It’s not Ableton Live by any stretch of the imagination, but Verizon has commissioned an interactive app built in Adobe Flash that lets you remix the sound of some top beatboxers. Featuring samples from Antoinette “Butterscotch” Clinton (international female beatbox champion), Masai Electro, max b, rahzel (also a member of The Roots), and click, the app gives you a basic MPC-style interface and sequence timeline on which you can create and share mixes. Watching the video clips at top is sort of fun as you play, and this does demonstrate that all kinds of creative musical apps could be built in Flash (and made more sophisticated than this one, if you like):
… now, if there were just some samples from former Verizon spokesperson James Earl Jones, this would be really cool. You can read through clunky marketing prose about how these artists are using the “online community space” (I’m guessing you already know what the Internet is good for if you’re here); instead, skip straight to mixing your own stuff and check out these very talented beatboxers. There’s a live performance planned this week in New York as part of the Digital Life expo.
The best link here is max b’s own beatbox tutorial site, including video tutorials to take on your PSP or iPod: