Noob popping guide by noob (work in progress)

[mrho]

Hey everyone,
Im a total noob. And like many noobs, I have had to do a lot of learning and thinking on my own as a compliment to my studio classes.

Im posting this to see not just as a guide, but as a work in progress, that helps me by being critiqued, commented etc.

BASIC NOOB POPPING TRAINING GUIDE

My latest realization with popping as a whole is that ALL the core elements of the dance really compliment each other to improve your dancing fast. I think the three super basic foundations of popping, (besides being on beat which is actually super obvious but really hard) are:

1) Hitting
2) Isolating
3) Dimestopping

Most popping moves are one or two combinations of these things like a wave which generally uses isolation and dimestopping (sometimes even hitting).

So practicing MOVES is actually not a bad idea I think. I mean I was obssessed by waves when I started. Ofcourse, after like 4months, I still sucked at it. But I never learn how to hit my arm.... hmm. My neck isolations sucked too ... and my neck hits still suck ... hmmm.

Anyways, one day I was practicing my chest hit, but then decides to also practice my boog chest rolls by doing a 4 point isolation drill. Then I went back to doing chest hits and what do you know 100% improvement. Weird. Doing the exercises separate from eachother was not improving me much though before....

So my noob conclusion:
1) Hitting> Builds muscle strength and ability to quickly tense. Important for dimestopping and isolating since it also refines control of distinct msucle groups.
2) Isolation > stretches body parts. not only that, it builds recognition of distinct muscle groups by the brain. increases control which improves hitting and isolating.
3) Dimestopping > refines subtle muscle control abilities to soften and harden tension smoothly and allows them to move on beat and interpet music.

As a way to practice I recommend the following practice routine:
1) 4 point isolation of a body part. e.g. for neck that would be isolating the neck right, front, left, back. It is important to dimestop in to each position AND also flex and hold the position for a few counts. This should hurt. It's really important that we strain ourselves. When we damage our muscle it retains new information as it repairs.
2) Hitting drills of the same body part.
3) Rinse repeat

So thats it! Hope this speeds up our learning processes.
Would love to hear feedback. I am not at all pretending to be any kid of master so thats my waiver.

I will be adding to this thread as well as I think of new things that can add to the discussion.

[mrho]

So a bit more on hitting from a total noob. Today I got down in class, ... I was totally nervous completely out of sync.... like someone's retarded uncle. Was fun though!

Had a little conversation with my teacher about hitting timing and did some drills. His advice was to hold my position after the hit a while, actually almost holding to the hi-hat, since I was jerking in to a new motion too quickly and lose my place easily.

so I spent a bit of time after and thinking about some things. So I came away with a bit of realization... at least to me. I am high but will try to make this cool as possible.

SO HERE IT IS:
In general, as noobs we try to hear for boom clap boom clap. most of us will hit too early because we suck and are nervous, have weak muscle control. The thing is boom clap boom clap does not actually relate properly to the time signature of the music. We pop to 4/4 beats mostly ( although I have seen Kite do it to 6/8 sicko!). Just listening to boom clap an d trying to hit to it doesnt say much about the music. It could be in 11/17 time for all we know.

So I came to a bit of an idea, that I am sure is not new, that you gotta listen to boom shh clap shh. thats kick hihat snare hihat. Beat has three parts ... duh. Instead of trying to aim a hit at a kick or clap and ignoring everything in between, I am trying to learn to hit/tense between boom----shhh and clap---shhh. So the beat is not necessarily a small split second thing but actually more of a accentuated pause from boom too shhh.

I am finding that its been a mental thing that I feel like is going to help me a lot and wanted to share it with other noobs. So following this, instead of counting 1234... I am trying out always counting 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Even if I use my voice to create sound efx as an aid, I account for the high hat.

If you are a noob and this seemed to get you in time, lemme know!

Peace.

[hellojellojw]

Ey, respect the posts. Im a hella noob popper as well. I'm learning a lot though, but everyone learns in their own experiences and your way is interesting. Visit www.funkmeyers.com too. I'm not endorsing the site, but it's pretty damn useful. Especially the gangsta bop post. Gets you goin' places. Anyways keep up the posts

[mrho]

Ey, respect the posts. Im a hella noob popper as well. I'm learning a lot though, but everyone learns in their own experiences and your way is interesting. Visit www.funkmeyers.com too. I'm not endorsing the site, but it's pretty damn useful. Especially the gangsta bop post. Gets you goin' places. Anyways keep up the posts

Im totally in to otis's posts actually and his generosity. glad you find these findings interesting. Tell me if you find any results from my posts or if you have criticism / praises / changes etc.

