Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
http://void.printf.net/~meghan/
That's a link to some great staff tutorials from Meg ~ MCP
Enjoy,
¦m¦
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http://void.printf.net/~meghan/
That's a link to some great staff tutorials from Meg ~ MCP
Enjoy,
¦m¦
Comments
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
Yeya, i just finished going through all those the other day. Some solid contact basics, i think its an awsome sit but the only problem is its ALL contact. Which is ok for all you contact freaks but for the rest of us lame try hards also want to see some standard basic staff moves.
All round id give that site a easy 9 outta 10.
Do you know who's site it is?
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
It's fun to quote yourself
¦m¦
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
:20 LMFAO
Damn i was just going to :56 as well 
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
yeah, more of that staff-stuff...
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
marvelous is right. I looked like this
8O
for most of the time I was looking at the site.
I know for a fact that it has inspired several people to start playing with staff.
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
But at the same time, this is kinda weird... I didn't realise this was ere. But it's good that I didn't post it, cos it makes me look modest like.
In reply: I just never thought non-contact staff needed explaining. It all seemed fairly easy and self evident, compared to how difficult contact moves are.
Now non-contact with doubles... That needed explaining...
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
[quote="mcp"]non-contact staff moves... all seemed fairly easy and self evident, compared to how difficult contact moves are.
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
my advice is not to listen to simian either.
he has more elbows than the rest of us and has no respect for the laws of bendiness.
mcps site was the first bit of contact i ever saw and is the reason i started learning.
she rocks like a rock with a stick on it.
as does the bendy monkey
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
my site has been updated! WOOOO!!!!!
New tricks!
go look go look!
http://void.printf.net/~meghan
in reply to ado-p: A rock with a stick and a rock on it? Woooo, that's a lot of ROCK!
in reply to simian: Simian is pooo. But he is good for making people do more vertical contact. He also makes up nonsensical analogies. I can make up much better ones.
In other news:
MATRIX TUTORIAL!
http://void.printf.net/~meghan/final/matrix-tutorial.wmv Matrix Tutorial - HQ ~4mb
http://void.printf.net/~meghan/final/matrix-tutorial-low.wmv Matrix Tutorial - LQ ~1mb[/url]
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
NONSENSICAL ANALOGY SECTION
i make nonsensical analogies? That's like saying that a capybara (or Coypou)eats a lot of cheese just because it's the worlds largest rodent, when in fact capybaras only come into contact with cheese on extremely rare occasions in captivity. And mice and rats don't really like cheese much, thats a popular miceconception. They prefer chocolate. i also prefer chocolate to cheese, but this doesn't make me a rodent. Do you see?
MORE CONTACT MOVES RANTING
All the most talented spinners exploring the same small section of ways to manipulate a staff? This makes the monkey weep.
witness his weeping:
How cool do all those doublespins and turns look in the 'Various' noncontact spinny vid on your site? This cool:
[code:1]coolnessevaluation1(Non-Contact.wmv)= 79.344[/code:1]
Deny the coolness. Do you deny the coolness? The coolness cannot be denied.
ON TOPIC SECTION 8O
Old vids i hadn't watched:
Various Non contact vid. Was cool, as i believe i have already mentioned. Would be better with 360s too
BTB elbow pass. Ace. i'm having that
New vids i watched:
elbow wrap variations = f~cking wicked. i'm stealing that too.
(i don't reckon thats a 360 fishtail though. i used to think so until yesterday, but now i think its something else entirely)
stops = beautiful transition from stop to stop. guess what? i'm gonna nick that too!
layouts = looking solid. i'm not stealing these on the grounds that i really wanted to do fishtails before everyone else got into them, but now i think they're boring. Why are they called layouts rather than 'elbow wrap to fishtail'? It's them pesky baton twirlers again, innit? :roll:
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
SENSICAL ANALOGY:
Right, in normal spinning, doing a normal front rotor to a two handed figure of eight on one side would be analogous to doing continous hand wraps to the contact weave on one side.
Doing a normal front rotor to a one handed figure of eight would be analogous to doing a devilstick propellor transfer in front between hands then a fishtail to one side.
all in all, ANALOGIES ARE FUN FUN FUN!
all the most talented spinners? Well not me then.
This is cos normal spinning is too easy. and we only have one prop, with two props many many many ... more things become possible.
Maybe if you took the word spinners out of the title, a lot more things become possible...
plus contact is a great name for encopassing things that aren't really contact, like footwork, which owes more to hacky sack and skateboarding than contact juggling. (Sometimes.)
Let me download and evaluate that video... Oh my, that's an extremely badly made video.. who made that? They should really go and practise a bit...
Why is fishtail 360's not fishtail 360's? Do tell.
