How it all started: scene of the crime, Ivory’s bedroom

It all started in Ivory’s childhood bedroom. Three teenagers, one carpet, neighbours with remarkably strong nerves – and noises nobody would have called music yet. A few years and a few thousand repetitions later that turned into the Massive Beats Crew: three Austrian team beatbox championships in a row, plus third place at the team world championship in Berlin in 2009. Since then we have played more beatbox events than we can list – and learned one thing above all: anyone can beatbox who sticks with it long enough.

In 2012 the music publisher Doblinger released „The Real Beatbox School“ – the first beatbox method book in the German-speaking world, written together with the educator Werner David Wiechenthaler. It contains a tested teaching concept, its own notation and more than a hundred audio and video examples. School workshops turned into a book.

And the book turned into videos. We shot and designed them together with the Graz animation studio Unter freiem Himmel – who turned paper, notation and three loud people into something you actually want to watch. That is how the method book became seboom.

Why seboom exists

In a workshop a class learns its first beats in three hours. Then the coach leaves. That is the gap seboom fills: the same sequence, the same notation, only online and available whenever you want. All course videos are free, because nobody should fail at the entrance because of a paywall.

Our notation

Beatbox sounds can be written down. Our notation shows which sound comes when, when to breathe in and out and how often to repeat a phrase – without you having to read music. We developed it ourselves and it now runs alongside every course video. Thanks to Unter freiem Himmel for the animation.

Your coaches and seboom founders