An inward snare is a method of making a snare sound and sucking or breathing in air at the same time. There seems to be lots of confusion surrounding inward snares and this is because there are different methods/combinations of methods and because people have named different sounds using the same name. This article is to help you distinguish between five of the different sounds and methods and it will hopefully unmuddy the waters.
Five Different Sounds
Breathing-in Sounds
There are many different snare sounds that allow you to take a breath at the same time, however, this article describes five of them.
We call breathing-in 'inward aspiration'.
The first four of the sounds use different methods and the fifth sound uses a combination of two of the methods. The four different methods use:
- Lips (bilabial) - e.g. Inward Classic Snare { Pf }
- Vocal Chords (voiced) - e.g. Inward Hollow Snare { ^ish }
- Tongue/Hard Palate (palatal) - e.g. Inward (Classic) Handclap { ^CL }
- Tongue/Soft Palate (velar) - e.g. Inward K Snare { ^Kh }
The fifth inward snare is the Inward Roto Snare { ^pKh } and uses a combination of lips and tongue/soft palate - i.e. it is a combination of the Inward Classic Snare { Pf } and Inward K Snare { ^Kh }.
Non-Breathing In Sounds
There are other inward snare sounds that are made without taking a breath. For example,
These sounds are not covered in this article.
And finally...
The beauty of these five sounds is that they enable the beatboxer to continue beatboxing without drawing a separate breath. It always amazes me how different beatboxers use these same methods and yet their sounds are so different because of the shape of their mouth, vocal chords, etc. No doubt someone will come up with more methods and this article will never be the final word on this subject. However, these five basic sounds should be enough to keep most beatboxers busy for a while! Love and Peace. TyTe