ANd layouts: They are called this cos of the premature way the elbow wrap ends. The fishtail back to in front of you isn't part of a layout, just the elbow wrap to arm straight bit is a layout. yes it is baton twirlers - and yes i have to explain that on my site...
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
oh, i see what you meant by my analogies now.
the ">" bit was meant to mean "more difficult and prettier than".
If i'd meant "the same as", i'd have used an = instead
[quote="mcp"]Maybe if you took the word spinners out of the title, a lot more things become possible
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
Non-Contact? Dpeneds if your hands are gripping the stick or not. Techically, some mime is contact staff.
In other news: Yes technical is better. I'm a great fan of rodney mullen. I don't know any skateboarding lingo, but I can see he's very good at it, cos he's sooooo technical.
Techically makes you're audience appreciate that what you do is hard. Plus it helps you do the easy but impressive stuff better.
Most stuff without the stick leaving the grip is easy and self explainatory... I picked up most of it in a summer... Tell you what isn't self explainatory... You know snakes, where the staff goes into the cradle of your arm, you can do the same thing the other direction... Not a reverse snake, but an inverse forward snake. This is a move that makes triplespins look easy. (Which of course, they are, compared to full steves)
I'm not soo sure about there being no anti-gravity fishtail. There probably could be, just very very fast...
I think I agree with your definition, I used to find 360 fishtails real hard, till I learnt that keeping arm straight and up business...
Haven't you read my staff moves list? Of COURSE I like stupid longwinded names!
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
"I picked up most of it in a summer"
i'm not even going to get started on that...
8O 'most of it'???
yeah, some mime is contact, some is not. Mime is universal like that.
At the moment i'm doing lots of not moving the stick at all while i almost fall over. That and writing stuff...
i couldn't tell you about relative difficulty of a steve to anything. i've never tried none of that horizontal contacty business. But i seem to remember you not being aware of the existence of low triplespins when i met you at Highgate. Just like i'd never heard of 'precision jumping', despite watching squirrels do it all the time. How could that have been if they're so 'self explanatory'? Triplespins that is, not squirrels.
Learning technical tricks improves your basics.
But learning contact doesn't noticeably improve spinning.
My point wasn't that "technical tricks aren't pretty". It was that you refuse to admit the technicality of cleanly performed non-contact sequences of turning figure eights, carries and snakes. The description of clean lines and curves through manipulation of centres of rotation. That sorta thing. Technicality isn't just in the completion of complex patterns, but in the efficient execution of movement. Watch more of Mr Mullen if you don't believe me. He's my favourite too
Can you do an isolated antispin longarmed figure eight with staff (or doubles)? Of course you can, it's not that difficult. It is technical though. And it ain't self explanatory.
(after all, 'isolated antispin' could mean at least three different movements just to start with... :roll: )
and finally: a fuller explanation of that inverse snake would be nice. centre grip, or offcentre?
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
most of it:
Yeah I did, I haven't learned much new 'spinning' stuff apart from triplespins and things not related to spinning (
) like body movement.
Plus I think triplespins are a logical extension of doublespins. I would have figured them out eventually, like people worked out the 7 beat weave after the 5. And frankly for me they are in the same class as the 7 beat weave.
Mostly recently I haven't been spinning a stick at all... Tooooo cold. I've jumping over things and practicing poi. Silly me I know. pendulum weaves are fun. That and I really wanna know more about the traditional maori form of poi...
Learning contact doesn't improve spinning... Don't be silly. It improves your understanding of planes and overall control of the staff. Just like good posture improves your gymnastics. Body awareness and all that.
What I refuse to admit is that they are technically difficult individually. There might be a techical combination of them, (And I don't really want a discussion of technical.) but I think the individual moves are easier than contact moves. What am I arguing about again?
Oh, self explainatory. I don't think any combo is self explainatory. I just found out today that for b balls and a length n of siteswap, there are b to the power n siteswaps. for that number b balls. That's a lot of siteswaps.
Doubles is a different thing.
"isolated antispin longarmed figure eight"
see? Now you're making things technical, this is more interesting. When you say longarm, is the staff an extension of your arm, ie burning your armpit, or is it in a 3/4 grip or is it just with a straight arm? Since your body doesn't rotate unless you join up figure of eights, I don't thing anti-spin applies. But then, I haven't seen an anti-spin fishtail. (But a fishtail doesn't pass the plane of the body, so it would be easier to anti-spin it) I supose then you could anti-spin 1 beats. But I don't even spin them. (funny that staff doesn't have unsymmetic beat moves, but it can't so much, I don't think, without turns. <- digression) Plus, with staff I think you have to define what point on the staff you have decided to isolate. And if you're isolating it, or yourself around it. (Which is maybe sometimes a different thing)
The thing elasta made up.... let me think... The staff is going inwards and you have to have your arm straight out, palm up the hard way, so that your elbow points up, (like you are doing ballet like) and then you break your wrist so you can get the staff to lock, (or just use the other hand for the first few) and take it behind you and try and unlock. fun fun fun.
