The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

Winged Post
Newsletter

To Hoscars or not to Hoscars?

I learned a few curious things last week. Clichés are around for a good reason. When I was on stage performing in the HOSCARS, my heart, going at a million miles an hour, actually did feel like it was about to beat out of my chest. My mouth truly did feel like sawdust, and I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

That moment when the curtains opened on me was honestly the scariest in my life. I wanted to run, I wanted to hide, I wanted to smack myself on the head with my flute and make myself unconscious so that I didn’t have to play in front of seven hundred of my peers. I was going to fail, I could feel it.

But let’s backtrack for a minute. How did I end up on that stage, subjecting myself to what I initially thought was a horrible experience?

It started three years ago, when I watched my first flute-boxing video, a high-speed rendition of the Super Mario Bros. theme song, performed by Greg Pattillo. The flute took on a whole other meaning for me. It was relevant, and it sure wasn’t Mozart.

When I went to a Beatboxing 101 tutorial two summers ago, and saw Mr. Pattillo for the first time, I could definitely understand why his videos went viral. The fluteboxer had such stage presence and confidence, and he channeled his addictive energy to us novices.

But, though I would eventually listen to all of his YouTube videos, I could never bring myself to try the art form. I would look silly, I thought. Who am I to try to beatbox? I belong in the world of Mozart and symphonies, not that.

And trust me, I did look like an idiot for the first month I started to tackle the Three Beats for Beatbox Flute. Practically every sound that came out of my mouth was an embarrassing raspberry sound that I hadn’t made since the second grade. I’d practice for hours trying to get the punchy kick-drum sound, the “B” that was so essential to beatboxing.

I asked my peers for help. More than half of the 126,000 views on the “Beatbox Flute 101” YouTube video are probably mine. I was lucky enough to have a flute community that was as enthusiastic about intermingling the sounds of a drum and a flute, and incredibly willing to help me.

So I had put in the hours, and made my recording to submit to a competition, but what was I going to do next? It looked like fluteboxing was going to be shoved to some sad corner of my lyrical artillery, never to be seen again except as a parlor trick.

A couple of weeks later, my English class suggested that I bring my flute to class for our weekly presentations, and I was really grateful to see that they loved the idea of fluteboxing. I decided to audition for the HOSCARS at the urging of my class (shoutout to Dr. Douglas’s period two!), and, well, here I am. Though I was scared to the bone, another completely true cliché, I managed to grit my teeth, set my feet, and expose an incredibly fun art form to our community.

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About the Contributor
Apoorva Rangan, Winged Post Editor-in-Chief
Apoorva Rangan (12) is the Editor-in-Chief of The Winged Post and a fourth-year staff member. She has previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor and Opinion Editor. She’s currently pursuing a historical research project on investigative journalism’s growth during the Vietnam War. In her free time, Apoorva plays the flute, beatboxes intermittently, and eats far too much.