Counters and Battle Moves in Looping

Rarer and more difficult than solo beatbox counters, loopstation counters are a specialty that deserve celebration

For all the pomp and circumstance at Grand Beatbox Battles in the 2020s, there has been a series of awkward encounters on stage that has undermined some of the loop battles. 

At this year’s GBB, Syjo, Yaswede, Mirsa and other loopers found themselves standing politely at their loopstations while their opponents dissed them, countered their styles and acted all manners of antagonistic. All they managed to do was shrug or put an apologetic hand to an ear.

In most cases, when a beatbox battler puts their hand to his ear during an opponent’s round, they are signaling a counter is set to come. But recently, in loop battles specifically, this movement has come to mean something else.

“I can’t hear you.”

More often than not, these loopers didn’t even say something in response during their rounds. This unfortunate circumstance is actually a result of the growth of the Grand Beatbox Battle, says looping veteran Tioneb.

“The loopers don't use any stage speakers. They just use their headphones so they cannot hear what the guys say,” he explained.

Back when Tioneb was battling at smaller GBBs and the competitors shared a table, it was possible for loopers to hear each other directly or even through the sound system. But now, he says, “on a big stage like this, you barely can hear what the [other] guy says.”

Battlers hearing each other is just one of the many ways that it is harder for a looper to embrace battle energy than solo beatboxers. KBA, a GBB champ and judge, laid it out for me.

In solo beatboxing, you don't have the layers that are consistently being built, whereas in loopstation, I believe people come with significantly more prepared sets. Because of the nature of the loopstation scene right now, which is kind of catered towards building full songs.And it's difficult for that reason, because you can't go from one beat to an entirely different beat.

If you're doing that for loopstation, you have to delete your entire bank, and then you have to restart the entire process. Of course, the other thing is that you hear a snare [from a loop], and you can't really figure out the effect combinations of your opponent in the detail that they would require to make a traditional counter that you would be able to because you don't have all the effects that your opponent is using.

This gives a bit of insight into why you will see “counters” that are little more than anemic counterfeits of an opposing looper’s style (see Mirsa against Yaswede for a classic example of this). If you want to do a true counter, you probably need to write a track from scratch.

And yet, loopers persist in trying. They scowl, rap and yell “your style!” in an attempt to battle in unbattleable circumstances. And god bless them for it.

With all this in mind, I took it upon myself to take stock of the loopstation counter. Part history, part power ranking, and part reported essay, I hope there is something in this story for every looper and loop fan. Let’s get to it. 

The weaker methods

Years ago, my brother told me that in a solo beatbox battle, the fastest way to win is to establish a minor key. Once you’ve done that, it’s all downhill from there.

In looping, a minor key will help, but really it’s the choice of soundscape and genre that conveys the proper battle energy that judges and youtube commenters alike will interpret as battle energy. Drum and Bass, Riddim and Cyberpunk will always be more legibly battle genres than Pop or Lo-Fi. Doesn’t mean you can’t win with those genres, just means you’re taking a risk.

Along with choosing routines that convey that you are there to battle, loopers have used stage presence over the years to engage the crowd and battle with psychological energy.

By my accounts, BreZ was the first beatboxer to leave his loop behind and talk to the crowd. Many have followed suit. Mirsa took that to the next level at the 2020 Florida Beatbox Battle, bringing the mic with him and walking towards his opponent Rythmind as he rapped aggressive lyrics. 

Yaswede is a big proponent of walking over to his opponent while they build their loops and standing by ominously. Thorsen was another fan of watching his opponents loop, and he didn’t have to walk to get to their loops. Bizkit and Kaos have flexed dance skills during their opponents’ rounds, demanding attention even when they were not looping, another interesting play. 

But while these musical and stage presence choices add to the battle, I don’t think they quite come to the level of a counter. Rarely, if ever, catered to the specific opponent, these moves are, with respect, expected. The bare minimum to keep up the battle. And Tioneb says that for something to reach the level of a loop counter, they have to “achieve an element of surprise.”

So let’s look at some higher level loop battle moves that at least reach that bar. 

Lyrics

“Slizzer’s a bitch, Slizzer’s a whore …” some loopers write lyrics that make you want more.

