↓Skip to main content

CoastlessCon passing notes (15–23 July 2023)

This entry will be of interest to jugglers only, and really just those extreme-nerd club passers who like to attend PassOut or hang in the Passing Zone at EJC. It will likely be incomprehensible gibberish to anyone else. If it’s gibberish to you, there’s a companion entry written for everyone else.

However, if you’re curious, the centre of the universe for all things nerdy passing is the Passing.Zone website, run by our friend Juli. This has nothing to do with the Passing Zone performance duo of Owen Morse and John Wee (sorry guys). Passing.Zone has videos of several of the patterns mentioned below plus many other useful resources for the nerdy passer.

Essentially these are the notes I (Greg) made about who I passed what with during CoastlessCon 2023, augmented with photos of workshop notes, a bit of explanation, and links to Passing.Zone videos where I found them. I didn’t note any of my solo juggling (I did a bunch), and was a bit slapdash taking notes on the first day and at a few other points when I was either tired, having too much fun, or both.

For those who are nerdy passers, or want to be, there’s lots of fun stuff here ranging from actually quite easy to seriously advanced. Hit me up some time and we’ll pass.

15 July #

Maybe with Axel

Catch the Carrot workshop by Jenny (I think?), practiced with Markus and Christian. The video and write up on Passing.Zone are very good, but here are the notes I took:

  • Jim’s 3-count manipulator pattern, simple-ish
  • sequence is self-self-pass-pop-flip-carry-intercept
  • colour coded: one club is passes (blue), two clubs are pops (orange, the carrots), four clubs are selfs and carries (white)
  • carry goes to the hand with the carrot
  • always carry and catch the pop with the inside hand to maintain the colour code
  • useful to say “straight” or “cross” on the pass to keep track

6 count popcorn with Berengar

16 July #

Funky Bookends (77786) and Placebo (7966966) with Helene

Scrambled V notation workshop, taught by Wiebke S., juggled iA cC sC (Ivy) and iC cA sC (Wankel Engine) with Nicki, Anett and Tobias. Passing.Zone overview with videos of all 27 patterns

Scrambled V
Wiebke S.’s Scrambled V scorecard listing all 27 variations. The rules: pick a pattern, pass it for at least two complete cycles with three other people, you can’t pass two patterns with exactly the same group, then give the pattern a rating of 1 (yuck) to 5 (awesome). By the end of CoastlessCon I think a few people had done five or six. It’s a fun idea, but there were lots of other fun things to do!

Crossed iC cA sC (Wankle Engine) with Nicki, Anett and Jenny. Passing.Zone has a good explanation of crossed scrambles.

Funky bookends, 96677, and 7 club Why Not with Danny

17 July #

Swimming at a nearby lake with Juli, Karen, Di Hong, Xin Fang (Chia), Co, Danny, Wiebke C., Barbara, and Paula

Paternoster workshop by Toto, an “easy” and slightly silly big group pattern

Paternoster
Paternoster being juggled. It tended to fall apart quickly! Greg is in the pink shirt, third from the left.

Scrambled variant iC cA sA (Moonwalk) with Theo, Philipp, and Cyril

18 July #

Running (10 km with 500m ascent, 2 hours, of which about 1:07 actually running, up hills through the forest, including a castle visit), with Juli, Co, Kilian, John, Magnus, and Magnus’ dog

Missed the Baby Mix workshop but here’s the board:

Baby mix
Baby Mix. A moving multi-feed like Magermix but with four people instead of six. Based on Cyclone by Dave Davis, but where Cyclone is on 2 and 4 count, Baby Mix is on 1 and 2 count.

Lukas’ workshop on designing asynchronous feeds. Passed Parsnip feeding Not Why and 5 club Why Not with Kathi and John

Siteswap feeds
Designing asynchronous feeds. Key technique: take the feeder’s passing “interface” (e.g., XX-X- for Funky Bookends, where the X are passes), look for a matching partial interface for a feedee, then take the start from the feedee’s partner’s start. Of course the passes by the feeder must sum to the passes by the feedees, and need to line up somehow. For double passes, Lukas suggests simply sliding that throw in the interface one step forward as though the pass were a single; backwards for a zap.

