What drives your identity as both a guitarist and a beatboxer, and how do you balance those two voices creatively?
I have always wanted to be respected and taken seriously as a guitarist, and the idea of being good enough to keep a listener/audience’s attention without any lyrics was a very interesting prospect. I study music theory with the goal of being as fluent as possible on the instrument, and I want to be able to navigate scales, modes, and chords with ease. I want to have the technical capability to be fast and flashy without losing the feel that allows people to connect with a musician. My interest with guitar is rooted in Metal and Grunge, but I like to study Blues, Jazz, Hip Hop and other styles. I want to be able to present anything that comes to my imagination.
As a beatboxer, the story is a bit similar. I wanted to be good enough to rock a crowd with JUST a microphone. I want to be able to show virtuosity without abandoning the groove oriented beats that make a listener feel good. I don’t practice to compete and battle though. As much as seeing beatbox battles helped me develop the skill, I have zero interest in participating in competition based musicianship. I worry sometimes that because beatboxing is so heavily associated with the battle scene, that some people getting into the artform might feel that is the only route to success with it. As important as the battle scene has been to the artform and culture, I want to be an example of that not being the case.
I respect the battling aspect, and I feel that it is very helpful to the development of the skill. I’ll gladly participate in those events as a judge or guest performer or something like that, but
as far as competing, I am not interested at all. I don’t practice to show I’m better than someone else, I practice to show I’m better than I was yesterday. I practice to entertain and connect with people, and to express my imagination.
With balancing the two, that’s where the title of the album came from. Dichotomy is defined as “a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.” This is a concept that I absolutely love, and it defines me as an artist quite well. The way I play guitar is more associated with Rock, Metal, and Blues, and beatboxing comes from Hip Hop, and I also have EDM sensibilities with my stylings. I used to think of them as separate things, which frustrated me. Who am I? I’m Beatbox Jake, but I put just as much work into the guitar if not more!
How do I get them to coexist in a way that satisfies me? This album is an exploration of that, and is just the beginning of my endeavor to discover myself, and what these two artforms mean to me.
Before “Dichotomy”, what moment in your musical journey pushed you to fuse guitar and beatboxing so heavily?
It actually started at an open mic! I used to go to them ALL THE TIME. I was much more known as a beatboxer, and a lot of people didn’t even know I played guitar.
The recognition was wonderful, but seeing my guitar hanging on the wall at home, and neglecting the instrument I had already put so much time into was extremely frustrating.
I took it to an open mic one night and started playing some random Thrash Metal type riffs while beatboxing into a mic at the same time. The response was some of the most immediate and aggressive cheering I had experienced up to that point. What I played that night eventually turned into a song of mine called “Weaponized”, which wound up on the Beatbox Metal EP! Turns out I may have invented Beatbox Metal, considering I can’t find ANYONE else doing it. At least not like I do.
Later, after I got a looper, I figured out a way to run both the guitar AND microphone through it. I actually had my guitar tech make me a specific cable to allow me to do it with the pedal I had since it didn’t have an XLR port to do this with. From there, I was FINALLY able to create beats, basslines and chord progressions, and focus on lead guitar type stuff as well! This led to the Instrumental Rock approach to writing that you hear on Dichotomy.
Did you ever feel pressure to stick to one instrument or genre, or have you always resisted categorization?
I never set out to resist categorization at all actually. I always describe the music I write as Instrumental Rock, but even that vague description doesn’t always fit what I’m making. Some of my stuff can be described as “Beatbox Metal”, but that title fails to completely trace my identity as well. As far as the pressure to stick to one instrument, I never felt any of that either. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 9, so I didn’t want that to go away even after I started beatboxing. Honestly, the lack of categorization has been more beneficial to me than not. I get to be on Rock and Metal events and hang with those people, and the amount I study music theory gives me something to talk about even with Jazz players. The beatboxing element immediately put the culture of Hip Hop into relevancy to me personally, and I have met so many wonderful people in those circles as well! In the end, people will try to put you in a box, or apply a descriptive label to you regardless of what you do. I’m in a unique position where people often have trouble describing what I do, which I find amusing.
If you had to describe your sound to someone who’s never heard beatbox-infused guitar, what would you say?
This is a difficult one, but I always say “instrumental high-gain shred guitar mixed with professional grade beatboxing.”
