Performing, what I learned tonight

I learned a thing or two about performing for children tonight.

• Never show them the knifes until it is a show (crowd watching) environment (IE: not when messing around, gathering, or killing time with the curious kids).


• When you make a big deal of something that will only happen once. Stress how it will only happen once (knives over somebody).


• If you show them (or let them see) something, be prepared to do it. IE: if they see the unicycle, and the juggling props, they will want to see you do both at the same time, and when they ask "can you do this" being able to say "yes!" is the best thing ever.


• I need to get a prop box to hide things/protect things/carry things/look official, and I need to have a clear routine with a beginning and end.


• I need an assistant or somebody that can get kids to behave, because my humor often comes from my reaction to misbehaving kids. Then they think:misbehave = funny. I don't want to get rid of that bit about my performances, so somebody else has to be the authority.


• I need a length of rope I can set down to make an impromptu stage. (and maybe some chalk)


• I need to set up the kids to peer pressure the other kids into behaving. as opposed to them banding up against me. It's tough if they already don't respect you, but possible.


• Looking different/unique/some sort of outfit, or silly hat, or something like that, would be nice.

Tonight was fun, but none of the kids respected me. They stole and run around with my stuff, they crossed my chalk-line stage, they got in the way of things and tried to mess up my juggling or trip me on the uni. Also, juggling knives over the kids is huge. Danger adds a whole lot. I should get some torches and a water bucket and make a huge deal of things. Really I should get better at clubs.

In the end, they enjoyed the hell out of it, and that's the point, right?

The 5 ball cascade, progress report

I am getting to the point where I can get 6 or occasionally 7 tosses in during an attempt, and I can toss 5 balls up and then catch them in my hands over 50% of the time. My tosses still are not consistent enough, so I am doing a lot of 3 ball flashes, 4 ball cascade/showers, and other tall/high tricks to try and be more accurate tossing higher, faster. There were sessions where I would hold 5 balls, toss them into the air and try and catch them, and they would almost all drop, for half hours at a time. It was terrible, and the lack of improvement means I should go to a more basic of fundamental step (such as three ball flash's with a clap or two, continuously. Try it). But now it, after throwing 5 up I got three of the original toss' back up again, and it felt good. Really good. I am just going to need to attack this pattern head on

Demystifying the complex: 5 Ball Cascade Practice Path

Guys, I have been approaching this 5 ball cascade all wrong. I have been practicing the 4 ball cascade, lefty 3 ball shower, and some '5 ball practice' siteswaps. On those siteswaps I have been making 0 progress. my 5 ball cascade has been making 0 practice. Then I realized something so obvious, it's painful. Learn 5 balls the same way you learned 3. Breaking it down throw by throw, and building up hand speed, and (more importantly) accuracy and consistency.

Start with 1 ball. Toss it high above your head at the 5 ball height. No 'about eye level here', but some previous tinkering with numbers, as I am sure you have done, has you knowing about where this is. Throw a bit higher than that, for safety and accuracy's sake. (If you are bored, I bet you are skilled enough to do this with 3 balls.

Move up to 2 balls. Don't throw one at the apex of the other, but rather quickly - as quick as you can. OK, not that fast. (the tempo will make sense when you have three, then you can scale it back and do 2 balls). Make sure you are not moving your hands too much to catch the balls before moving on to 3. Throw and catch both before throwing again.

3 balls now, do a 3 ball flash. Good. Now try, except count out '1-2-3-4-5' out loud as you throw them. 1,2,3, should be on throws, and 4 and 5 should be said before the first ball lands (right before it lands, in fact). Catch all of the balls before tossing again. While you will inevitably play with 4 and 5 balls, ensure that you have 3 solid before really continuing.

up to 4 balls! Just remember to watch the ball's height, and listen to the sound as they land - it all should be pretty consistent. Try counting out 12345 and seeing if you have time to say that '5' before catching. It'l be quick. Just remember, don't fumble constantly around with 5 (not getting better) until you can do 4 consistently. It may not look like it, but your hands are really learning something here.

OK, and the moment you have been waiting for. 5 tosses, 5 catches. Look elsewhere on the internet for grips and how to hold the balls. (I purchased smaller beanbags to practice with). If you have 4 consistent, being able to throw and catch 5 most of the time should not be hard at all. But again, don't move on to 6 until you have these 5 nice and consistent. This is probably the step that will achieve the most attention (deservedly or not). If you are fumbling and dropping most of the time, scale back to 4, to 3, ect. Every once in a while, do a pyramid. Being with 20 tosses of 1 ball, then 2, 3, and so on. Get comfortable with three balls in each of your hands.

