Innovation

General Yo-Yo
21

Here is my two cents:

In all honesty, what you just said is a truth in the manner.
In order for something to be “truly” innovative, it has to be completely utterly fresh.
Beyond all know-how and ability.

Yoyo however is a tremendous thing, there is just too many infinite possibilities with it and thus people will often then be like “Well, thats innovative” because of the idea that there is too many possibilities. What one person sees that they find fresh, another will outcry and say its not.

Then there is the usual debates about what is and what isn’t.

Its come to that point and age in that it just doesn’t matter.

When people start yelling in awe about Riccardo being innovative, I sit back and say “Not completely”. Because like many other yoers before him, those people put the building blocks in order for him to do what he does today.

However, many of the top yoyers are pushing previous ideas and making them entirely new. Should we call that innovative? Example: Should Innovation movement be considered “innovative” even though the ideas they have were from previous blocks of ideas to which they took, destroyed and rebuilt a new?

Its a debate ad nauseum.

Overall, I’ve come to have a belief similar to what Ed Haponik has. I’m sure I am misquoting him wrong but basically it is that when you come to yoyoing, and you think you found something completely new, automatically think its been done. Don’t own a trick or claim it as yours, just show it to the world and see where it goes.

Pretty much I’d say I agree with 90% of what you said.

I heavily clap to Eli Flops opinion whom has the other part down pat. Innovation is broke down into different things really, especially when it comes to yoyoing and everything related to it. The tricks, the styles, the gear, the community…

Lets all keep pushing forward.

~Z

22

My point was just do what you do, disregard the ‘has somebody done that’ feeling and your tricks will be better

23

What Charles says.

24

Maybe. But it depends on definition. If I write an 8-bar blues, it isn’t innovating on the chord progression front. If I add a solo with the pentatonic blues scale, I’m not innovating (necessarily) on the guitar solo front. But I could still be writing a song that at the end of the day gives someone the chills and makes them say, “Dang, that was one fine song…”

Doing something only because you think it hasn’t been done before isn’t really innovation. I can randomly pick out notes on my guitar and create something that sounds like garbage, then process them through some sort of in-track effects and make some ambient weirdness. That’s “innovative”, I guess. Or at least it might fool some people into thinking it is. But it’s just random garbage that doesn’t make any sort of musical statement.

I think there’s a lot to be said in yoyo through “phrasing”… not just the selection of elements but how they are presented. Heck, you could ask 10 people to do a trapeze and still see variation and personal style between all 10 of them. And you’d probably see one that made you go, “Yeah, I liked how THAT PERSON did the trapeze…”

TL;DR (too late, haha!): something that’s “new” for the sake of being “new” isn’t genuine innovation. It’s a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile of innovation.