What was the spark behind the album title Dichotomy?
A: It was that the definition of the word suited me as an artist, which made it an apt title for a debut record. The way I play guitar demands some sort of knowledge and mastery over the instrument, where as beatboxing comes more from Hip Hop, which is a COMPLETELY different approach to music making. The fact that both artforms that I practice are so different from each other makes the combination of the two fit the word “dichotomy”. However, I also always felt the word suited me as a person as well. I like to be respectful and open to the ways of different people and cultures, and the existence of those differences I believe can help improve and unify us as people in different ways. In that respect, the title also refers to my life philosophy as well. I started out with guitar and found the folk, blues and rock people. I later found beatboxing, which pulled me into the completely different community and cultures of Hip Hop and EDM. Being able to experience, and learn from both has benefited me greatly.
What part of “Dichotomy” took the longest to get right—and what made it worth the struggle?
I’ve always said it was the production, getting the beatboxing to sound right in the mix, and getting the guitar to sound the way I wanted, but I think it was the actual composition of the songs. I had been working on them for an extremely long time. I’ve been playing guitar for 21 years at this point, but I’ve only been writing songs the way I do for about 3 or 4 years. I was still learning how to get the songs to flow the way I wanted, and to be interesting enough to listen through with no lyrics WHILE I was writing them. I spent so much time working on melodies, licks and riffs. I spent a lot of time working out small 3 to 4 note sections of songs because I felt that I was leading into the wrong note, or maybe the note before it didn’t provide the right context for the upcoming note to formulate the feel I was going for. I spent time transposing whole phrases into different modes to see if that worked better, and I was even working out different ways to play a single note. Then, after all that time working the songs out, I had to try to mix it down until I was happy with it. I started entire songs over from scratch even after recording the entire thing. I re-recorded “Dream Shift” I think 6 different times because the tempo wasn’t feeling right, and because I didn’t feel like I was playing the verse lines the way they should be played. There was a lot.
How do you want listeners to feel when they hear the album from start to finish?
I don’t have a good answer for this one. I Just hope they like it.
You’re often performing multiple roles in a single track. How do you layer rhythm, melody, and texture without losing clarity?
For me, it takes a lot of trial and error. I’m sure other people who have been producing and engineering music for a long time have go-to methods for this. I’m starting to have a few of my own, but I will say it’s best to make sure the recording you’re working with is as clear as possible in it’s most raw form without EQ or any effects or processing, THEN you start working with it. Another thing is to understand that every sound/instrument is occupying different space in the frequency spectrum, and that should be facilitated in a way to allow everything to shine and support everything else.
Is there a track on the album where you tried something completely new or unexpected in your process?
I tried different things on each song, but “Malign” is definitely the most blatant example. I actually created a bassline that I currently can’t properly replicate live due to the effect balance. There is a clean bassline in one spot, then to one side there’s one with a bitcrusher on it, and one in another spot with an envelope filter if I remember right. When I do it live, it’s just the clean bassline. The composition of the song was also a bit of an experiment. In the second “verse” of the song, I string together different flashy techniques, one of which I don’t even know the name of, and I almost never see guitarists do it.
Your music blends metal, funk, EDM, and more. How do you keep that mix from sounding chaotic?
Production wise, it’s the thing I said earlier about giving everything it’s space to shine. In terms of composition, I’m working out melodies quite a bit and trying to keep them interesting in some way. When it comes to the more shred technique parts in a song, I try to highlight those moments in a way rather than have it be the entire song. That way there are melodies and interesting runs for the listener to latch onto, and also moments for me to be a bit more show-offy. I also have songs in a style I call “Beatbox Metal”, and sometimes those are meant to sound chaotic anyway. I don’t worry too much about taming those ones.
What’s on the horizon for Beatbox Jake? Any upcoming albums or projects?
Yes! I’m currently working on 3 different solo records, and a collaboration record with Klep from Bio Killaz. I’m also about to start work on a collab record with Kool Ade Kam!
Do you plan to explore new musical directions or continue refining your current style?
Both of course. My current style draws influence from all over the genre spectrum. You’ll hear different balances of this in different songs, which is what makes them sound different from each other. I would like to put more work into the Beatbox Metal side of what I do though. I feel like I neglect that in favor of more melody focused guitar playing.