And finally, 6 tosses. Now it starts to get fun, (and the advice repetitive) but essentially it goes like this: toss 6, catch 6. Repeat until cozy, do it 10 times in a row without dropping. Toss 7, catch 7. Be able to do it 10 times in a row without dropping. Move like this all the way up to 10, where you are throwing each ball twice. After that, try going straight to 15, then 20, or maybe smaller jumps. Tossing and catching - surprinsingly- is better advice than keeping a failing pattern alive - learning how to toss a ball from odd angles and while violating the 1-plane rule (no front/back shit) is not helping you learn any good muscle memory, despite how cool you feel getting that pattern solid. Take it easy, count out some numbers, and build it slowly.

So really, just learn 5 the same way you learned 3. It seems so obvious! It is so simple! But it works.

Disclaimer: I do not have a 5 ball cascade down, this advice is discovery+intuition+basic 3 ball tutorial concepts+other peoples general juggling advice, for 5 and other ball cascades.

More Juggling Practice Advice

I am working my way up to a 5 ball shower, with the arrival of 5 new dube stage balls (bringing my collection up to 9). Here is my personal roadmap for this:

(3 ball shower each way)
3 ball snake (follow?)
Flash 3, clap
Continuous 3 flash (clap)
some nice tricks to stay happy (mills!)
-
4 ball fountain
552
5551
-
The actual learning 5 cascade: [start from both sides!]
4 ball throws (in crossing 5 pattern, catching)
5 ball throws (flash) let drop
5 throws, catch them
move up one throw at a time.
6 toss, 7, 8, 9, 10, long as can. (don't always try to keep going continuously)

And some quotes to keep in mind:

Learn juggling with 5 in steps. First learn 5 throws. Then learn 6 throws. Go on to 7, 8, 9, 10. Then try to juggle as long as you can. Don't always try to do endurance runs. Set your goal to perhaps 20 throws and make sure that you can do that really good, and perhaps with a neck catch as finish. - Peter Olin

I found catching the balls rather than trying to go for extra throws was really useful because I didn't have to chase them all over the place. The extra throws just came naturally, and I added them only when I was ready rather than going until the pattern fell apart (thanks to advice from Steve Ragatz on practice style). - Steve Joyce

quote from this great page

The idea is that setting solid benchmarks will help. I have been doing this to a limited extent in my juggling thus far, mostly I just go for it and try to keep going continuously. I do stop myself when the pattern breaks apart (i'm throwing forwards or backwards, or the timing is off), so I have the same idea of only practicing doing it right (learning correctly!), but with explicit throw number goals, it puts definitions on this ideology of juggling.

Pretty soon (next?) I will be making a post covering my juggling equipment. In other words... Pictures!

Unicycle / Juggling act in Depauws Talent Show

Here is my act from the talent show I was in last night.

Some things to learn:

• Get the audience laughing, they won't expect skill. Surprise them.


• If you drop on stage (mess up), just laugh it off.


• When doing a routine to music, make sure it's dead solid. A mistake throws you off, because the music doesn't stop!


• I didn't ride the giraffe because backstage, I didn't have enough headroom. I couldn't fit through the door. Because I still can not free-mount the giraffe, I would (should?) have played it over-the-top difficult. Get some assistants in hard hats to hold a latter, draw out getting on the thing, be funny.


• Funny is good


• Rings are awesome for stage performance. I was juggling rings on stage beforehand, and they are large, visual, high, lots of fun.


• At least have a general idea of what you are going to do. The entire club part of the act was improvised, I wish I at least thought of some tricks to do ahead of time, practiced them.


• Just because something is difficult does not mean the audience will appreciate it. When I did 'factory' I got a huge reaction, but the mill's mess/pistons combinations were confusing. (although I did get comments on that trick after the show). Flashy is good, difficult does not = good. What I am saying is juggle for an audience, not for personal skill or other jugglers. There is a reason why taking a bite out of an apple (maybe the 2 trick I learned) is so popular.


• Be personal with the audience, casual. This may not work for everyone, but I like being really relaxed and loose, doing a trick like i'm showing the audience some cool secret. Drop a few times, they are with me trying to succeed. When I do, all the better.

