History of Hip Hop Dance

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Hip Hop Dance has a dynamic history. From Breakdancing to the moonwalk from michael Jackson to Krump dancing to Bboy dancing to plain old head nodding. Everyone had their own way of expressing love
for hip hop dancing.

Hip Hop Dance History has people buzzing. Why you ask ? Because they are watching all these crazy Hip Hop dancing music videos on tv and they want to know the history of it. Where did this stuff come from.

The history of hip hop dance started with Breakdancing. It started around the late 1970s to early 80s. Breaking started in the south bronx new york. It was a form of Hip Hop dance that was used by street gangs to settle differences without using violence. This was a positive for black and peurtorican youths at the time. People were not losing there lives over bs ya know. One of the first Hip Hop Dance crews in History are the rocksteady crew.

They help usher in a new style of breakdancing that included acrobatic styles such as headspinning, windmills, backspins, waves and all that good stuff. The Rock Steady Crew dropped on the scene around 1979 to 1980.

They were encouraged by a legendary DJ by the name of Afrika Bambatta to use break dancing as a tool to achieve greatness. Afrikaa Bambatta was instrumental in pushing break dancing forward by motivating youth to pursue their love of the art form.

How To Tune Your Guitar By Ear

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1. The very first thing you need to know is that learning to tune your guitar takes time.

Some things on guitar can be learned in minutes, some in days, and others in weeks, but tuning will sometimes take even longer, because you have to train your ears. If results come slowly or don't seem to be making any progress, don't be discouraged, just keep working at it.

2. It will help you to know that the ear is a very skilled instrument for taking in sound. Your ear hears four things in each sound: Pitch, Duration, Volume and Tone Quality.

Pitch is how high or low the sound is. Duration is how long it lasts. Volume is how loud it is. Tone quality is the "character" of the sound. If we were to play the same pitch, at the same volume, for the same length of time on piano, clarinet, flute, violin, guitar, doorbell, or car horn, your ear could tell one instrument (or car horn) from another because of the tone quality. That's because each instrument has a different "character" or "personality" of sound. You can prove you have this ability to tell one sound from another by listening to sounds without looking where they come from.

The point I want to emphasize is that you already hear very well. Learning to tune your guitar is learning a new way of using your hearing.

3.The next thing to know is that when you are tuning your guitar you want to listen only to the pitch of the strings. The quality of the pitch will differ between two strings, and this may at first confuse your ear. You'll mistake the difference in quality as a difference in pitch. For example when playing the first string open and the second string at the fifth fret, you may notice that the first string may sound 'crisper', while the second string will sound a little "darker" in quality. The darker quality of the string at first can be misunderstood to sound lower in pitch. (You may use different words to explain how the strings sound to you, but the idea is that the tone quality of each string will sound different). If you understand that the ear hears a combination of pitch, volume, duration and quality all at the same time, it will help you to filter out the quality from the pitch and overcome the basic problem of tuning.

4. The steps involved in tuning your guitar: The first step is to tune one string to a note from another source. You could use another guitar (one that has already been tuned), a piano, or somebody that know how to tune could guide you along.

A better source is a tuning fork. (It's better because you don't need anybody else around or any other instrument. If, for example you learn to tune to a piano, you're going to have a problem if ever you need to tune and there's no piano handy).

A tuning fork is a U shaped piece of metal with a stem on it. The fork is designed to vibrate at a particular pitch. You can get one that gives you the pitch of the first string on the guitar. (Look for one that has the letter E and the number 329.6 stamped on the stem).

To use the tuning fork you hold it by the stem, tap the U shaped fork against something solid, and place the stem (not the tip of the fork) on either the body, or the bridge of your guitar. (For electric guitars can place it on the pickup). You should hear the note which the vibrating fork produced. The note is the correct "source".

You now adjust the first string to match the pitch of the tuning fork. You do this by finding the correct tuning gear for this string and then turning the gear slowly in one direction or the other. After about half a turn you should hear the string change pitch either up or down. This will tell you which way you have to turn the gear to tighten the string (to raise the pitch) and which way to loosen the string (to lower the pitch).

Now compare the sound of the string with the sound of the tuning fork. If the string is lower than the tuning fork, tighten the string to raise the pitch. If the string is higher than the tuning fork, loosen the string to lower the pitch.

