Change Your Music, Change Your Style

by Crazy Ivan


I mentioned in a recent blog the importance of listening to music when you practice.  This tends to keep you more involved in what you're doing and makes it more fun but it also gives you a tempo to follow and helps you when you're learning to link your tricks together.

A whole volume could be written on preferred jamming music.  It seems like most everyone has a preferred style of music and it runs the gambit from hip-hop to jazz to rock to blues to classical to rave.  It's obviously a pretty personal thing so I'm not going to make any attempt to say which genre is "best" for jamming to Myachi.  I think I can say that something with a fast pace and a lot of change ups is good but after that it's all a matter of individual taste.

But there's an observation I made last night that I felt like I had to share.  I'm choreographing a routine that goes to a classical Russian guitar song.  I know that sounds pretty weird but with a nickname like "Crazy Ivan" you know it has to come eventually.  It also helps that Andrei Krylov is one of the most impressive musicians on the planet:



(That's not the song I'm choreographing to, by the way, just the musician in question)

Anyway so I'm freestyling to this cool but radically different style of music and I notice something strange.  My whole style of jamming had changed.  I was doing all these crazy finger tricks in between swaps, I'm throwing in a lot of expressive kicks (something I hardly ever do), I'm using the knees a lot more than usual and I'm keeping things way more right/left balanced that normal.

My style is pretty cemented but I'm usually listening to some chill rock like Dispatch or Jack Johnson when I jam so I start wondering if the change in the music is really changing my style or if I'm just in a weird mood (it had been a weird day, after all).

So I borrow Mav's infinite iPod and start checking some other stuff.  I discover that for me, the change in the style of music makes a radical and noticeable difference in the style of tricks I do in a freestyle shred. With hip-hop I'm way more measured and everything is evenly paced whereas with rock I'm more fluid and tricks tend to just run together.  With jazz I'm really stop and go but with classical I'm really formulaic and rhythmic.

Anyway, it's hard to describe a style of playing Myachi in any meaningful way so I'll have to leave it with the notion that I could tell the difference.  It made a big enough difference that I actually felt like I was learning new stuff when I listened to new music.

I would strongly encourage everyone who plays the game regularly to try changing up their music once in a while.  Obviously it still has to be stuff you like.  No sense in torturing yourself with something you hate while you're doing something you love, but exploring different genres can really open you up to some new ideas in your actual game.

I know it sounds kind of weird and I guess the only evidence I can offer is your results if you try it.  If nothing else it opens you up to new music and that's usually a good thing.

Oh, and for those of you keeping score at home, that means that yes, I:

• Woke up at 5:30 yesterday morning,
• spent 8.5 hours teaching gym,
• wrote a blog when I got home,
• filmed the trick of the day,
• wrote another blog and
• still found time to work on a routine I'm choreographing.

And of course, being as dedicated to your constant entertainment as I am, I also woke up early enough to write this and still be out the door by 6:15.

Your welcome...