This argument is very useful. Continue.
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
oh i see, so triplespins you'd have worked out eventually, but any move that involves the staff wobbling round your shoulder is totally impossible for someone to figure out out on their own?
Gracefully relating body movement to a move requires technical skill. If you do it while spinning it's technical spinning, if you do it with contact thats technical contact. And noone cares if it's technical or not anyway because they're all so busy saying "cor blimey" 8O after you do it...
but thats 99% of waht i was talking about when i say technical spinning.
Effective body movement. Clean lines and control of momentum of body and prop. Balance. Lots of other things i wish i was actually good at. The stuff that usually gets summed up as "dance" :shudder:
ANYWAY
pendulum weaves are cool :cool:
Forms of antispin totally cross over to staff or any form of manipulation. I wasn't talking about conventional poi antispin weaves there. Although you can do them not much harder than ordinary doubles weave. Antispin is much easier with sticks.
when i was talking about isolated antispin i mean...
ug the difficulty of explanation...
basic movement of staff
The centre of rotation switches from one end of the staff to the other every 90 degrees of movement. So the staff makes a 4 pointed cross shape every rotation, with the vertical points formed by one end, and horizontal points formed by the other end (or you could make it diagonal instead). Being antispin, if done perfectly, this results in the vertical end travelling only in a vertical axis, while the horizontal end travels only in a horizontal axis. The difference of this move to ordinary antispin is shifting the centre of rotation from one end of the object to the other, which i reckon is what you get by applying antispin to a certain type of isolation (as opposed to isolating an antispin move).
longarm = arms at length holding middle of staff, or a bit off-centre. Can be stretched outward (burn the armpit) or perpendicular to arm. This move would entail shifting between both, with the ends switching round so it forms the four stages of the cross you're making.
now weave! weave damn you! thats not a weave!
did any of that make sense? i kept it theoretical rather than practical so you can work it out for yourself a bit more. Also i can't do this move with doubles properly anywhere but my head yet, so my advice is questionable anyway.
it's cool to spin it with a single staff though
had a nice play with doubles at the xmas spitz on tuesday. Opposite directions with crossed arms, with turning carries. They were matchsticks though, so while it's possible that they were in perfect planes, there's no way to verify that hypothesis
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
I have still been doing poi. Silly me. I have been practising heigen-thingmabobs.
No really.
That and four or 6 or 8 or possibly more variations on one poi in a pendulum weaves. They are totally easy and quite fun. That and I finally got other way airwraps, which made btb airwraps easier. Maybe.
Hmmm. That's what practise does I guess.
You know what I mean about triplespins! :p
Yes, grace and spinning requires skill., but when I say technical spinning, I mean the spinning that requires you to concentrate so much on the poi, you forget about what you're body is doing, or otherwise spinning that controls your body movement significantly.
No body says cor-blimey to me...
All movement is dance really.
You can do vertical anti-spin unless you redefine it I think. Anti-spin is usually when you turn in the opposite direction that the staff is spinning. So to anti-spin vertically you would need to be anti-psin cartwheels or something. ( 8O :idea: ) But if you define anti-spin as turning in the direction that's harder and or not the way you normally turn, then you can do anti-spin vertically. (To be more technical? : if you think of cogs, then anti-spin vertical is as if the staff and your body are cogs and one cog is going in the wrong direction to mesh.)
poi is hard. Same time weaves are uber hard with poi.
Sorry to say this, but I think I need a video. My isolations are always on one point of the staff and the point switches when I want to change the hand grip to a different one. (To practise all grips obviously)
I'm glad at least the logarm definition is obvious.
Yeah turning crossed arm carries are well ard with poi. Haven't tried with sticks thou.
ANYWAY! I ought to go and get some work done on the old bookage, and univeristy work...
hugs
meg
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
I said cor-blimey to you once when I first saw the matrix, you just didn't hear it
Oh yeh for the prayer steve too, finally nailed that one last night.
It should be pretty easy to do a vertical anti spin windmill(w stick). I've got a few moves with poi that I'm working on with poi that could translate to this. You know if you plant your feet, leaning backwards(leaning back like matrix), your upper body can rotate 270 degrees? Makes for some interesting separations.
So far any antispin vertical contact is incredibly tough tho.
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
I'm not a big fan of cor-blimey. Supposed it's a shortening of "God blind me." And since god already half did, I'm not a happy mophead.
Anyway... I'm off to wait for simian to reply...
