UPSB v3
Videos, Presentation and Music / [topic][3.1.1] Overview
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Date: Fri, Jun 15 2007 17:06:30
This topic will give a general description of what synchPS (synchronized PS) is about. It will talk about the motivation behind such project and what should we expect from it.
First and foremost, synchPS is about building a combo, or more commonly a whole collab, around one song or possibly a set of songs. The idea is that you pick the song first and then worry about the combo later. Doing a combo without prior knowledge of the music most definitively won't work.
The other idea is that most of the difficulty of synchPS lies in the rhythm dimension of the combo; instead of following your own pace, you're following the music's. In this sense, the first criteria we should use to evaluate synchPS combos is how "tight", how good of a fit the combo is to the song. Therefore, by making this our first priority, combos will most likely suffer in our regular criterions. The combos may not be of superior quality when viewed on its own but they will be very impressive when matched with the music.
This is why synchPS combos should never be viewed without music. They lose all meaning if done so. It is akin to watching a music video clip on mute. The combos are secondary and arranged to the music.
This synchronization becomes yet another layer of difficulty that spinners who like to work on their execution will have to now tackle on. It gives them something new to think about.
Also, due to the rhythmic nature of sPS, it is conceivable that the combos will probably be pretty repetitive. Creativity won't have too much of a factor because it would involve ideas that will be hard to implement with the music. There will however be some creativity involved in thinking about how to design a combo to match the music. i.e.: How to express nuance, change of beat, silence in the combo, but I don't think it will involve much creativity in introducing new tricks or concepts.
A possible motivation for synchPS is that today's style of PS is mostly focused on execution, than creativity. In this sense, this style of PS should fit perfectly for this project. Therefore, if people are going to spin in a "repetitive" way, why not put them to a real test and make them do the same thing but to music? It will make their combo a lot more interesting to watch as well, even if they don't contain "real" creativity.
SynchPS will also allow us to expand the expressiveness of the Art of Pen Spinning. By closely following the beat of a song, some of the expressive power of the song becomes attached to the spinning itself, which makes it more artistic.
Obviously, our ultimate goal is to have high quality combos that are perfectly timed to the music. This will prove to be extremely difficult but I hope that people will disregard the fact that the combos are slightly less good in synchPS to make up for the fact that they're matched with the music, which makes it totally cool.
To achieve our goal, we will progressively work our way to achieve "true" synchronized PS music, by increasing the constraints on the combos on how synchronized they must be. This is done by using a "spectrum of synchronicity", which is a topic in itself. The spectrum itself contains "levels of synchronicity" which are certain levels on this spectrum with pre-defined constraints.
I will also have a topic dealing with choice of song, which is crucial in our project.
There will also be a topic on combo creation and examples/ideas on how to express music through PS.
The last topic will deal with the whole process of organizing a collab and tips on how to record synchPS combos.
I will also reserve a topic to test synchPS with an example collab, a "study case". The song is Touch Ya by Rain.
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Original Thread -
Date: Mon, Jul 7 2008 19:21:19
Okay, yeah, I had this idea since 3 months I think, but I wasn't reasearcher by this time (thanks thig)
I sent a huge e-mail to Zombo, it would be cool if he post it somewhere here... But the idea was youger, so it may be be less "refined" than now.
Instead of synching the tricks themselves, we can keep two concepts to mark the beat of a combo: nuber of rotations and the movements of hand.
number of rotations: this would fit better for koreans, who spin verry fast, smooth, at a verry constent rate, and use fast, uniform music.
If the music has one pulse per second, the pen should do one spin per second. As simple as that.
Hand movement: this could fit better for japanes and old school, styles with verry much hand moves and "hits", like done to throw a backaround.
This would be better with more "funky" music, with clear drums and slapped base. Example: in a middleback 1.5 to middleback, there's a hit to throw the pen around the middle finger for the second bak. We could sychronise this with a strong base drum kick.
Or for me: fit a backfall to the "Ah ah ah ah" of Stay'n Alive of the Bee Gees
Discuss,
Stay'n Alive, Penspinning 4 ever. -
Date: Mon, Jul 7 2008 22:20:56QUOTE (Stay'n Alive @ Jul 7 2008, 08:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>number of rotations: this would fit better for koreans, who spin verry fast, smooth, at a verry constent rate, and use fast, uniform music.
If the music has one pulse per second, the pen should do one spin per second. As simple as that.