Whether you’ll indulge my rhyme is up to you, but I know you’ll take my point. All beatboxing these days makes use of lyrics, but loopers in particular have the time and space to sing, rap, chant and scream. Which is why, of course, so many loopers are awful at writing lyrics.

But for every dozenth lyric asking you to “feel my bass” or something equally devoid of meaning, you will find a looper who writes beautiful original tracks or tasteful covers that outsource lyric writing or a good ole fashioned diss track.

Before jumping to the counters, I do want to bring you on a detour I took with KBA on lyrics that reference people, songs or moments from beatboxing history.

“Bizkit you’re right, you’ve just gotta crunch it!”

“You thought you were stronger, but no Dice!”

I asked the champion and judge what he thought about these navel gazing lyrics. When he is judging, do they add to the battle energy?

When I made my rounds for [the 2023 GBB] producer category, all the battle rounds had a battle element in [the lyrics]. The most important thing for me was that once the battle is over, I could take the track with the lyrics, [make] minor adjust adjustments, and then it's a song that I would be happy to release.

I think, as a judge on the panel, however, I think it's very, very, very clever to to reference the beatboxing community. As a musician, I'm sitting here thinking, I want my tracks to be for anyone who enjoys the music genres that I make, and that they can still be used in a competition. Like the famous one is “you're my prey / I'm going to hunt you down like a predator.” That can both work in a battle, but if you hear it on Spotify, it's also like it's just an aggressive lyric. 

But as I guess also, I mean, the majority of the people that will be listening to Martin Benati's GBB rounds. I assume that they will be consistently, be replayed by beatboxers. I see that with some of my own music that the GBB rounds become very popular amongst the beatboxers themselves. So maybe for them, it's maybe for like, the general beatboxing audience, it's actually quite cool to have all these lyrics with all these references. 

I mean, in the in the I'm not very familiar with, with hip hop, especially American hip hop. But it also feels like from from the very little I've listened, that they also make references in their own lyrics to previous rappers, and so maybe they don't take other guys' lyrics one to one. But I feel like there's a lot of references in a lot of American rap music. And this is also a thing you don't understand if you're a casual listener, but, saying “you're my prey / ima hunt you down like a predator,” that's a reference to the beatboxing community.

I’m still unsold on this type of reaction farming by performers, but it is worth considering that, unlike me, the judges came up in this scene and they might feel seen in such references or appreciate the attention to the scene’s history. And if KBA is on your looping judge panel, you can know that this is a lane where, if you do it right, you can land a point or two.

BUT BACK TO COUNTERS 

When it comes to diss tracks, and any other battle lyrics, “if it's well done, funny, [and] comes on point where it should be, it’s good” says Tioneb. “If you have this battle vibe [and] want to go the extra mile, I think that talking to the opponent and taunt[ing] him, and doing this kind of stuff can be very interesting when it's well done.”

But if it’s “just a diss track with some comments on the guy's style, I don't think it's very interesting,” he adds.

In recent years, Bizkit, Yaswede, and Matej have had success writing songs and lyrics special for specific opponents. It would seem that in large loop competitions like the GBB, the first battle round is the best time to work in a round like that because you are seeded in advance and know for certain who your first opponent will be. 

This year, Martin Benati came with a new approach to his lyrical attacks, seemingly creating space in a number of his rounds to simply talk at his opponent. “I love when you sing in English!” he insisted to Mahiro. “It’s sexy!” (???????)

Perhaps this is Martin’s version of a diss track, perhaps it’s meant to disarm the opponent and get them to make a mistake, or perhaps it’s just the champ’s weird truth. In any event, it was interesting. And to Tioneb, that’s enough. 

The heavy hitters 

To my eyes, the power in Martin’s speech was that he backed it all up with his music. I loathe a lyric that runs counter to the music. Equally, I adore a coherent pairing of counter and round. So when Martin poked at Mahiro for selling his loopstation presets in his first round, and interpolated that Japanese champion’s best track in the next, it was like he closed a loop (no pun intended) on his diss. 

“If I was to show an opponent how you should battle 101, it would be through something like Martin Benati vs Mahiro,” KBA told me. 

“[Martin] mentioned in his round one that Mahiro was selling his presets and kind of proved that by then using [Mahiro’s] melody, which might have been from a preset he sold. So he brought up that he was selling his presets and demonstrated exactly his point that he was making the first round in the second round.”