Clubs are getting fun

I am not juggling enough. Only getting in 15 min or so a day, and I am pretty disappointed in that. I am telling myself I will ramp it up, get back to how I was doing with ball juggling, with at least an hour a day. Also, All of my juggling balls are busted, and it forces Clubs to be my only option. Which is good – forces me to use clubs, but bad in that I am not practicing balls.

Anyway, I am just starting to hit the point where it’s getting worth it. That point when you do something, and you start getting good. It starts becoming habitual. You start to not think about it. The best way to describe it is that you enter “The Zone”. The zone is different for people, just ask athletes, but for me –juggling- it’s when I enter complete concentration. I am not thinking about anything else. I am not thinking about juggling, or about the text message I just received and haven't checked. I am not thinking. I am just doing. It’s the zone, and it’s a wonderful place to realize you were in. (You don’t know it at the time, that’s pretty much the whole point).

My life is practice

What I do is not entertain, not write, not juggle, not tell stories, not play music, not write code. I don't do any of that. I practice them. For every minute  I am juggling in front of somebody, I am spending 8 hours practicing. I sent such a rediculus amount of time practicing, it entirely dwarfs nearly everything else I do. Therefore: my life is practice.

Dancing With Hands

I found this article while doing some research on club juggling. It compliments this post I wrote a while back. Yeah, its juggling related. Ignore if you please.

Juggling to music

I always listen to music when I juggle, but  once I am ‘in the zone’ and cognitively entirely focused on juggling, the music is ignored and/or drowned out. I watched a few juggling videos where the jugglers are juggling to music, and I have to say that it is stupid difficult. I like doing things that are difficult, but this may exceed my abilities.
As a side note, I am talking having virtually every throw in sync with the music, not just more-or-less going along with it.
When I throw a ball on the beat, that beat happens when the ball is released from my hand. That moment of disconnection. When you see the ball being thrown, you see the beat of the ball at the moment the ball begins its up path. This is after it leaves my hand. My ears hear the beat of the ball when I catch one.
But that can all be ignored, to an extent. If the pattern is continuous and aligned (more or less, close enough) to the music, then we will register it along with the music as one entity. It will groove. But throws can not all have the same hang-time. An overhand throw will have a longer hang-time than underhand, and, well, every throw is different. This is a huge pain in the ass.
End note: its hard!
If I ever do perform to music, I will probably not do it to some heavy beat stuff, I will let your ears drown the music out in favor of the stimulus presented by your eyes.

Mills Mess Explanation

I recently learned Mills Mess (the juggling move). It was very complicated and took me a while to learn. I hadn’t realized I had previously ‘discovered’ it while playing around with under and overhand tosses. So here is an easier (in my opinion) way to learn mills mess.
Prerequisites (and to be fairly good at them):

• Reverse Cascade (outside – in/overhand)
  
• Under the arm

Start juggling a cascade. I would use one off-color ball. When the off color ball comes around, juggling it under the arm and toss it strait up. Then immediately do it again with the other arm. You are juggling jugglers tennis but instead of overhand, its underhand.
At the same time, when you are catching the ball that was tossed by the under the arm throw, throw that one outside-in/overhand. For now just throw it all the way over. If you keep this pattern up, you will have one ball in the center of two other balls that are flying over and under around it. The trick that makes this mills mess is, on the overhand toss, only toss it into the center of your body. Let your other arm (crossed, above) stay out of the way before you catch it with the other one (crossed, below). Now you should be doing mills mess.
Remember the path the balls are taking. They all seem to be following each other in the infinity sign/sideways eight pattern. Keeping this in mind has helped my mills mess drastically.
Don’t forget your tempo, be patient with the second (uncrossed arms) toss. Wait for the previous ball to hit its apex for each toss.
Also, here is how I learned mills mess:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiMHQ7nOa0k

Juggling

I can Juggle. Don’t believe me? Too bad. I learned because, while on a unicycle, I was tired of people asking “but can you juggle?” –what, is the Unicycling not talented enough? Well, hey look, I can! (on the unicycle!). When I learned to juggle, I learned the basic three ball routine and, after I got it down, I didn’t move on to anything else. I really got it down so that I could do very well, and I can do it on a unicycle. Recently I have started moving on to learning move juggling techniques, and I have been practicing for almost an hour every day this week (no Facebook, look at my free time!)  Anyway, juggling is fun and worth picking up, which I recommend you do!