Go slowly. Do not turn the gear rapidly. Turn about a quarter of a turn and then compare the string to the tuning fork again. (You'll have to strike them both again). You'll probably have to repeat this process several times. When the string sounds close to the fork make smaller turns.

When you think the first string is in tune, use the following steps (one to five) to tune the rest of the strings. (Remember, you can only tune as well as your ears hear now. With practice, you can become a better tuner). The following steps repeat the process of matching one pitch with another. The difference is that instead of using a tuning fork you will listen to the string you have just tuned, and try to match the next string to this one.

1. Place the finger behind the fifth fret of the 6th string. This will give you the tone of the 5th sting. (A)

2. Place the finger behind the 5th fret of the 5th string to get the pitch of the 4th string. (D)

3. Place the finger behind the 5th fret of the 4th string to get the pitch of the 3rd string. (G)

4. Place the finger behind the FOURTH FRET of the 3rd string to get the pitch of the 2nd string. (B)

5. Place the finger behind the 5th fret of the 2nd string to get the pitch of the 1st string. (E)

A Silk Road Trip, or I Gobbed in the Gobi, China, 1992

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In August 1992, myself and my wife, Caroline, arranged a trip to post-Tiananmen China. It was in the days when the London China Travel office was on Cambridge Circus, opposite the Palace Theatre on Charing Cross Road. It took me at least twenty books, a late-night Japanese television series and several months to plan and arrange the trip from what was then our base in Balham, south London. In those days, you could arrange the visit via China Travel and then, as long as the itinerary was lodged in advance, you could travel absolutely independently. Everything was pre-paid, but on setting off, we had no tickets or confirmed reservations apart from our air tickets in and out of Beijing. As ever, I kept a journal of the trip, which ran to more than fifty pages. A few years later, I condensed the experience to two sides of A4, ignoring rules of grammar and syntax, and produced the following ramble, a perhaps poetic impression of nearly a month of travel.

Ex-London while the Sun dissected Michael Jackson's nose and praised Boardman's hooterless gold-medal bicycle. Air China to Beijing, where taxis cost more than Lonely Planet predicts. A Chinese character itinerary from one Tim Han of China Travel whilst fellow workers drool over televised lithe Afro-American sprinters at the Olympics. Then to the no-longer Forbidden City. Piles of local tourists to negotiate.

Four hours of Xinjiang Airlines to Urumqi. Signs in Chinese and Russian plus Uigur written in Arab script (a recent innovation). Land lines across Inner Mongolia. Why and how so straight? Urumqi multiple-peaked. Piles of coal, scruffy high rise, snow-capped Bogda Shen at street-end. Pavement fortune tellers, traders. Food stalls. Women washing sheeps' stomachs in a stream, tripe kebabs. Uigur town now Han Chinese, populated by Shanghai overspill, over 2000 miles from 'home'. The second long march.

Uigur breakfast. Hot sheep's milk, Chinese tea, flat tomato bread, sugared tomato and cucumber, pickled cabbage, thin congee, sheep's milk butter, two giant sugar lumps. Uigur market. Fruits amid a forest of hanging lamb. Chinese market. Live vegetables and meats. Tank over-spilling with energetic eels (unit price). Self-knotting spaghetti.

Woman losing her gold watch at an illegal 'find the lady'. Policeman looking on. Tears when the loss hits home. Renmin Park for noodles and rocket-fuel chili sauce. Bag slashers with finger-ring knives on a crowded bus. Care needed.

Car to Turfan. Fertile valleys. Barren mountains. Occasional snow. Road ploughed. Kazak yurts. Semi-sunken shade-making rammed-earth Uigur villages, invisible at a distance save for chimney smoke. Steep downhill gorge, spectacular river, rocks, white water and slate-grey hills. Into Turfan depression, snow-capped distance surrounding grey stone pit 100 miles across. 42 degrees at its base, 200 metres below sea level. Car ahead leaving tracks on molten road. A hefty gob from the driver irrigates. Gobi means stones. Plenty here. And then green. An oasis. A giant mirage?

Turfan. Latticed vines for street-shade. Hanging raisin grapes. 15 yuan fine for casual picking. Hotel tea in galvanised buckets. Turkish-style dancing and music. Genghiz-sacked rammed-earth cities of Goachang and Jiaohe. Painted tombs and brick minarets. Flaming mountains. Karez underground irrigation system. 3000 kilometres of channels. 1500 years old, gravity-fed from mountains at the depression-edge. Uigur culture's greatest feat, and in full working order.

