Introduction
Passing patterns can be beautiful, they can be challenging, they can be open to improvisation. We have collected some of our favorites and we hope to be able to juggle them with you sometime!
About our descriptions
Our goal is to describe a pattern in a way which you will understand. Failing that, we hope that you can view the pattern with JoePass!. The rest of this page goes through the various ways we may describe any given pattern. Some may have all of the styles of description, others very few.
This page is under construction.
Title, Aliases, and Software/Hardware counts
The title and aliases are the names of the pattern as we know it. We would be interested in hearing alternative names to the ones we have.
Accompanying the names are the number of passers (software) and the number of clubs (hardware) required to do the pattern. These can be launching off points -- add another passer and turn the pattern into a feed (line), or add another club and see whether you can still juggle the pattern.
Description
How to Do It
This section will usually contain some English description of the pattern, including how to start.
PPS-style description
This should be one of several descriptions in one of our various PPS notations. Some people like to vocalize the pass rhythms.
Causal diagram
Though causal diagrams are a subject for mathematical research, there is a lot of benefit to the (extra)ordinary club passer who can read them. Even more helpful is the ability to create them, as they help you work out the possibilities of patterns and to communicate them succinctly to others. There are several good descriptions already on the web - check out our external sites page if the following description doesn't help you enough.
There are different ways to represent the same causal diagram, and there are stylistic modifications from there. The following diagrams each describe 4-count (every others). The first has one row per juggler, the second has two:
Each block is a beat, and an arrow leading out of a boxshows whether the right or left hand of a given juggler is passing on that beat, and to which juggler's hand it is being thrown.
Causal diagrams alone are definitive in a two-person pattern, though it may not always be obvious what the best start may be. In a three-or-more- person pattern, it may also be necessary to know the relative positions of the jugglers. Are they in a triangle? A line? A feed pattern? Squared off? Also, which of the lines corresponds to which of the jugglers?
JoePass has a 'runaround editor', but we haven't quite gotten the hang of associating it with a pattern. Perhaps we need to add a 'comments' section to the causal diagram so that such explanations will be available per-pattern
The arrows in a causal diagram are intended to show from which hand/person a club is thrown, and to which hand/person it goes. It also shows why a club must be thrown, by way of showing which club is arriving to force it out.
This gets us to the confusing handacross or zip throw, which seems to go 'backwards in time' in a causal diagram:
Another thing which a causal diagram can tell us is the height of the throws. Singles, doubles, triples, etc., can all be depicted. Just count the beats from a 'normal' throw. JoePass! will allow each throw height to be a different color, if that is desired, though it only knows 'whole numbers' and will not tell you which passes are singles and which are 1.5-height 'lazy singles':
The sequence of throws is an obvious inference gained from a causal diagram. Here, we see that the two passers are not making throws of any kind at the same time:
We also try to make sure that hiccoughs or hurries are marked by JoePass! with an asterisk:
Siteswap
If there is a siteswap in a pattern description, it is almost never a 'vanilla' siteswap (2 hands), because we are describing passing patterns.
Image of juggler (starting) positions
Video clip
JoePass! file
Other Comments
Related patterns
This section may list patterns which bear some resemblance to the pattern. They may be some usual variation, some similar rhythm, something more or less complicated.
Copyright 2003-2004 (Aerial Mirage? Dave&Ron? Nobody? GNU Copyleft?)