Now this I don't think would work since the speed at which a trick completes one rotation is different. For instance, within a spin trick, the initial rotations will be faster than the latter ones, a fingerpass would be difficult to make at 4 passes (2 rotations) per second whereas a Sonic rise (also 2 rotations) can easily be done in just one second. When tricks are done continuously, they do more rotations per second than when they are caught and how about roll tricks and infinities?
For all these reasons I don't think this can ever work, or at least, not without greatly restricting the combo.QUOTEHand movement: this could fit better for japanes and old school, styles with verry much hand moves and "hits", like done to throw a backaround.
This would be better with more "funky" music, with clear drums and slapped base. Example: in a middleback 1.5 to middleback, there's a hit to throw the pen around the middle finger for the second bak. We could sychronise this with a strong base drum kick.
This seems to be something that editors do. I know that in one collab I edited I did this (Pen Spinning Styles Collab?) and have seen it done before. However, the combo is done before the music and then the combo placed at the appropriate moment to be in time with the music at the appropriate moment with the correct trick. To plan a combo alongside music has not been done as of yet (so far as I know), but this could work.
I felt a way to synch pen spinning to music would be to work out the song you wished to use and get the BPM of it. Then work with a metronome or straight beat (just a kick) and make the combo be in time with it. Eh... I wrote an article on this in pen spinning magazine I think. * goes to look *
It's definately an idea I will be looking at doing at some point this summer.
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Date: Mon, Jul 7 2008 22:41:20
Yeah, I read the penspinning magazine article.
And when you say "be in time with", you mean start and finninsh at the same time?
Anyways my idea with the number of rotations is that the tricks must have all the same rotation speed or close enought to adapt. By the way, you can slow down your sonic rise to fit the FP, the main article told that combo will be limited to fit the music. -
Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 22:15:15
Music along with spinning could help create and grow penspinning further as a performance activity. Currently I think it is accepted that until very high levels of penspinning it is not as notable or relevant when it comes to large audiences or settings. Because the pen itself is minute and many tricks require small changes in fingers, if you blink you miss it...
Music would add to the enjoyment and help penspinners become more widely accepted or have more opportunity to preform. -
Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 15:57:42
I don't see that pen spinners will ever have the oppurtunity to perform as many people in other arts do as it's simply too small, adding music or not.
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Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:02:04
yeah, i think no matter how far penspinning develops as a manipulation, i can't see it ever being on the same performance level as most others ...
i was in an airport alone a while back, and there was a kid doing acrylic ball manipulation (whatever that's called), and he had a whole crowd around him watching, and i imagine that'd be true for yo-yo, and other manipulations as well
I can't imagine even peem or vic or somebody being able to draw a crowd like that (although the power-trickers would be the most likely people to do it IMO)
in any case, i wrote this whole post before i realized it didn't pertain to music lol, sorry about that -
Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:11:15QUOTEin any case, i wrote this whole post before i realized it didn't pertain to music lol, sorry about that
Mistakes like that get people killed
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Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:15:54
well i think this project needs experimentation now, we need to create a synchronzed video, doesnt have to be a whole song for now
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Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:20:04
lol i tried to do a freestyle along to "Feel Good Inc" a couple months ago ... it wasn't amazing or anything, but nobody even commented on it lol, like "interesting idea" or anything
EK does this every now and then though, a freestyle with the feel of the music, people seem to like it -
Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:21:35
yea i saw it, i thought it was ok, but i didnt think the music was th best for spinning
eriror's stuff is really laid-back and unprepared, it has almost nothing to do with the music
here we are aiming for something between level 3 and 4 of synchronicity, so most beats must be reinforced with pen psinning. -
Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:25:30
yeah the idea i was going for is that there are pauses, so you can like "stall" your spinning to match those pauses. it wasn't the best-executed, because it was a freestyle though
but it's hard to match every beat in PS, unless the song is really slow, which then it's less interesting -
Date: Fri, Feb 5 2010 16:26:27QUOTE (strat1227 @ Feb 5 2010, 11:25 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>yeah the idea i was going for is that there are pauses, so you can like "stall" your spinning to match those pauses. it wasn't the best-executed, because it was a freestyle though
but it's hard to match every beat in PS, unless the song is really slow, which then it's less interesting
whats important is not really that the beat is fast, but that its STRONG -
Date: Sat, May 29 2010 16:46:46
The next problem would then be a collab.
I guess one way to do it would be to have the editor break the song into parts and send these parts to the participants but then you begin to restrict the amount of time allotted for each of the combos. I think this would require a lot of cooperation and communication between all members of the collab.