Gare du Zap (6 handed siteswap a8999) with John and Markus. (There’s a variation with three extra jugglers called Gare du Zap^2.)

Gare du zap
Gare du Zap a8999, a gentle and fun six handed siteswap. Photo from John’s notebook.

Six club ultimates, 972, 966786 (chosen randomly, turned out to be not really fun) with Helene

Mini scrambles workshop by Wiebke S. Practiced with Ronja, Markus, and Hoschy

Mini scrambles
Mini scrambles. The core idea is to remove the substitute from the Scrambled V patterns, yielding a two-pass rather than a three-pass rotating feed. There are six variants. Left hands are not shown in this notation as they are all selfs.

New pattern with Juli, Wiebke C. and Danny. Mashup of Zippy feed with Phoenician Waltz manipulation A to C. (See the workshop at the very end of this entry, this was manipulation W.)

19 July #

North Wall Muckabout practice for workshop with Co, Wolfgang and Christian

Phoenician Waltz with Christian and Co

Why Not, Not Why, and Funky Bookends with Jeff

Scrambled V with Jeff, Magnus and John

Bamboolzled Panto workshop by Lukas. Practice with Lukas, John, and Psycho

Bamboozled Panto
Bamboozled Panto. The Scrambled V Panto variant but with two extra clubs; jugglers stand in a cross shape and move forward and back. One of the kids had drawn the kitty on the board; Lukas needed a circle for the notation anyway.

Co gave North Wall Muckabout workshop with me, Wolfgang and Christian as demo monkeys.

North Wall Muckabout
North Wall Muckabout, designed by Co. Based on the Muckabout manipulation but with the jugglers moving in a figure 8. In Co’s vision of the full pattern, which we didn’t try, there would be two manipulators, one at each end.

Animal crossing workshop given by Mees (with Hanna, Jenny, Piet, Wiebke S., Lars, and Juli), practiced the Cubs manipulation with Theo, Annadore, Cyril and Paula.

Animal Crossing
Animal Crossing. Based on a Havana Weave feed, the full pattern has three manipulators (so seven people total) each doing one of the named manipulations and trying hard not to crash into one another. In the workshop we practiced the base pattern and the Cubs manipulation. The demo of the full pattern looked like delightful chaos!

20 July #

Volleyclub with Wolfgang, Philipp, Théo, John, Xin Fang (Chia)

5 count popcorn and Vitoria with Jeff

Watched Fight Night playoffs

  • Quarters
    • Lukas 5 Psycho 0
    • Paula 5 Cyril 3
    • Matty 5 Jonathan 2
    • Kilian 5 Wiebke 0
  • Semis
    • Lukas 5 Matti 4
    • Kilian 5 Paula 0
  • Third place consolation final
    • Paula 5 Matty 4
  • Final
    • Kilian 5 Lukas 0

Mini and micro Aidan workshop by Cyril and Annadore, practice with Berengar

Mini and micro Aidan
The mini and micro Aidan. A two-person manipulator pattern based on the Aidan Scrambled V manipulation. Surprisingly fun.

Zaps workshop by John and Jonathan. Practiced with Hecke

Zaps workshop
Zaps workshop. I practiced with Hecke (shown, centre) who is a beginner juggler and the father of a teenager who attended CoastlessCon. He was visiting for the day. On the right is Nicki, the CoastlessCon host. Not shown is Hecke’s child, who had flopped on Nicki’s lap.

