The other How do you listion to music and use poi? Thread.

Right then..

I thought that the other How do you listion to music and use poi? thread would be about this, but it turned out not to be....

Right then..

Now, we all know just how many "what music do you spin to?" threads there are and for a good reason.

Music is important when spinnering stuff. It also helps to stop you getting bored just spinnering stuff.

Which leads me to the point:

How do you listion to music and use poi?

(ive now only just noticed the spelling mistake...and Ive already used it three times.. )

I mean like, how does the music you are listening to influence how you spin poi?

It cant just be spin faster when the music is faster.....

There must bvbe something more complex than that.

and im not excluding doing wraps to the beat there either...

I find it hard to actually spin to a song... even if I know the song backwards....

So whats the secret?

as a fat white boy with no rythm, i feel i can confidently answer this question.

there are no rules to spinning poi to music. do what the music makes you do. if the music is going faster and you think it wants you to spin faster, spin faster. if the music gets slower and more subtle, you might try dancing slower and more gracefully. but like i said, no rules.

the music is already at the end, it dosen't have to hold your hand for you to get there too.

The answer is what the dancers call
MUSICALITY


Its really complex to master, its one of the things that I've been starting to work on really hard this year,
while I'm not spinning poi.... and it nicely humbles me to the power of 10.

Expect to start mumbling things like:
12345678
very soon

Drew:)

Yeah, just time combos and such to link with particular parts like breaks or drumrolls, move around in time to the music, turn an even number of times compared to the bars... it's a lot of fun.

And learn the songs really really well. That's the best I can advise.

Also, if you're up for a challenge, try some Mew. Because they do stuff like 7/8 time. Which is fun to do stalls and isolations to.

Sometimes I find it hard to spin to songs with certain moves, because I tend to like having the music and the beats of the poi meet up. Problem with that is, I use the regular boring 3 bt weave to stem off into other things, but most songs are in some form of 4 beat time. (or 2 beat time/split time, which is just the same as 4bt, pretty much.) It's hard to match up a 3bt move, with a 4bt bar.

Umm, I just got scared at how similar the terminology for music and poi is, and am now going to run away from the topic.

*runs away*

~ Bobo

imagine an incredibly drunk man at a disco. don't do what he does and i should turn out alright...

i generally find that i don't spin along with the music, i just listen to it cause its more fun than listening to the kids outside screming at eachother.

i dont know how i spin to music, but i deffiently do. if i put on some augustus pablo, my spinning is totally different to spinning to aphex twin. i think its just a feeling...

Yes for me it is also just kinda natural to spin to the music that I am listening to, but also for me the music helps me fill less self aware or paranoid which inturn helps me spin better.

Juggling_Arcs

to me as a musician i don't know how i do it either *badly* but the only thing that i can say is let the music surround you and do what you feel

I thought this thread was going to be about the diffculties of using headphones and getting the poi tangled in the wires and such like... Well it's a big problem with staff... the cables are always interfering with neck wraps, and nobody likes getting earphones ripped out of their ears at full speed... And big headphones can get in the way of the stick easily...

But then I read the thread and saw it wasn't about that.

I've been spinning a lot to music recently. Last night I went out to spin fire without my headphones and it wasn't even half as enjoyable. It felt just like I was going through all the moves I know with no particular goal or theme to it. Felt a bit crappy and just like I was practising badly.

So I love spinning to music now. Though it does sometimes get in the way of hardcore drilling of moves.

There is the whole idea of looking at a move and seeing how it makes your body (not just arms!) move and trying to change / emphasise / exaggerate that to make it more dancey / fit the music better.

(some of the following advice cribed from drews musicality workshop)

Using the size and expressiveness of moves to fit the music. Sometimes the music builds and has dramatic changes and suchlike that can be used to change how you spin.

Sometimes the music has a dance that goes with it already...

Sometimes I want to express what the music feels like, and sometimes I just want to dance to it.

spinning in time to the music generally doesn't mean speeding up when the music is more exciting, it means spinning in time to the music all the time, and changing what pattern your spinning to express the excitment of the music.

I've only ever seen like three poi routines done perfectly in time with the music. Where you're going to count the music beats on the circle of your poi is a whole n'other debate.

I suppose you could count the beats of your favourate poi combos and then work out how many bars they take up and then just spin them to the speed of the music, but that would be a bit hardcore for me. I generally prefer to just wing it.


Possibly your trying to express the music *with* your prop, or your trying to express the music *as* your prop. The good old distinction between dancing with your prop and making your prop dance.

"Sometimes the music has a dance that goes with it already..."

But doing the Macarenca whist spinning would be nigh on impossible no?

You can do anything can't you Jonny? There's a challenge for you!

Try spinning to everything Steps have done... that's an even bigger challenge! If you can stomach it

My view is that you can either let the music dictate how you spin or you spin with the music as a companion. Yes, to me there is a difference...

With electronic music, with the beats you can treat it as the equivelent of that Dance Dance Revolution video game that tells you the dancesteps. With this you can syncronise the beats of the poi/staff with the drum beats. My favourite type of electronic music is french electro which generally has a very simple beat but has layers of complex sounds with their own rhythms that you have to find. This type of music generally encourages me to change moves as often as I see fit.

