I think there are a lot of ways to build a yoyo combo.How do you do it?
I’m a musician and a songwriter. I’ve also been through the university grind of doing a history degree. The result is that my brain very much wants a theme and a pattern and some sort of point to anything I’m doing. In yoyo this translates into needing to have a theme to build a combo around. I often will start with an element, then try to weave other elements in and out that are similar in style. If it starts with short sharp movements then that will be the pattern for the combo. If it starts with slack, I’ll have slack elements patterned in. I think this has the benefit of making for interesting combos and keeping my combos from looking the same. The downside is that I have a lot of ‘tricks’ that aren’t complete because they didn’t work into a theme.
I also rarely make combos with intent. I can’t sit down and decided to make one. My songwriting has always been like that. I call it a “Drive by Muse-ing”. Some artists have a Muse that whispers in their ear constantly giving them ideas. Mine flies by, dumps a piece of art in my head and then continues on. Songs come out of me quickly in a sitting. Yoyo combos aren’t quite that abrupt. The start is, I’ll be playing and all of a sudden it’s creation time and I have to go with it. I’ll get part way into a combo in a burst, then spend a couple weeks slowly puzzling through the next steps. Again, I can’t just decided to finish, I’ve got to pull out the yoyo, try for a bit, then put it away and let my brain work on it. Then randomly the next element will happen.
Invariably I get stumped. The combo could finish, but it doesn’t feel right ending there. So I move on and start making a new combo. Somewhere along the way the 2nd one merges with the first one and it turns out they were meant to be together. The combo at 1:15 in this video is a great example. It’s actually 3 combos that eventually just merged into one.
https://youtu.be/WwdYRs_raEY
What really frustrates me is how many tricks I never finish. Sometimes my muse flies by and drops half a combo, then never comes back with the rest. I guess that’s par for the course though. I’ve got a stack of about 200 pages of song lyrics that never went anywhere as well so I guess it’s just how my brain works.
What about you?
At one point I did start making a series on this topic, and as with so many projects I lost track of it, but here are the videos I did make! I’ve also got a series of quick elements you can build into combos under the playlist “1 take tutorials”