Semi-sync 4p4p33 vs 3p3p44 with Jeff

Lazy Lukas workshop by Lukas, Juli, Piet, and Kathi. Practiced with Vero, Magnus, and Nicki

Lazy Lukas
Lazy Lukas. The idea is that the lazy juggler (“Lukas”) stands still and passes to each of the three other jugglers in turn, who rotate around in a conveyor belt fashion, ending each sequence by carrying to Lukas while the next in line intercepts. This can be done with many four-handed siteswaps. Lazy 96677 was quite challenging; Lazy 972 had more frantic running but was easier to juggle. Definitely fun.

Lazy Lukas
Lazy Lukas 97892 (I think) being passed by Lukas, Piet, Juli, and Kathi.

75666, 756, and 5 with Magnus

21 July #

56464 and 5 with Magnus

Minis workshop by Juli and Hoschy, practiced with Xin Fang (Chia)

Minis
Minis are patterns with fewer than three clubs per juggler, normally juggled side by side. The siteswap and description at the bottom is for the “Hoschy” pattern, which Juli and Hoschy made up while goofing around one day at the beach, and may be incorrect.

Juli and Hoschy passing Martin
Juli and Hoschy demonstrating “Martin” 32p21p.

Funky Bookends and 4p3p3 vs 3p4p4 (?) with Barbara

Dolby 7.1 workshop by Uwe, Helene and Piet. I just watched, as I had injured my thumb playing volley-club and didn’t want to catch that many doubles.

Dolby 7.1
Dolby 7.1 is an extension of Dolby 5.1 with more clubs and double passes.

Period 6 patterns workshop with “impossible” local siteswaps by Mees and Piet. Generated 646455 and tried it with Théo; cute easy pattern.

Period 6 and 10 siteswaps
Period 6 and 10 siteswaps. The idea was to learn how to generate four-handed siteswaps that include locally-impossible sequences, using Tilmann’s Siteswap Generator app for Android or Lars’ web site). These will all be even period; it’s nice if the local period is odd so the patterns mirror locally and feel longer.

Why Not About workshop by Uwe, Juli and John. Practiced with Barbara and Hoschy

Why Not About
Why Not About is a manipulation on Why Not with a monstrously long 180-beat total cycle – fifteen base beats, times three positions, times two handedness, with both straight and crossing passes. Uwe says he’s juggled a complete cycle once, and that took several juggling conventions of practice with the same partners.

Why Not About 2
A printed Why Not About handout by Wiebke S., with some useful explanation.

22 July #

MinuEd with Markus and Danny

MinuEd
MinuEd. Not a workshop, but we jotted it on the board, so here it is.

Suwecide Bunny (45678-about) workshop by Uwe, Mees and Piet. Practiced with Wiebke S. and Jonathan

Suwecide Bunny
Suwecide Bunny is a pattern by Uwe (sUWEcide, get it?) that extends Juli’s Killer Bunny About from its 456 base pattern to 45678. The manipulation is the same — intercept the 4 as a side-by-side delivery — but the pattern is longer and a bit harder. Fun. There was a Killer Bunny About workshop earlier in the convention, but apparently I forgot to make notes.

Gare du Zap a8999 (see above) with John and Kathi

Chopped up B (iB cB sB) with Juli, Berengar and Anchen

Wiebke’s Waltz workshop by Danny, Wiebke C., Markus and Wiebke S. Practiced with Juli, Co, and Uwe.

Wiebke’s Waltz
The Wedding Waltzes were developed at this convention by Wiebke C. (shown) and Danny, and named in honour of their marriage two weeks previous (congratulations, you crazy kids!). The base is the same eight-beat rotating feed as Zippy, but with manipulations taken more or less from Dave Davis’ Phoenecian Waltz. Wiebke’s Waltz is the version with the manipulator labelled “W”, and I worked on it with them while they were figuring it out earlier in the week. The carry-substitute-substitute sequence on beats 8, 1 and 4 is quite challenging, but you can replace beats 8 and 1 by having W and A tap their clubs together, labelled “wedding bell” in the photo. I think that was Juli’s idea. W and D are compatible (i.e., can be run simultaneously with two manipulators), and W2 is arguably closest to Phoenecian Waltz.

↑