Music that contains moments of catharsis inspire me to do big moves like flowers in a state of exaultation. Like praying. Varying tempos within a song is nice as a constant tempo can get quite tedious if you do try and match the poi tempo with the music.

There was a time when I let the lyrics dictate the moves. One easily example - Gorillaz 'Feel Good Inc.' Was it just me who upon hearing 'Windmill Windmill...' imaginatively synchronised it with the similarly named move? I grew out of that one...

Generally music tends to affect the poise of my body rather the moves. The aforementioned French electro tends to prompt me to give my body a rigidity akin to body-popping but not that juxtaposes with the fluidity of the moves. Whereas more chilled music tends to relax my body that flows with the poi in a few stream-of-consciousness manner.

yeah even with the cable inside my t-shirt the staff would roll over it, pulling it enough sometimes to pull it out, or just off-center the cable enough to annoy your ears.

Big ear phones don't have this problem so much plus they protect your ears from nasty brusing, but they get in the way a hella lot more.

Obviously the best solution is a light, portable and loud music device with uber battery life. unhappily this doesn't exist yet.

Well you wear that orange headband thingy, tucking the earbuds inside that helps sometimes.

As does winding the cable around your boobs figure-8 style.

I'm guessing you long for the day when they have music players implanted directed in your ear canal?

nah no more earphones for me, big ass head phones that protech me ears now and have enough suction to stop the cable pulling them off.

I was so astounded when I first took Drews musicality workshop a couple years ago... It had honestly never occured to me to try to hit all the beats with my poi!I was shocked!!

Now I can, but usually still dont want to, at least not all the time.

I usually hold the rhythm with my feet, and just highlight certain beats with my poi, use my body to express the character of the music, playing alot with the melody-- arm movements changing form with the flow of the melody.

You can go with the music, or have some fun contrasting it too- tempowise and interpretation wise also. Certain sounds definately create an image of movement types- deep slow thing seem to make people think of downward low movements, whereas fast high pitched sounds call people to change level to above their heads, reaching, etc. Then those postitions carry certain emotional dynamics and connotations too. You develop and use those natural impulses, or work against them if you wish for something different. Modern dance has whole movement vocabularies developed around these things, the interaction of level and dynamic, form and flow.

Interpretation is fun! Fluffy did a great workshop in that at Play. Really enjoyed it.

Now I will get all hippy like, and say what I really mean: which is just let the music flow through you, man, go with the energy dude, dont get all caught up in the structure, let it flow... lol

Deleted out with reason.

light,

:R

kk, i tried this last night, outside the courtyard (after raiding the dukebox and making threats at the bar staff to turn it up enough for me to hear outside)

and i realised that mostly, i just either wiggle more to the music, or bounce.

i kinda tried to "poi" (as it were) to the horrorpops, which went quite well until i smacked myself in the face

this calls for more practice!!

I come from the school of letting the music guide you, but there's a method to my madness.

for some parts i count 4s with the music, and do repeating patterns on multiples of 4 for 32 or 64 beats, depending on the buildup of the song. other times i'll just flow with the music, going wherever it'll take me. Other times when a new song comes in i'll change my style, or spinning persona if you will, complete with a change of facial appearance (usually a sinister grin, when i know something good is coming up) and poise (how i carry myself). other times i'll get more footwork involved, or start wrapping around legs or different parts.

all in all, it's really what the music makes me do, not how i preceiving it when i'm spinning. although, I do try and keep my transitions limited to new phrases in the music, or when new songs kick in. People tend to zone out on patterning and get a real jolt when you move into something else, as if you were "stuck" in the rhythm, so to speak.

I like spinning to music i haven't heard before, it's suprising how people will notice your going exactly with the song, and are suprised if you tell them you never heard it before either

Love listening to music while doing poi, becasue of this the ear pieces to my ipod are now dented!!

ARGH! i took my new glow poi to Kulu (rave) on friday night, and was quite happily poi-ing away to the music when a man with a video recorder started filming me - apparently my city has an illumination festival for which they are making a DVD which i might possibly be on. This would be super-cool, but i am still not brilliant at poi i only know a few things, and so wont look particulary brilliant

close your eyes and take in the music works for me ,
does hurt sometimes though.
i think the import thing is to let the music be part of you and let go- beats in the blood.

I'm probably one of the few HOPpers here that listens to Finnish folk/metal while spinning. I usually listen to Ensiferum or Moonsorrow while practicing staff spinning and I find it makes me more adventurous especially when there are buildups. I often like to time my throws such that the buildup releases when i catch the staff and power into something else


I have been known to listen to the Pirates of the Carribean theme song on repeat, too Perhaps i'll load some chillout music onto my MP3 player and see what that does

WOW!!!!
Reading all this makes me want to go out and spin right now. But unfortunately I'm still not that good and whilst I can do some moves; simple weave, backwards weave, windmill, butterfly, turns etc its the linking them together that I have problems with which makes spinning to music really difficult. I love to dance and can't wait till I'm good enough to start to properly interpret the music. I think it makes such a difference, we had a bit of a poi crowd whilst I was in Thailand and I really noticed what a difference using the music made to the performance. One girl was technically the best (the moves looked good and she never mucked up), but she always did pretty much the same routine regardless of the music. Then I saw another guy who was not so stylish, a bit chaotic but when he spun to Bohemium Rapsody it was amazing he really used that music. Its definitely a skill worth working on.