Andrew Gutterson works in pictures and thinks in sounds. His day job is at Corbis, the massive company that licenses digital images and videos. In his spare time, he’s a beatboxer. Between the two, Gutterson says he’s a pretty happy man.
But with beatboxing, Gutterson says he gets to express what images can’t cover: the way sounds take on their own meaning, the electricity of movement, and the excitement of getting to be Grey Matter, the name he goes by when he’s performing.
His list of career highlights is impressive. He’s worked with music industry heavy-hitters like Justin Bieber, has appeared in films and on numerous TV shows, and has had a series of beatboxing videos go crazy on YouTube.
And then, of course, there’s the “cypher.”
“The one thing to know before entering a cypher is the vibe of the cypher,” Gutterson says, describing how beatboxers gather in a circle to throw rhymes and beats at each other. “A cypher is not necessarily battling. You’re not trying to one-up another person. It’s more about the vibe of positivity and love in the cypher. Yes, there are definitely battles and hip-hop and all that, but that’s not necessarily the point of the cypher.”
Gutterson says that for beatboxers, it’s a little like networking.
“It’s kind of like a jazz session,” Gutterson says. “You’ve got people playing trumpet, and piano, and people are just jamming off each other. You’re not trying to overpower someone. Of course, there are times for solos, but it’s about going in there for the long haul.”
Gutterson says he started making noises with his mouth around 12 years ago. At some point during high school, he went to a music event at Muhlenberg College. He encountered a guy making sounds not too dissimilar from the ones he had already been making on his own.
“Hey, what are you doing?” he remembers asking. “I need to be part of this when I go to college here.”
So he enrolled at Muhlenberg and did just that. He started beatboxing within the college’s a capella group.
Gutterson guesses he’s among the “loudest beatboxers in the world” because he never had a microphone growing up. He had to pump up the volume so that the crowds could hear him.
Since he started out, Gutterson’s entrepreneurial side has emerged after joining a company called Beatboxing Entertainment. It produces beatboxing videos for those interested in breaking into the business.
“I never thought they’d catch,” Gutterson says. He suddenly found himself gaining massive exposure, as his introductory videos have been viewed more than five million times so far.
After college, Gutterson took to New York City’s subways and participated in a series of underground events called the Hip Hop Subway Series. He says he and his fellow beatboxers were “bringing it back to the 1980s,” a period commonly known among rap aficionados as the “Golden Era.”
Gutterson constantly moves through a variety of beatbox circles, performing alongside a 17-year-old Justin Bieber (“a cool guy, a really nice kid”) to teaching the basics to the anchors on Fuse. He’s also done a film called Beatbox, about a beatboxer trying to fit the position in while working a full-time job. Sound familiar?
The world of beatboxing is a place for Gutterson to pursue his passions. And though he only enters this world in his free time, these visits help other people find the voices they never knew they had inside themselves.
Photo credit: Exilus Photography/ Exilus Media
Photo credit: Mitten Photography