This, to me, is a true loop counter. Rarer than rare, a looper countering an opponent’s round without pretending that round is weaker than it is is as good a moment as you will find in the loop scene. Because sure, as I said earlier, many loopers yell “your style” and pretend towards their opponent’s music. But that offends both the opponent and the fans.

“I know that my opponent’s track was good enough to make the GBB but I’m going to pretend it is simple and boring in order to get off my wack counter” shows disrespect to the opponent that goes beyond the battle, and to the fans for suggesting they wouldn’t know better.

So when Martin Benati pulled off such a flamboyant two-round counter or Tioneb rapidly recreated Gon’s best drop in under 30 seconds it was no surprise that the audience absolutely lost it. They appreciate the rarity. They know that it is especially hard to do this in loops. At least in theory. 

In practice, I have learned that it is even harder to execute than I understood. More on that at the end.

But I would be remiss if I did not mention that BreZ had perhaps the most unique counter I’ve ever seen in his 2021 GBB battle against Rythmind. [^5]

At the peak of MK1 vs MK2 discourse, and with only some of the GBB using the mark 2, BreZ built a drop around a sequencer pattern, one of the fresh new effects on the MK2. 

The only thing was that BreZ was using the MK1. His counter was a technique counter. Brilliant. “How fair is it that he is competing with an unreleased device??” BreZ screamed. He said screw your MK2, I’ll sequence all by myself. Great fun, and potentially a robbery by the judging panel.

I KID, I’M BORED OF YOUR RIGGED DISCOURSE. (Unless you’re Ghost making a video essay, in which case, pop off king.)

Tioneb tells the story of how he became the greatest loop counterer of all time

It’s never a good sign to see your opponent in a beatbox battle smile during your routine. And if you were looping in 2016 or 2017, you’d better pray that the person smiling opposite you wasn’t Tioneb.

The 2012 World Loopstation Champion came to the GBB with a title from outside the beatbox world, and underprepared, but he was ready to prove he was just as good by their measure as well. Over the course of two years, Tioneb countered and remixed his way into history, setting an unreasonable standard for any future looper to meet. 

Whether countering in real time like he did to Gon and Ibarra (twice!) or remixing in between battles like he did to Saro, it seemed like Tioneb was as engaged with his opponents’ music as he was with his own original tracks.

Although Tioneb’s battle with Ibarra is legendary for the double counter, his battle against Gon is the epitome of a loop counter. Just seconds after the Lithuanian champ finished his Limp Bizkit cover, Tioneb was already rebuilding it, faster and cleaner than Gon could. Without thirty seconds, Tioneb had built, dropped, and wrapped up what Gon did in three minutes. The battle was over before Tioneb even began his original track.

The question has always been how did he do this? How was he so nimble on his feet, so quick to understand his opponents songs and adapt them to his style? I hadn’t meant to ask these questions in our interview, but Tioneb brought it all up and I had to know. 

I’ll let him take it from here. 

When you do loops, you have to have some kind of pre presets. So my main thing would be, if you want to counter, you have to do some counter presets beforehand, so you know that you can take the guy’s stuff and kind of remix it. So this is what I was planning to do the first time I went to GBB in 2016 because I did not have much material to battle. I mostly had songs, so I had to think about something else. So I prepared some freestyle presets.

I had two or three different [presets] for different styles. I had one with a very simple common kind of beat and one with kind of a dubstep beat. I'll say, if he does that, I can do this. And when [Gon] did [Rolling by Limp Bizkit], I said, okay, I can do something with this, because I know the song, and I think I can do it. I can sing it way better than it does. If I can put one of my presets onto this. It may work, it may not, but I try to kind of make it work.

Dear reader, it worked.

Come 2017, Tioneb had made a massive statement and he was back at the GBB for the second time, this time as a heavyweight. After wins against Robin (“your name is Robin but I’m the fucking Batman!”) and Penkyx (“my Belgian sweet little bitch”), he faced upstart Saro in the final.

Faced with the new-school looping dynamo, a talent who he already seriously respected, Tioneb turned back to his old faithful: the remix. Only this time, it blew up in his face. 

I kind of liked this song that he did. So I tried to do a remix. And at the end of it, I was supposed to really switch it, and there was supposed to be a very unexpected drop at the end. But I [made] a crucial mistake. 

