Scantron is what you would consider a 21st century musical virtuoso. Though he has risen in the local music scene because of his beat-box skills, he also raps, plays the guitar, the keyboard, and perhaps most intriguingly, a traditional Chinese guitar-like string instrument called the Zhongruan. On top of that, he manages to utilize all these trades in one performance. He's played in many local venues:  Broadway Joes, Nietzches, Soundlab, Duke's,  Hallwalls, and the Albright Knox Gallery being among them.  He sets himself apart from other Buffalo rappers in that his locus of inspiration a product of seemingly disparate influences, as in, influences we wouldn't associate with rap or hip-hop- his travels in Asia (an underground rave scene he was a part of in Taiwan) and classical western music being among them.

On top of all of that, this year he took leave from his job as an ESL instructor in public schools to film a low-budget film/musical, the script of which he wrote. He is also designing an after-school program on hip-hop for a local public school and among the files in his computer is a half-completed science fiction novel. Is it even worth mentioning that he is trilingual, fluent in Japanese and Mandarin?  It's not necessary to interview him yourself to be able to gather the simple fact that during given any time of the day, his mind is actively wandering in many different places at once. But as he explains himself, he thinks of it all as falling in line under one vision.

When did you start beatboxing?
Scantron: Middle school.  I just saw it on a few commercials here and there, and then I tried doing it and practicing it more and more. Pretty much, I was never taught. I went back and listened to the earliest beatboxing, and that was the main thing I was listening to and then I just developed some of my own sounds after that.

How did you get into playing other instruments?
Scantron: I taught myself guitar when I was in middle school.  I used to play rock songs on the guitar and beatbox. I used to go to Borders to listen to music, I spent whole days there. The thing that made me go in there the first time was that I was only listening to rock music, like Nirvana, and one day when I was in the supermarket with my mom I heard something on the radio, it was a an old jazz record by this guy named Wes Montgomery, and I never heard guitar played like that. So I went to find that record. I got that and two other jazz records, jazz fusion records. That's when they fuze world, rock, and jazz altogether. So that set the stage for me to think of music in a more open way. Another CD I got was a Zhongruan CD, which is one of my main instruments now. When I went to Singapore for the first time, I was taught the instrument by a local chinese orchestra conductor, and I actually practiced the songs on my guitar until I got my own Zhongruan. 

Where did you find musical inspiration did you get while traveling.
Scantron: There's a universality to music because a lot cultures are pentatonic. When I was in Japan and Taiwan and Singapore, I saw people were playing just on the side of the road, like old people, or people down in subways that are blind, and they were all playing music. They were one of my biggest inspirations. I also used to get little cds that people were selling on the street, they're not online, and I have a whole collection of those.

Talk about the music you're trying to create now, what instruments are you trying to incorporate, or anything conceptually thought out.
Scantron: There's something I try to take with each of the fields of I try to do.  For the power and loudness, I take inspiration from rock, the pedals and things. For the scales and emotion, I take a lot of inspiration from the blues. For the complexity, I'm trying to make with the chord patterns I take a lot of inspiration from jazz. For some of the feeling and emotions, I'm taking inspiration from Chinese classical music, and for the structuring, Western classical music.

You think things through very thoroughly.
Scantron: I feel like I'm at a conceptual level now, it sounds different every day in a better way. Right now, I'm mixing a lot of Chinese classical music theory with the blues. A lot of people know me as a beat boxer, but I've been studying Chinese classical music and playing in rock bands, but beat-boxing overshadowed that, and I've been progressing in those things these years. So now, overall, all of it is catching up to one level, and I think crowds are going to inter-merge.

So, what exactly do people expect when you play under your moniker "Scantron?"
Scantron: They expect things to be different, like one time I wore a Superman costume. I work with so many different populations and I know a lot about different cultures. So I try to interject that in, once in the beginning of my set I chanted the Koran. I'll try to do things to shock people. I try not to make the music easy. I try to make a statement and make people think, the concept is always important. I also think about how to improve each show from the last one.

What about your set-up?
Scantron: In terms of the set-up right now, I have everything going into a mixer. I have a laptop, which has the DJ software that I use, sometimes I run my synths through there, through like Ableton. I have an analog keyboard, and microphone, a guitar, and a Chinese Zhongruan. My mixer goes into an effects rack. I use a basic wah pedal, a delay pedal, and a loop station, which I ultimately use to loop everything.  I try to have each section to be a cohesive theme, but have peculiar differences. You can have chinese rap going into blues guitar over a hip-hop beat or a Chinese classical instrument over beatboxing with some bright analog synth thing going over it. Have it be one cohesive thing, but if you come to it in different sections they are highly distinguishable.

What do you have in store for the show that's coming up?
Scantron: Well I'm really excited about it. We're designing a whole set that will replicate a subway car, 8 by 12. I'm working with some people who've worked on plays and things like that and also some graffiti artists in Buffalo. I've been studying New York subway grafitti from the 80's and 70's. I have a couple books on it in my car actually, we're trying to replicate that style. We're also making an 8 foot version of the Tapei 101.  I take a lot of inspiration from old-school hip-hop, which incorporated separate elements into one culture, the words, the music, the visuals, and the dancing.


And there you have it, I edited out a lot of portions from the interview, tangents about musical inspiration from James Joyce's Ulysses and details about the beetle-nut prop in his movie, for example, just to make the interview coherent to you buffaBLOG readers. And during the interview, while trying to keep up with his rapid speech, I gathered the impression that the only thing that distinguishes his hyperactive mind from one that would be typically labeled as having ADHD is his startlingly bold ability to materialize his ideas, make them happen, as small or large as they come. As a result, he serves as the perfect counter-example to a popular misconception we all can't help but believe at times; the impression of Buffalo a dying city ridden by apathy.

The highly-anticipated performance which will include rapper  Jeremy Jermaine Jerome (aka Just Ending Now) will take place at Soundlab on the 1st of December. A preview will come, but just in case you don't catch that, the show is 18 and over, starts at 8pm, and the tickets are $10.

And here is a video of Scantron playing the Zhongruan.