So what makes a good juggling song?  I don’t think there’s a single thing.  I tend to stay away from music that is heavy on lyrics.  It’s hard to really get into a mindset of your own when you’re essentially being talked to by a song.  Music that has different sections with different feelings is nice as well, because it gives you key points of the music to match.  For example, the song may build for a while then burst into an epic chorus.  You can follow the music as it builds up and unleash a really flashy trick simultaneous with the chorus.  Also, everyone has their own musical taste to deal with.  I tend to like electronic/pop/classical music for my juggling, which may not be everyones thing.  Sometimes movie/videogame soundtracks get in there too.  So here are some of strange and exciting songs I juggle to regularly:

Booka Shade – Night Falls

she – Atomic

Lady Gaga – Starstruck

she – Coloris

Zoe Keating – Tetrishead

Ludovico Einaudi – Primavera

Lisa Miskovsky – Still Alive

Capsule – Jumper

Madonna – Die Another Day

James Newton Howard – The Gravel Road

Will I Break Anything?

This is usually only an issue indoors, and with specific equipment.  If you’re using beanbags, you aren’t likely to break much even if you’re indoors and close to furniture.  But maybe you’re using clubs, or knives (you maniac) or FIRE.  Unless you can clear out a juggling DMZ in your living room, chances are a wild club will hit something of value, and the club always wins that battle.  So to avoid breaking stuff when you’re juggling larger objects, move to a very clear area, or go outside, that’s where I learned clubs.

Will My Equipment Get Messed Up?

Are you juggling clubs over asphalt?  Juggling stage balls near a sewer drain?  Passing beanbags near a trash can?  These are easy ways to get your equipment screwed up.  Usually you’ll just get scratches or grime, but that still causes problems.  I know if there’s noticeable scratches or dirt on the object I’m using, I’ll start to think about it when I feel it, and when I’m juggling, the less thinking the better.

Will I Lose Stuff?

When you’re practicing juggling and trying new things, stuff is going to drop, and when they drop, they roll.  They roll under beds and dressers.  Into piles of clothing.  Behind computer desks.  After years of juggling you’ll become a master of visualizing where the balls rolled to, but you’ll save yourself a lot of hassle if you stay away from areas with crevices and ball sized gaps.

The terrible, terrible light.

The best kind of light for juggling comes from a few different angles, and is soft on the eyes.  The worst is light coming straight on, that turns whatever you’re juggling into shapeless black silhouettes.  I like to set up enough lights from enough sides that there aren’t a lot of shadows being cast too, that can be a bit confusing.  Having your back to the sun is almost always good too.

The second revision was probably the most complicated this site ever became.  There was a bit of everything: custom photo galleries, video display systems, calendars, video reviews, polls, articles;  it was a little crazy.

The third revision was the first site to really be focused on juggling.  Teaching juggling, talking juggling, promoting juggling.  It was also the first site to be on jugglingjon.com instead of .net.  Up until then, a Kenyan domain squatting company had owned it, and I got lucky one day and registered it when it was released.

Sometime later, when  I switched from Todd Smith Red/Black beanbags to a set of Dube Black/Yellow beanbags, I decided to redesign my site to match the new colors.  The old site was also heavy on design but light on content areas.  So the new site would have to be more content-friendly.  Also, I got hassled a bit about the pink.

This was also the first site I developed upon a custom content-management system I developed in PHP/mySQL.  But the problem with custom developed stuff is, you’re the only person who develops for it.  So the site became harder to deal with as I wanted to add different types of content.  So jugglingjon.com version 5.0 was born.  Built on WordPress, and fully customized, I’m hoping this will be the end of major site revisions and the beginning of an era where I can do gradual changes to the site without worrying about the backend getting out of date.

So there it is.  I’ll be stamping out some bugs and adding features in the next few days, but other than that, this is the new digs.

I love 3 ball juggling because of the immense library of complex patterns, the transitions between those patterns, and the spare time available for contact stalls/music beat matching; things which numbers juggling lacks.  These are the allowances for interpretation in juggling, the artistic element.  So to me, when I do numbers juggling, it feels rote.  Half the fun is gone.

So do I even bother with it?  Yes, I do.  I think of 5 ball juggling as more of a juggling exercise than a pastime in its own right; it’s great for improving your hand speed and consistency.  Also, it makes me appreciate 3 ball juggling again.  When I practice juggling, I’m always cycling between 3 and 5 ball, and my best 3 ball juggling always happens right after I’ve finished with 5.  The change makes you feel free, and more able to appreciate the beauty in what you’re doing.

There are:
9x pins (Todd Smith, Beard)
25x beanbags (Dube, Todd Smith, Misc)
6x  Silicone Balls (Propworks)
3x MMX Plus Balls (Play)
3x Illuminated Beanbags (Nighthack)
3x Illuminated Balls (Funtrix)
3x Glow in the Dark Balls (Todd Smith)
3x 2.5lb Weighted Exerballs (Dube)
3x Rings (Todd Smith)
1x Acrylic Contact Juggling Ball (Dube)
15x Mini Juggling Balls
1x Lonely Juggling Torch (Dube)

My personal favorites are the MMX Plus balls, the European style Todd Smith pins, the Nighthack juggling balls, and the Black/yellow Dube beanbags.  More pictures below.

These things are unbelievable.  Just the little weight added on makes them perfect for my style of juggling because they allow me to move a little faster.  The grip is also a nice upgrade as well, despite the fact you need to clean them to maintain it (it’s worth it).

Of course the property silicone balls are known for is how consistently they bounce, which is something I’m looking forward to playing with more.  Bouncing probably won’t make it into my next video, but the new balls definitely will.

Juggling isn’t like most activities, where you slowly progress through hard work.  In fact, I find that the longer I brute force practice a routine, the worse I get at it.  Juggling is something that you learn in a sequence of epiphanies. You can work forever at something, and then it will just click, and you’ll get a feel for how to do it and have no trouble at all.  What I have discovered, is that those moments just don’t happen when you’re frustrated.  I get the best results if I work to the point where I’m about to get frustrated, then come back to it in a day or two.  More often than not, I’m better at whatever I was doing than when I left off.  I don’t understand why that is with juggling, but it’s been true for me since I started.

That being said, I think another big part of learning juggling is effort based, and that is achieving consistency in what you’re doing.  When I started to juggle, I picked up a bunch of the basics like columns, backcrosses, and tennis at the same time, and then spent a long time working on moving between the tricks without too much difficulty.  During college, during graduate school, and after graduation I had similar periods where I learn a ton of new techniques in a short amount of time, then nothing for a while.  The nature of juggling is that you can learn something new accidentally or without a lot of effort, but gaining consistency in it is where the effort is spent.  Learning to throw at the same height, learning to throw accurately behind your back, these are things that you have to nail down through practice and repetition, but they’re also things that you don’t really get frustrated with, because you can show gradual improvement.

I don’t know everyone else experiences juggling this way; but if you do, I think there’s value in understanding that driving yourself to frustration with a new trick isn’t necessarily the best way for everyone to learn juggling.  Learn something new casually, and keep it fun; and once it clicks, drop the hammer and practice it until it’s perfect enough that you’re bored with it, and repeat.