I removed my headphones like I was going to sing, and in fact, I [still] had to do the long loop of beat there. And so I did it without my headphones, with a very bad stage sound. So it took me 30 seconds more than it was supposed to [and] I didn't get to do my drop. At the end, I was stopped. 

So to me, [the counter made] no sense, because it was not countering a thing he just did. I was countering with one of his [other] songs. But there was supposed to be a surprise destructive drop that I could never do.

And without the drop, Tioneb was unable to make the remix his own. Instead he was, for that moment, just another fan doing a Saro cover. And therein lies the risk he and KBA told us about earlier. If you mess up any of the parts of a remix or counter, you have little recourse to recover your round and impress the judges. Tioneb came up short a second time in a row.

Despite losing to Thorsen and Saro in the 2016 and 2017 GBB finals, Tioneb is still widely considered one of the greatest loopers of all time, and his countering is prime among the reasons he is held in such high esteem. 

We’re three thousand words into this essay, so TLDR, loop counters are incredible and also super risky. More loopers should try them and also they should know that in that effort it might all blow up in their faces. 

Big shoutout to the r/Beatbox community on Reddit for brainstorming with me at the start of the reporting process.

No event recap this week. I can't do that to someone, bury their thoughts after thousands of words of me rambling! Next newsletter will have one, it's already on the way.

PS: Thank you to everybody who has already gotten in touch with me about updates to the 2025 national champions map. I've made all those updates, and I'm so appreciative that you helped me make the map as accurate and fully representative as it can be.

Upcoming Calendar: Wild Cards

• All Star Beatbox Championship solo wildcards submissions open until January 24, 2026.
• Beatbox of the Month February 2026, registration open until January 31, 2026.
• Beatcity Japan 2026: Tag-Team/Loopstation/Solo Women/Crew submissions from January 19 until February 19, 2026.
• Italian Beatbox Family Championship solo and tag team submissions open until February 28.
• Grand Beatbox Battle 2026:
  • Solo and loop submissions until March 1
• Tag Team submissions until March 14
• Crew and Producer submissions until April 12
• Saarland Beatbox Battle solo and loop submissions open from February 2 - April 1.
• Beatbox Paradise solo and loop wildcards open March 1 - April 17.
• Music City Beatbox Battle registration open.
• SLAM DO BEAT registration open.
• Pocket Beat vol.1 wildcard information announcement: January 25, 2026.

Upcoming Calendar: Events

• Beatbox Paradise Solo Qualifier Event. Online, January 22, 2026.
• Beatbox of the Month. February 14, 2026.
• La Cup: Mantes-la-Jolie, France. February 20, 2026.
• FentaMan Loopstation Championship 2.0: Online. February 21, 2026.
• Ohio Open Beatbox Battle: Akron, Ohio. March 7, 20226.
• Japan Loop Championship: Tokyo, Japan. March 15, 2026.
• California Beatbox Championship: Los Angeles, California. March 21st, 2026.
• All Star Beatbox Championship: Charleroi, Belgium. March 21st, 2026.
• Music City Beatbox Battle: Nashville, Tennessee. April 3-4, 2026.
• Pocket Beat vol.1: Nagoya, Japan. April 4, 2026.
• Saarland Beatbox Battle: Blieskastel, Germany. April 11, 2026.
• Italian Beatbox Family Championship: Venice, Italy April 11, 2026.
• Florida Beatbox Battle: Agen, France. April 24-25, 2026.
• BeatCity Japan: Tokyo, Japan. May 5-6, 2026.
• SpiderHorse @ Aarhus Vocal Festival: Aarhus, Denmark. May 14-17, 2026.
• German Beatbox Championships: Berlin, Germany. May 16-17, 2026.
• NUE Beatbox 2026: Tamworth, United Kingdom. June 20, 2026.
• Motion Beatbox Battle: Southampton, UK. July 18-19, 2026.
• Maestro Beatbox America: Bogota, Colombia. July, 2026.
• Grand Beatbox Battle: Warsaw, Poland. September 24-26, 2026.
• SLAM DO BEAT: Location and date TBD, Brazil.

If I missed any upcoming events or Wild Cards, hit me up on Instagram, I’m @HateItOrLevitt or @SpeshFX. You can also email speshfxpodcast@gmail.com.