[mrho]

More thoughts here from today's pratice:

THE HIT
Had some thoughts today that kind of added to my thoughts on what hitting is. There is two basic ways people describe hitting.
1) It's a sudden stop
2) Tensing of the muscles

Well I guess its obvious but its probably both of these things. But how do we go about practicing most effectively? I feel like Im slowly approaching an answer.

Most noobs like me spend years on timing their hit and I think I am only figuring out what is wrong. The noob hit looks like this:
moving body part -> start slowing down -> pause -> relax and get ready to hit -> tense -> relax -> move again

I suspect a well timed clean hit is actually:
move -> hit / pause -> move

much more efficient. This allows for hitting fast beast in a clean fashion. I have a ton of trouble hitting single counts probably because I relax and pause before tensing.

when thinking about how to improve my technique to get a well timed hit, which I am still struggling with immensely, I think the history of the hit may be the answer. Presumably, the dimestop came before the hit as it a crucial part of botting which precedes hitting styles to my knowledge. If you think about the "hit" as an effect was discovered as an extension of botting given that it takes much more time to create hit as opposed to a dimestop. So if we trace the steps to the discovery of the "hit" we can begin by dimestopping.

So what is a dimestop? In physics you learn that an object will immediately stop if an equal opposing force is applied. When we dimestop, we should practice moving a body part and engaging the muscles that are opposed to that movement. When we do this harder and faster it creates a hit. So we dont need to relax or pause before creating a hit. All we need to do is engage all the extra muscles in that body part with the rest of the muscles that are already creating a motion. So there is no pause before etc. We engage all our muscles and tense TO STOP our movement. The interesting thing is that following this method, we can bounce out of the hit, by simply relaxing the muscles that were moving before the stop/hit. The muscles already engaged to stop that body part will move it when we release it.

So as a practice, again, I recommend dimestopping but perhaps dimestopping only. No tensing for 4 counts etc. Practicing hitting on its own I think may be effective but I think just practicing dimestopping will be faster since it takes us through the history of the "hit" and shows us how the hit is actually a hard dimestop. The problem I see with tensing exercises they dont account for the body in movement. It will train us to relax completely before a hit. In reality when we dance, we are likely always in motion and cannot afford the time to fully relax before a hit.

Anyways, I realize this is all basic stuff or even totally wrong :) I am recording this stuff to share as well as chart the development of my own thoughts and would love to hear criticism and opinions.

peace

Thanks!

EDIT: When I say no tensing for 4 counts I think I want to clarify that may be it doesnt make as much sense to do it from a fully a relaxed position. I think dimesotpping and holding it hard for 4 seconds makes sense. anyways... sorry.

[mrho]

I think Mr. Wiggles talks about funk organs. I have been thinking about the idea for sometime and developed a few thoughts that I think might help a new dancer "get" popping, or I mean dancing in general. So here it goes!

Funk Organs:
I think the idea that certain body parts need to be worked on to be funky is pretty rad. I wanna extend this idea and talk about it in reference to the entire body and breakdown what each part can do. These are not final complete claims... its just how I personally conceive my dancing body...

Feet/Legs:
These take care of rhythm and basic dynamism. The step is the foundation of our movement. Learning different steps should be the foundation to dance on beat and find a groove to lock in to.

Hips/Pelvis/But:
Obviously makes us sexy. Using this body part speaks to the sexuality suppressed in our culture. This part of the body spews blood, shit, piss, sperm. So using it kind of challenges what our world wants our body to be. I think I read that in ballet the buttocks and pelvis area is tucked in. Can street dances be unconscious challenges to ballet and thus in some sense be partly responsible for the vocabulairy of street dances? hmmm. Trained by doing 4 point isolations (Hip roll)

Abdoment/Ribcage:
This body part is probably the most ignored. But I think if there is one body part is a priority to be strengthened and trained... its this one. Our core, helps move both our pelvis and chest. It provides us stability allowing us to stop propersly as well as move quickly. It is largely invisible in the actual dance, but it provides strength and the base for connecting our lower and upper bodies in a coherent movement. You can train this part with chest pop, pelvis hits, chest rolls, hip rolls etc. Also def do crunches and other exercises. Becoming stronger here will improve your dancing by like a 100%. At least it did for me ( although I still suck)

Chest:
Expresses confrontation. Its about challenging someone in front of you ( often a fictional person) or even protecting yourself from them when we cave it in. chest pops and chest hits are effective training. you can hit the chest in and out.