Bus to Daheyan. Two hours over bumpy stones to depression-edge. Dump of a railway town. Coal heaps, box buildings, waste land. Two women at war on station forecourt. Ramming victim's head onto the ground. Blood. Onlookers. Inaction. A tense town of resentful postees.

500 miles to Liuyuan in Gansu. Featureless flat grey shale stone. Spectacularly unique. Snow mountains to the north. Utterly empty, save for smoking coal towns. 40 above in summer, 30 below in winter. Overnight by train. Dawn reveals same massive scene, now in brown.

Arrive Liuyuan. Daheyan writ similar. 120 miles south across the desert (black at first!), past remnant ramparts of Han Dynasty Greater-Great Wall. Camels and dunes of Taklimakan, world's largest sand desert. Near Dunhuang oasis blossoms again. Sand and scree suddenly crop and tree. Feitian Hotel, with complimentary toiletries labelled Sham Poo and Foam Poo. Lunch. Fourteen dishes. Duck, foo-yong, cucumber, cabbage, oyster mushroom chicken, coriander pork, steamed buns, steamed bread, rice, beef broth and noodles, pork and green beans, pork and sweet chili, chicken and squash, plain noodles, water melon. Then to get the essential torch for the caves. Houses huddled together. Wood stores for winter piled on top. View across the roofs like a scrap heap. Ground level claustrophobic stoneware maze.

Cave day. Mogao Buddhist caves - closed from 12 to 2, full day needed for perhaps the most stunning sight on earth. 400 'caves' (some cathedral size) in a sandstone gorge, between 400 AD to 1100 AD. Utterly dry, always dark, perfectly preserved. Everything painted. Tang period complex and colourful. A world of scenes by torchlight. Buddhas reclining, sitting, standing, posing. Thirty metre seated figure with thousands of unsmoked cigarettes and coins on his lap as offerings. Shock of Qing-renovated cave with Taoist figures. Ghoulish features, contorted, and a face in the groin. 40 caves seen in the day, archaeologist as a personal guide. Stunning. Fourteen dishes for dinner.

Desert bus back to Liuyuan. Always a fight for seats. Three dusty hours. Train to Lanzhou. 800 miles along Gansu-Qinghai mountainous border. More black desert, then yellow earth. Jaiyaguan fort at the limit of the Ming empire. Overnight by train. Country changed. Mountain pass, green rolling hills and stepped fields. Wheat harvest in. Straw dollies like children at assembly. Houses still of rammed earth. Lanzhou a thriving industrial city. Thirty hours of travel. Walk by Yellow River.

Fish in hotel restaurant tank all dead. Lanzhou bus expensive. 50 fen per trip. Radios and knitting banned. Han dynasty flying horse and bronze warriors. Steamed carp with rape on menu. The fish comes first. Train to Xian through yellow loess country. Deep furrows and gorges. All flat land cropped. 500 miles overnight.

Terra cotta warriors facing east to guard Qin Shihuang's tomb. Made in pieces. Assembled in situ. Partly excavated section where piles of dismembered limbs emerge from the earth. New terra cotta warriors for sale from the factory behind the museum. Exact replicas of originals. Wheeze at the thought of the whole thing as a sham for the tourist trade.

Xian, like all Chinese cities, a square. Roads straight, intersecting always at right angles. Ancient centre walled, Ming rebuilt. Old mosque exquisite. Xianyang nearby, with Seventh century Qian tombs, museum with another 3000 Han terra cottas like a football crowd. Train to Beijing. 800 miles, 26 hours. Houses often caves in valley side. Later immense flat land, maize everywhere.

Temple of Heaven, Tiantan, and then Beijing Opera. Pause for beer at wayside stall. Served by moonlighting trainee stockbroker! Breakfast pickle amazing, like four year old camembert out of a shotgun. Takes the head off. Great Wall. Mucho touristico, but still stunning. Like climbing a giant ladder in places. "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirts, prices lower the further you climb. Must be the air. Ming tombs dismissed by guide-book. Wrong. Amazing barrel vaulted rooms nine stories underground. Jade doors, carved thrones, marble, marble, marvel. Reminiscent of renaissance Italy. Everlasting bricks etched with names of their makers. Souvenir jade boat for 55000 pounds.

