Jugglers and Guitarists

A Comparison of Two Completely Obsessed Sub-Cultures

Everyone needs a good obsession, and most of my life has been consumed by two seemingly polar opposites - juggling and guitar. Unfortunately, they don't go together very well as juggling flaming torches is the quickest way to break a fingernail. But they have so much in common that I thought it worth another rant here on the website.

Juggling is a whole world, full of all sorts of people chasing all sorts of things. Like guitarists, there are those that focus on technical ability. Then there are those that focus on aesthetics and artistry. And as in both worlds, there are those that put the two together, in my opinion with the best results.

Here is a breakdown of a typical juggler's path. Someone at university, or the local tennis club absent-mindedly starts juggling 3 balls one day. 99% of people see it and think "whatever", while the other doomed 1% raise their eyebrows. Something inside their heads says, "I must do this". Next thing you know it's Monday night at the local juggling club and you're on stilts. Life will never be the same again.

3 balls leads to 4. This is equivalent to learning barre chords on the guitar. Juggling an even number requires a new outlook. The penny drops when you realize it's 2 balls in each hand. A month later it's down and you move on to 5 balls. 20 minutes later you go back to 4. We're not ready to play Van Halen just yet.

One night the juggler picks up some clubs. This is like learning alternate bass "Travis picking". A whole world opens up and a lot of people stay with it for the long haul. These are often very interesting jugglers, who devote themselves to exploring something that makes sense to them. And so it goes on. Every time you add an object, the degree of difficulty goes up very rapidly. Rapidly that is, in direct proportion to the audience's lack of ability to count the objects. Just like playing guitar really fast.

Which brings me to the main point here. Jugglers are a lot like guitarists. They obsess about details, and pursue skills for their own sake. Like folk music, there's not exactly a financial payoff for those extra skills. It's just doing stuff for the sake of it, and for the fun of meeting other people weird enough to care. Juggling festivals are a blast. In one corner of the gym you have the "shredders"; a ring of people all launching 9 balls into the air, cheering at the lucky sod that keeps them off the ground. In another corner, there's the math types using phone numbers to describe patterns that are otherwise unthinkable. In another corner there are the people working the envelope with one rubber chicken and a teaspoon. Anyone who's been to a folk-festival might see a comparison here.

On a practical note, there are interesting comparisons between the way jugglers go about learning new tricks, and how guitarists learn things. Repetition is obviously a big part of learning a juggling trick, particularly to prepare it for a performance. The same is true for fingerstyle guitar, there is no substitute for direct repetition. However, this does not help much in learning new skills.

There are two distinct approaches to learning difficult juggling tricks. The most common way, is to just add the next ball and kind of go for it. If you know the pattern and keep throwing them up, eventually your brain just puts it together. This works quite well and makes for good fun as you never know when a new trick will suddenly drop. With juggling it's very much a plateau to plateau progression. The same is probably true for guitar.

The other more formal approach is typically used by those that go on to be the very best jugglers. In this case, the idea is to remove any imperfections before they get a chance to take root. In the first approach, you run the risk of developing a bad habit and it is very hard to unlearn it. This is so true of guitar, a good example being the right-hand pinky finger resting on the guitar face. Not a good habit, and very tedious to un-learn. These super jugglers work on 1 perfect throw, of the 9 objects they plan to keep aloft. Then 2 perfect throws, then 3 and so on. Maybe it's not quite so rigid, but you get the idea.

I suddenly stopped juggling madly one day. I'm not entirely sure why, it just didn't seem important any more. I suspect it was because I started getting worse at it. But every now and then I feel the madness lurking beneath the surface, and maybe like many before me... I will change back to the other side.

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