Shoulder/neck/head:
This entire area I think really expresses our swagger. Our upper body, speaks to how we address the audience which in many cases its a metaphorical one that dancer is critiquing. In a battle its direct. when we face someone directly it can be does a sign of friendship, antagonism, sarcasm etc. When we face away, it may signify defiance, ignoring, disregarding etc. This is really about getting in to character and understanding why you dance, what you are saying to who. Facial expression is obviously important here. Your face dances too. Smile on beat. Grimace on beat...

Arms/Hands
Largely in charge of musicality and orality. We can hit intricate parts of the song with our arms and hands as well as tell a story. Think about talking with your hands. It creates punctuation. We can train by doing waves, arm hits. etc. Also think about how you use your body when you speak everybody. This also really about what you wanna say, what you want to emphasize in the music.

Final thought:
I think a lot about popping and other dances is about making the ordinairy, extra-ordinariy. Things like walking, talking(in the form of facial and arm movements) becomes weird and wonderful in this dance. I think it might help to you use your body to communicate in an everyday setting and translate that in to a dance. Your lower body will find you the rhythm, and our upper body will tell the story in detail.

This is the way I think about my dancing body. It may change in the future. I just thought it may help in someone actually read dancing better and also be able to understand how to say they want to say better. Also thinking of each body part having separate purposes I think lets the dancer ( esp a noob ) put together a dance that is complex and has flavour.

People who have trouble dancing often are not able to use all body parts once. their lower body may be on beat but their upper body is saying nothing. They might forget to punctuate and talk by using their arms. they might fotget about their facial expression. Better dancers, and I dont mean like trained dancers since even experienced dancers can suck at his, use their entire body at all times. Every inch of their body is expressive. I dont care if you are exclusively in to finger tutting or digitz, the rest of your body matters unless you can get a cardboard box to hide the rest of you. There is staight up swag gangster digitz and there is also self-indulgent stre-at-yourself with terrible posture lame digitz to me. Your posture, your demeanor all add up to what you are doing imho.

anyways I rambled, and again, this thread is about charting my own thoughts, recieving opinions and cirticisms, so no I dont think im any kind of authority.

[mrho]

TIMING PRACTICE AND DANCING

I got some thoughts on practicing and dancing and how it may relate to timing, given its the MOST difficult thing to get down as a noob. One thing I might have stumbled across today is that 'aiming' for the beat is not going to work, atleast for me. To get in depth, I will list somethings that definitely throw me off my timing
1) Thinking
2) Trying
3) Flexing
4) Any kind of trying

I think you get the picture.

So I was freestyling after a few beers today and found that my timing was much better. My hits were a bit sharper, timing cleaner even though I didnt have that much thought control over what I was doing.

I have arrived at some conclusions from this. The only thing that perhaps may make sure when you are DANCING is to relax at all times. If you cant relax and pull off a move or movement, it should probably not be part of your vocabulary yet. Just make sure you are relaxed at all times. The POP is an ILLUSION ... so it doesnt actually take enormous strength to create it.

When you PRACTICE, this is the time to repeat, strain, think, try... all the pain that it causes you will make it part of your muscle memory. But when you dance dont try. Just concentrate on relaxing first and foremost. Funk is fundamentally relaxed dance in terms of timing so if you can do one thing just do that.

Anyways, Im still drunk so Im gonna correct any errors tommorow.

Oh yeah, I know I contradict my earlier post that says dont relax when you hit. To clarify, I mean that we might be best not practicing from a static relaxed position. When we move, we should use the minimum amount of muscle tension that would get us from A to B. I guess this is what gives us great timing since our body arrives at the aimed position at the very best timing and we snap right into an insta-hit.

[mrho]

Havent had a post in a while. I have a few thoughts that I developed. It might contradict my earlier thoughts... but that's what this thread is for....

1) Hitting is yup, actually tensing and relaxing of a muscle. As a noob, I have been very overtaken with the tensing part. I think a lot of us are. Im starting to think the pop, is perhaps more the relax part. If a muscle is already engaged without us tensing it, just relaxing it to the beat it does create something close to a hit. It's like dropping something from your hand to the beat.... I am wondering if this will help with timing.

2) The most important muscles to hit is actually your core. Your hit will only be clean as how clean you hit your core muscles since it connects our limbs. hitting the extremeties, is cool, but when they are disconnected from eachother, the cleaness is thrown off because our timing is thrown off.

