostly thanks to this ventilatory behavior, but also thanks to the use of pulmonic ingressive phonation. In conclusion, the ventilatory behavior of beatboxing appears very different from that of any other type of voice production described in the literature so far. It suggests that beatboxers do not only master articulatory agility but also master special breath support for sound production