Kid Beyond

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Kid Beyond
Birth name	Andrew Chaikin
Origin	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Singer, Beatboxer, Voice actor
Instrument(s)	Vocals, Beatboxing
Years active	1991-Present
Label(s)	Love-Million Records
Website	http://www.kidbeyond.com/

Kid Beyond (real name Andrew Chaikin) is a singer, beat boxer and live looper based in the San Francisco area.

1 Early career
2 Performances
3 Techniques
4 Voiceover Work
5 Awards
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Early career

Chaikin attended Brown University and was a leader in the co-ed fraternity Zeta Delta Xi. He sang in the Jabberwocks, a student a cappella group. He graduated in 1991 and moved to San Francisco to form the House Jacks with Deke Sharon, recording "Naked Noise" and "Funkwich" with the band (the latter for Tommy Boy Records).

He left the House Jacks in 1997. He released his first solo EP, Amplivate, in 2006.

[edit] Performances

Kid Beyond has toured nationally with Imogen Heap [1]. He has also performed at major music festivals, including sets at the Langerado festival[2] and upcoming performances at the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival [3], and Coachella [4].

His song from "Amplivate","Mothership", was used in NBA Live 08 by EA Sports.

While opening for Buckethead in San Francisco on February 15, 2008, Kid Beyond mentioned recording vocals for "Free Bird" and other songs for Guitar Hero II.

[edit] Techniques

Kid Beyond's performances often include some traditional beatboxing as well as live looping. The looped pieces make heavy use of Ableton's Live software on an Apple laptop to layer and loop vocal and vocal percussion tracks together to create full songs. Prior to concerts, the software is configured with the tracks that will be used in each piece, including any necessary effects and levels, but lacking any audio. A set of MIDI controller foot pedals allow Kid Beyond to control the software during performance, enabling him to record, play, and manipulate the audio tracks with a set of predefined macros. In some cases, a single press of a pedal performs multiple actions, such as muting one track while initializing recording on another. ^[1]

In recognition of his innovative techniques, Ableton made him a featured artist on their website and presented him at a series of clinics in Germany. The associated footage was shown on a number of viral video sites.

[edit] Voiceover Work

As Andrew Chaikin, he has performed as a voice-over artist for a number of video games and advertisements, for instance in the 2005 game Star Wars: Republic Commando, where he does the voices of Clone Advisor and Delta 40 "Fixer"^[2]. He also provided several voices in graphic adventure titles by Telltale Games, including Phoney Bone and Ted the bug in the Bone (comics) adaptations, a pair of suspects in CSI: 3 Dimensions of Murder, and most notably Max for the first episode "Culture Shock" of Sam & Max Season One before being replaced by William Kasten for the rest of the series due to health reasons.