3) Body balance is super important. Street style dances have lateral movement at its core. Without being able to transfer weight properly to both sides we will not be able to a do a lot of things and may be even injure ourselves ( I just have so I know!) I think given the sedantary lives we lead, most of us noobs will probably have some sort of twist or bend in our pelvic structure. This throws off everything, especially hitting, because your body wont be able to balance itself on one side. This means the hit will be off balance as well, openig us up to injury.

There are various ways to find out problems with your pelvic structures. Its probably best to google it yourself and find yourself a way to address it. For me it was simply trying to fresno and compare my posture on both sides and particularly paying attention to where I hurt. I found out that my abs and lats on my left side were not properly acivated when i hit my leg. the problem was since my pevis was bent low on the left side because nothing was pulling it up, my glutes and thigh muscles could not engage since my leg could not proper straighted they had no where to go.


Anyways, thats it for now!

[mrho]

hi everyone, had some noob revelations in my quest to dig deep in to popping...

I think its fair to say as a noob, the thing that eludes always and is the holy grail is the clean hard hit.
It's the magic of popping in its pure essence.

One thing that I think we can say is generally true is that some who hits clean and hard almost always a good dancer. I think that is because the foundation of being a good dancer is also the foundation for the hit. That really is, as I see it now, control and coordination of the core muscles. It doesnt necessarily require strength in the brute force sense.

To dance at a high level, I recently learned ( I know its so basic...) that you require a subtle amount of tension through the core muscles of your body, in your trunk. Muscular tenstion in your back, stomach, sides, pelvis, butt, chest, is important to provide the stability to move around and isolate. I mean, actually, its a fundamental necessity of having good posture. If we dont have good posture, you wont be able to dance how you want. I know, since my weak points in my posture, which is inevitably the left side of my body, is really really exposed when I try to hit.

Why is that? well, the left side of my body doesnt naturally hold itself in a subtly tensed state. When our corse is tense, the muscles are already engaged. They react immediately and sharply to stimilus coming from our neck arm and leg hits. It snaps the core, connecting the entire body in a hard clean pop. So I think, the idea that the pop is a tensing and relaxing of a muscle is some what misleading I think. For someone who has been dancing a very good time, and has a good physical foundation, who holds a subtle amount of muscular tension naturally through their core, the hit comes much more easily.

For a noob though, when we relax our muscles, we end up returning to zero tension = no muscle engagement. This screws up everything, and makes it hard for us to move or pop cleanly and quickly.

I think any noob can benefit from learn to keep their core engaged at all times. What helped me instantly was keeping the shoulders dropped and back at all times engaging my chest and back muscles since this was a weak point. This helps us to suck our stomach in as well. The posture is complete when we tense our butt and pelvis.

anyways, hope this helps someone!

[mrho]

Hi guys!
I had some new revelations while reading things about core stability and other stuff.

One thing I came across is this technique in Karate called "ibuki" where exhalation through the contraction of the abdomen is used to trigger a hard contraction of the entire body. Sounds familiar?

The key to this technique was the contracting of the diaphragm for inhaling and the contracting of the abs for exhalation. I tried this technique and experimented with making sound effects with my mouth like "boom" and "clap" and noticed that they move the core in a specific way. "Boom" would puff out my chest. "clap" would make my chest cave in a bit and be a quick snap...

So I tried practicing a few session always making sounds with my mouth for every movement I made. The effect it had on my timing was amazing once I just let the sound im making the focus... the rest of my body would just automatically react to the movements in my core including my hits...

anyways, I hope this helps some people out there!

[mrho]

hey really quick update... ummm.. I have had a lot of trouble with timing and keep thinking I found it and find its not the holy grail... lol. but one thing I am trying out atm is relaxing to the beat rather than hitting to it. Its basically the reverse of what we are used to think of as a pop. we dont flex but relax to zero muscle activation. Then add a hit at the end of the relaxation period. It should feel like letting go of an object in your hand on the sound of the beat and grabbing it and catching it as the beat ends... this should put your hit right at the sweet back of the beat!

Im drunk so its short.. but Its been working for now! so its 50%(normal) -> 0%(completely relax to beat) -> 50-100%(super quick and this is yeah the end of the hit) Should feel like we are relaxing to the beat. In fact, for many of us, we probably dont need to think about hitting since our muscles will automatically do it.

[hellojellojw]

that's actually quite creative to reverse the two roles, I do think people think their bodies are relaxed when in reality they are quite tense. Your exercise should allow people to feel how their body is when it is relaxed.