White drapes over erotic statues in Tibetan Lama Temple. Same bestial content in wall paintings. 24 metre gold Buddha through the incense-blur. No smoking signs everywhere.

Mao's Maosoleum an emperor's tomb. Lines for queues painted across the square. Feet pointing north towards Tiananmen Gate, upside-down feng shui. He is shiny, waxy and painted about the face. Moving lines file past on either side. No pausing. Outside, stalls with Mao T-shirts, Mao key rings, cuddly toys, post cards, magic lantern shows. Mao Zedong candy floss by the armful. Then Great Hall of the People. Dining room for 5000. Now fast food for tourists. Great Hall chop sticks, cigarettes, T-shirts. Great Hall of the People cuddly toys.

2500 miles. Three and a half weeks. 5 destinations. 50 caves. 6000 terra cotta warriors. 1 each Great Wall, Forbidden City, Beijing Opera, Mao Zedong. Hundreds of tombs, temples, pagodas, parks, bendi-buses and bicycles. 3 silk shirts on the Silk Road. One amazing trip.

Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak's Masterpiece Interpreted

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"Where the Wild Things Are" is one of the most popular picture books of all time exemplifying Sendak's incredible knowledge of the textual narrative through illustration. The cover of this book is interesting for it does not show the protagonist at all but the wild things slumbering with a ship in the background.

Within picture books covers are privileged information such that in a good story they will tell the readers what the most important part of the book is. Although when the book is first read the readers do not start out understanding Sendak's cover the choice of this cover alludes to the moment when the main character of the story Max leaves the wild things sleeping in order to return home. It is this choice, to leave his wild fantasy and return home to where his mother loves him that is the point which Sendak's story has built up to.

The readers first introduction to the main character Max is of him stalking some monsters across the title page, his eyes mischievous and mean hearted, while the monsters despite their huge size look afraid as they attempt to stalk away.

This is the first double page spread and the only one for a long time, in this book Sendak uses the double page spread to indicate that Max is at his most wild. The double page spread can also be said to show the dream world in which Max rules.

By having the double spread on the title page before the story begins we are left to wonder how often Max enters his wild dream world. For although the first picture is of Max in his dream world, the book itself starts with him outside of his dream world, causing his mischief in the real world.

As the story goes on however the pictures (on page right) will grow and grow, as he gets closer to his dream world where the wild things are.

Further allusions to Max's constant forays into the dream world are found in the second picture where he is seen to chase a hapless dog with a fork. In the background is a crude child's drawing by him of one of the wild things, letting us know that these creatures are indeed in his imagination prior to the event depicted within the book.

For chasing the dog among other things Max is of course sent to his room. Although his mother is never visually depicted the text indicates that Max threatens to eat her up when she sends him to his room. It is this childish behavior that makes Sendak's book so believable, Max is indeed a little boy, with random threats, and chaotic dreams.

Once sent to his room we see for the first time Max truly isolated. For the picture is now much larger, though not yet taking up the page it has grown large enough at this point to show the walls of the room in which Max now finds himself imprisoned.

But in this picture book there is no prison but ones own selfish thoughts and so Max is able to escape his room by imagining a forest growing in it, until he is able to stalk off into the dark woodland night. He then sails away on the ocean with the woods disappearing onto the right edge of page left as the whole of page right becomes dominated by Max's imaginary world.

And so Max sails on into the land where the wild things are, and in so doing the illustration finally becomes a full double spread.

On arriving in to where the wild things are Max is greeted by the wild things who try to scare Max, but he tames the wild things, scaring them into submission and then becoming their king. As he does this we see the white space for the text at the bottom of the pages shrinking until at last it along with the text vanishes completely.

So for three double spreads Max and the wild things howl and wail at the moon, play in the trees, and finally Max rides on the shoulders of the wild things as their king. Then however as the wild things go to sleep the text reappears along with the white space on the bottom. The pictures from this point on begin to shrink again.

It is through this shrinking pictures as will as text and visual narrative that Sendak is letting us that Max is growing bored with his dream, and that the smell of food is calling him out of his dream. So he sails away from the wild things, back into his own room, which again is enclosed, but on the table in the corner we see Max's supper waiting for him. Letting us know that outside of the wild worlds of our mind there are those who love us.