Siteswap Families

I have seen many lists of siteswaps, personal and on the web, with many of them just random lists of numbers, and only sorted to amount of objects, and others are organized according to highest value in siteswap, and the length of a siteswap.

What I have done is to organize siteswaps into families.

I do this for two major reasons:

• Firstly, when exploring any area of juggling, I like to explore areas, or families, with similar characteristics.
• Secondly, these families are great ways of building up to siteswaps with more balls and/or higher throws, and also developing your skills in throwing particular heights.

Remember, when working on siteswaps that there is no definite height for a particular number. They need to be correct relative to one another. One major problem I have noticed is that people have their throws too close together. This will cause crashes, or make you loose your timing.

Also, I think that 3’s in siteswap are one of the hardest heights to throw, and most people juggle them too high in relation to their other throws. Either make the 3’s smaller, or the other throws higher, or both.

Alternating

High Low Ground State Tables

This family of siteswaps involves a high throw, or repetition of the same high throws, followed by a low throw, or repetition of the same low throws. These tables enable you to focus on only two heights at a time. This is helpful when you are learning siteswaps, or learning new throws in siteswaps, because it is harder to throw a whole lot of different height throws in combination, particularly when you are still developing the heights and rhythms that suit you when running siteswaps.

These tables can be used for building up to a number, for example when working on 7 balls, you can work on all patterns with less balls that have a 7 in them. The 5 ball and 6 ball siteswaps are particularly good. Another example is that if you are working on 4 club flats, you could work on the 3 club patterns with 4’s in them, on flats.

You can also use the tables to create more complicated siteswaps. Wherever you see a repetition of numbers, you can replace them with a siteswap from the table with that amount of objects.

For example, take the two ball siteswap 411. Replace the 11 with the one ball siteswap 20, and you get 420.

Taking the example further lets take 6222. You can then replace the 222 with 312 or 231 or 330 or 411 or 420 and get 6312 or 6231 or 6330 or 6411 or 6420.

Another example is to replace the larger numbers. Lets take 552, and replace it with the five ball siteswap 64 to get 642. You can also do the reverse and make more complicated siteswaps simpler.

They are also just nice siteswaps to juggle. Enjoy!

Pyramid – up by one

These are very nice looking patterns, because the throws keep getting higher, then drop down low and grow again.

Pyramid – down by two

Objects peak at the same time in this family of patterns (except for the single digits). I believe this occurs when there is difference of 2 in right/left hand throws, and a difference of 4 in right/right hand (or left/left hand).

Period 2 siteswaps

These patterns have all their entry and exit throws. Compare these to the “Pyramid – up by one” patterns above.

Period 3 siteswaps

These patterns have all their entry and exit throws. The first pattern for each number of balls is a combination of period 2 ground state and the base pattern. The ground state patterns (no entry/exit throws) can be used in combination with the ground state tables above.

Family of patterns that build up to b444b333444 – all are ground state

Pirouettes

With pirouettes you generally need a 22, 20 or 00 to do a pirouettes (or more of these in a row)

Basic Pirouettes

These patterns can be used in combination with the ground state tables or other ground state patterns.

7792244 variations

777790044 variations

779227722 variations with more/less objects

Notes:

• Line 1 – varying number of initial throws and midway throws
• Line 2 – varying number of initial throws, but keeping midway throws constant at 2 – after 5 balls, pirouette in first section, not in second
• Line 3 – keeping initial throws constant, but varying the number of midway throws – after 5 balls, no pirouettes first section, but a pirouette in second section
• Line 4 - keeping number of throws at start constant (3) and number of throws in middle constant (2)
• Some of them loose there pirouette ability – but it is a nice exercise is looking at variations of a pattern – some of them created nice pirouettes with more objects, some with less
• Can be done as half pirouette/half pirouette, half pirouette/full pirouette, full pirouette/half pirouette, and full pirouette/full pirouette

Two stage pirouettes

Can be done as half pirouette/half pirouette, half pirouette/full pirouette, full pirouette/half pirouette, and full pirouette/full pirouette

Couple of other notable patterns for 5 objects: d66226622 and 7777b006622

Synchronous and Synchronous Multiplex

Maximum Height 4

Maximum Height 6

6/4 Family

Note:

• I thought that I would mention the fact that I could do the 4 ball patterns before the three ball patterns, most probably because the zeros are hard to deal with.
• Also, with 4 balls, you get a definite response as to whether the heights are correct because you need to come back to synch first, whereas with 3 balls it is a lot easier to fudge it back to synch.

Note:

• The patterns above can be combined in any manner as every pattern comes back to ground state. This includes star and non star patterns

6/2 Family

Note:

• All the patterns above are non ground state. I will leave the entry and exit throws to the reader.
• The patterns in the last row do not really fit into the pattern of this family, but are very nice variations, so I have included them here.
• (6,2)* was a new pattern for me when I was working on this family.
• Also, (6x,2x)* is one of my favorite patterns

Note:

• At any time you can replace (6,6) with (6x,6x) in the table above.

5 Objects - 6/4/2

Combining these patterns:

With these patterns:

We get:

Maximum Height 8

Note:

• The patterns in the 4th & 5th rows do not really fit into the pattern of this family, but are very nice variations, so I have included them here.

Note:

• Can replace (4,4) with (4x,4x).
• Can combine exactly like the 6/4 patterns table, so not worth repeating

5 objects - 8/6/4/2

Combining this family:

With this family:

We get:

Combining the 3 object patterns 4/2 with the 7 object patterns 8/6 (average of 3 and 7 is 5).

Pirouettes

5 objects - 6/4 versions – 3up/5up