The 5 Basics of Tutting

Tutting is a style that is based totally on geometry and patterns and angles, mosty with your arms. It is a great style for feeling like you are building puzzles or boxes and there are an infinite number of patterns you can create. Once you learn the basics. The basics of tutting mostly involve learning the basic angles and how you can move between them. And then a LOT of drilling. You need to know that when you lift your arms, they are in the position you think they’re in. Once you have that down, you can start freestyling your tuts and go for days.

So let’s cover 5 tips for basic tutting mastery.

Hey guys, I’m Otis Funkmeyer, the professor of popping! I write an article about popping here at WCP every Sunday. I have lots of lessons, articles, DVDs, downloads, and music at my website www.funkmeyers.com!

90 degree angles

Let’s begin with the most obvious. Tutting is based pretty much entirely on 90 degree angles. All of movements involve your elbows and wrists being at 90 degree angles to the rest of your body. This is the reason it’s called tutting. It’s like the Egyptian tut poses in all of the tombs.

Now, making 90 degree angles is harder than it sounds and a lot of people end up with what we all used to call duck tuts, where the hand is bent at the knuckles into the shape of a duck’s beak. Also, when you are doing outer tuts, there can be a tendency to not lift your elbows up to 90 degrees (to where there is a straight line from one elbow, through the shoulders, to the othe elbow). It’s HARD to lift your elbows that high. You usually feel strain in your shoulders. It wears you out. But this is the price of excellence. You gotta WORK IT OUT.

Wrist rolls

Wrist rolls were made famous by Mr. Wiggles but are used by almost all tutters. They are an incredibly amazing technique because they are super easy to do and super dope looking. They have a lot of bang for the buck.

All that wrist rolls involve is rolling your wrists so that your hand moves in a circle from one side to the other. You can throw them in at any point. You can hit an angle and then roll the wrists. Then hit another angle. Then roll the wrists. It can go on forever. You can flip it in so many ways so it never gets old. Definitely practice the wrist rolls.

Incorporating your whole body

It’s important to practice incorporating your whole body from the start because it’s really easy to turn into a stand-still tutter who doesn’t move and just moves their arms around. You might come up with cool poses, but it doesn’t have the same dope dance feel as when you use your whole body.

This is especially true for the flexers out there. They have so many incredible combos and concepts but they are usually just standing there and executing. They don’t really move or dance through their tuts.

One good way to practice this is to tut on one leg and move the other leg into tut angles while yout tut your arms around it. Bend forward, duck down, hit ground moves, bend to the side. Moving with your tuts adds a LOT to the possibilities.

Adding texture

I learned this concept from Tetris who learned it from Mori. When Mori first saw Tetris tutting, Mori told him–nice, but ADD TEXTURE. Adding texture means changing rhythms, strobing your tuts, moving at different speeds, hitting sometimes… basically, switching it up.

Tutting can get old quick if you don’t switch it up, because it can just look like tut-tut-tut-tut-swing-the-hands. But if you add a whooooooooooosh and a tick-tick-tick and a fast-slow-fast-fast-fast, people will never know what’s coming next and they will become your biggest fans.

Tut to the Beat

This should be obvious, but just in case it’s not, do your tuts to the beat of the music. The music should inspire your tutting and help you come up with new patterns and new ways of doing your existing patterns.

When you tut to the beat, the tuts flow with the music and you can really accent the music, which always gets points with the audience, the judges, and the opposite sex.

Start with basic rhythms like 1-2-3-4 and then you can work your way up to more advanced rhythms and beat freaks.

The Wrap-Up

Learning and applying the basics of any style are the way that you really become a DANCER. You can piece together 10 tut sets and do the same routine over and over and that’s cool! But to really become a bona fide tutter, you need to take the basics of the style and come up with your own ways to flip them.

KEEP IT POPPIN BABY!
Otis Funkmeyer, Ph.D. of Popping