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
oops... i meant antispin in the poi sense.
Staff makes rotates in one direction while the centre of rotation moves round in the other direction.
if you do a longarmed turning figure eight, like a flower with poi, then reverse the direction of the staff's spin while still moving your arm in the direction of the original circle - then thats antispin like i mean it.
its not the easiest thing to get your head round. i've been working on some animated gif diagrams of funny patterns you can make with rotating lines. But i can't send them now because i'm in a scummy internet cafe in east london about to go to spitz. Hey, i have to go to spitz!
Catch you later and happy new year and stuff
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
should be coming down to london on the weekend of the 15th sometime - bucko!
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
hey you badass twirlers,
how do you make your antispins:
finger manipulation ??
hand rolls?
..
I guess I need to improve my finger manipulation :roll:
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
olive: you could do them with hand rolls or finger manipulation.
(the easiest way to do it with a single staff is passing from one hand to the other every rotation of the stick)
but i think its coolest to do them like figure eights, keeping them held in the hand, and switching from one side of the body to the other while twisting and untwisting the wrist.
meg: the 15th, eh? i'll make sure i'm around...
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
yup, night of the 14th or the 15th. I will be in LONDON!
In other news: Antispin pinwheels are pretty hard. I keep having to do spins in front in order to get the rotation. It's annoying.
Meg's Marvelous Tutorials
A thread all for !ME! and my shoddy videos!
First off: My site:
MCP's Staff tutorials.
It now has smaller vids, in wmv format. Very muchy smaller. And it has three new compilations of all the old videos. These however are not yet linked to on the site, and won't be tonight since my mum wants me to stop the 'clicky clicky'.
So secondly, The Adventures of the Slack and the Pook - Part III
The Adventures of the Slack and the Pook. Part III - HIGH ~ 37mb
The Adventures of the Slack and the Pook. Part III - MED ~ 17mb
The Adventures of the Slack and the Pook. Part III - LOW ~ 7mb
Comments are really appreciated.
Things I know already: (and can't change, cos I accidentally deleted all the source files. [Is it cos I is slack?]) Andre's bit has a large jitter in it because I used the razor tool to select it. Rob and all the fire is dark. But it's not the worst I've seen. The song america is a bit mental. Between ben and Ian shouldn't have a cross fade. Ian's special effect obviously went to a 'special' school and wasn't just ironic.
So y'all got any comments on anything else?
and enjoy!
:loco:
:cool:
Worlds smallest monkey:
[image]http://www.crazynews.net/dp/files/2-120.jpg[/image]
or my symbolic addiction to rob?
Anyway - new vid!
With out much prompting and no further ado, I present to you the first of a slack series in which I wonder why VHS to DVD to WMV encoding has reduced so much quality, ponder the meaning of special effects and don't even bother to edit out old footage. Plus maybe pop a few contact tricks in and name my peeps.
So the result of one days borrowed camera time, a three hour VHS tape and no gainful employment:
Is it cos I is Slack? <01> - 16mb.
No small version - no messin'.
Goodnightandgoodluck.
The post that just keeps getting longer...
Yes I know it's far too long, and you've got bored of looking at me spin already... Care I not for such trivialities.
Have Camera, Will Slack - High Quality ~34mb
Have Camera, Will Slack - Low, low Quality. ~7mb
Many things went wrong with this video, most of them me. Criticial commentary always appreciated - apart from: It's too long. I say: Learn to love watching spinning FOOL!
In other news:
MATRIX TUTORIAL!
Matrix Tutorial - HQ ~4mb
Matrix Tutorial - LQ ~1mb
Explaination:
Place staff on top of shoulder, slightly off center to the back. LEAN over a lot while you're doing this. Gently push staff under armpit and make a kind of forwards circle with your arm straight. LEAN back. With luck the staff should come out on your shoulder. The other half is similar but opposite. More explaination when I update my page. I AM SLACK remember...
[image]http://www.zen32721.zen.co.uk/weakfoo.jpg[/image]
Quit Your Jibber Jabber!
or
I am your father - FOOL!
LATE BREAKING NEWS!
<insert a lamentation about not having chitty chitty bang bang here>
Illegal spinning:
Illegal Spinning
Borrowed Spinning
Stolen Spinning
Official Results Osaka 2004 - Baton Twirling world championships.
http://void.printf.net/~meghan/final/muppet/trickswithsticks.avi
These will no doubt come down once the Federation for Copyright protection (FACT) come after me. And if I was in northern ireland, that would be: INFACT. :knowingsmiley:
the first two contain much of this:
[image]http://void.printf.net/~meghan/matrix.gif[/image]
No need for lamentations about chitty anymore. The lastest videos are all rather large, ~40 mb, so consider broadband before you download them...