Poi then music or music then poi

okay so im looking at putting a routine together for my first public burn and had an interesting thought. when looking at choreographing do you personally find music and fit the poi to it, or do you put the poi routine together and find music for it or finally do you go in with a number of poi combinations you want to use and use music to string them together?

I personally do music that fits what you have a rough vision for, and then build it around that.

Most stuff on choreography I've seen says the dance comes first and should determine the music. I sympathize with this since I think a routine is about making the prop fascinating, and the music is about highlighting the structure of the routine. But personally I don't see any reason you can't start with the music if there's a song that particularly inspires good spinning.

I tend to start with a variety of music, decide roughly what I am going for and then spin to each and see if it works. If it does, I narrow it down a bit more and choose a final song based on what I want to do with the poi.

Of course, part of spinning to each song is blocking out certain sequences that I want to use and seeing how and if they fit in.

for me first public burn all i could here was RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR oooooooohhhhh RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR *STALL* AAAAAAHHH RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

XD

Yeah that sounds about right

Music first definitely.

music then dance and find the tech that fits last

Fully agreed with discowraps. As far as the audience is considered, techy moves have the least importance. Nobody but other spinners are going to appreciate them properly. So moves should come last. And the dance part will work best if you already have a piece of music to plan it out on.

I think I would have to agree with a few of the others here: When I was working as a performer at the local Fests out here, I always made sure to pick my music first. Once I had the music I knew I could move around nicely to, then I would choose with one of my toys to use. [:

It depends, but generally, while not the first thing I think about, the music is decided early on as it has a huge effect on the feel of the routine and how you move as a character: not something I want to start thinking about late on!

For me it's usually been about finding music that makes me wanna spin... I feel lost when i try spinning without music cause i have no rhythm/beat to go off of

How about you have a couple beats that you like, create some set movements to them, movements that compllment the music and then use whichever you feel like on the day.

I usually just let the magic happen and improve based upon whatever song comes trough my ipod when i hit shuffle. Only twice have i tried to make a routine, but i picked a random song and built the routine from the song.

I'm with Teamo. Only fellow spinners will appreciate the difficulty of some of the more techy poi moves. Anyone will appreciate the music though.

i go music first everytime. if you have something in mind that you know you want to include in your routine before looking into the music, then you can just keep that in mind while looking through your music choices. for instance, i had a burn with a few friends where i knew ahead of time that i wanted to include a specific buzzsaw variant in the routine (partially because i wanted to scare 'em just a little bit. never the best idea to try and give your spotters a bit of a scare btw) so i found a song with characteristics that i could tailor that variant too and just planned around the rest of the song. in reality this tends to come down to personal prefference.

I think i will have to go with Music first then Poi/choreo.

Here is what my troupe does:
http://youtu.be/g6WtcSnMAtc