How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Learning Magic Tricks – A Better Way to Practice

by Merchant of Magic 23 Comments

how-to-practice-magic-tricks-better-001By Noa Kageyama, Ph.D.

Edited and adapted for magicians by Mark Hanson

While it may be true that there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going, there certainly are ways of needlessly prolonging the journey. Magicians often waste lots of time because nobody ever taught them the most effective and efficient way to practice their magic. Whether it’s learning how to code, improving your writing skills, or learning magic tricks, practicing the right way can mean the difference between good and great.

You have probably heard the old joke about the tourist who asks a cab driver how to get to Carnegie Hall, only to be told: “Practice, practice, practice!”

My first experience of practice was when I started to play the violin at age two, and for as long as I can remember, there was one question which haunted me every day.

Am I practicing enough?

What Do Performers Say?

I scoured books and interviews with great artists, looking for a consensus on practice time that would ease my conscience. I read an interview with Rubinstein, in which he stated that nobody should have to practice more than four hours a day. He explained that if you needed that much time, you probably weren’t doing it right.

And then there was violinist Nathan Milstein who once asked his teacher Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. Auer responded by saying “Practice with your fingers and you need all day. Practice with your mind and you will do as much in 1 1/2 hours.”

Even Heifetz indicated that he never believed in practicing too much, and that excessive practice is “just as bad as practicing too little!” He claimed that he practiced no more than three hours per day on average, and that he didn’t practice at all on Sundays.

It seemed that four hours should be enough. So I breathed easy for a bit. And then I learned about the work of Dr. K. Anders Ericsson.

What Do Psychologists Say about learning magic tricks?

When it comes to understanding expertise and expert performance, psychologist Dr. Ericsson is perhaps the world’s leading authority. His scientific research is the basis for the “10,000-hour rule” which suggests that it requires at least ten years and/or 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve an expert level of performance in any given domain.

That’s a pretty big number. So large, that at first I missed the most important factor in the equation.

Deliberate practice.

Meaning, that there is a specific type of practice that facilitates the attainment of an elite level of performance. And then there’s the other kind of practice that most of us are more familiar with.

Mindless Practice

Have you ever observed a magician (or athlete, actor, trial attorney) engage in practice? You’ll notice that most practice resembles one of the following distinct patterns.

1. Broken record method: This is where we simply repeat the same thing over and over. Same tennis serve. Same set of cuts and shuffles. Same powerpoint presentation. From a distance it might look like practice, but much of it is simply mindless repetition.

2. Autopilot method: This is where we activate our autopilot system and coast. Recite our sales pitch three times. Play a round of golf. Run through a complete magic routine from start to finish.

3. Hybrid method: Then there’s the combined approach. Going through a routine until you hit something you don’t like, at which point you stop, repeat the moves over and over until it starts to look better, and then resume the routine until you find the next thing you don’t like, at which point you repeat the whole process over again.

Three Problems

Unfortunately, there are three problems with practicing this way.

1. It’s a waste of time: Why? For one, very little productive learning takes place when we practice this way. This is why you can “practice” something for hours, days, or weeks, and still not improve all that much. Even worse, you are actually digging yourself a hole, because this model of practicing strengthens undesirable habits and errors, increasing the likelihood of more consistently inconsistent performances.

This also makes it more difficult to clean up these bad habits as time goes on – so you are adding to the amount of future practice time you will need in order to eliminate these undesirable tendencies. To quote a professor I once worked with: “Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.”

2. It makes you less confident: In addition, practicing mindlessly lowers your confidence, as a part of you realizes you don’t really know how to produce the results you are looking for. Even if you have a fairly high success rate in the most difficult moves, there’s a sense of uncertainty deep down that just won’t go away.

Real on-stage confidence comes from (a) being able to nail it consistently, (b) knowing that this isn’t a coincidence but that you can do it correctly on demand, because (c) you know precisely why you nail it or miss it – i.e. you have identified the key technical or mechanical factors that are necessary to perform the trick perfectly every time.

3. It is mind-numbingly dull: Practicing mindlessly is a chore. We’ve all had well-meaning fellow magician tell us to go home and practice your Elmsley Count x number of times, or to practice x number of hours, right? But why are we measuring success in units of practice time? What we need are more specific results-oriented outcome goals – such as, practice this move until it looks natural, or practice this sleight until you can figure out how to make it lead perfectly into ABC.

Deliberate Practice

So what is the alternative? Deliberate, or mindful practice is a systematic and highly structured activity, that is, for lack of a better word, more scientific. Instead of mindless trial and error, it is an active and thoughtful process of hypothesis testing where we relentlessly seek solutions to clearly defined problems.

Deliberate practice is often slow, and involves repetition of small and very specific sections of a skill instead of just running through the whole trick. For example,  you might work on just the first sleight of an ambitious card routine to make sure that it looks exactly the way you want, instead of performing the entire first revelation that the playing card is now at the top of the deck.

Deliberate practice also involves monitoring one’s performance – in real-time and via recordings – continually looking for new ways to improve. This means being observant and keenly aware of what happens, so that you can tell yourself exactly what went wrong. For instance, was the first turn over too fast? Too elaborate? Too controlled? Too close to the body? Too low down?

Let’s say that when you turned the playing card over, it was too fast and looked like you were trying to hide something. Well, how fast was it? A little? A lot? What should the movement look like in its realism, natural form? How much more speed did you add when ‘mimicking’ the real natural movement?

Ok, the move was a little fast, just a tiny bit rushed, and required a move clear and natural looking gesture with your finger and thumb in order to be consistent with the natural movement. So, why was the move fast? What did you do? What do you need to do instead to make sure the move is perfectly paced every time? How do you ensure that the speed is just as you want it to be, and how do you get a consistent speed each time you begin the sleight?

Now, let’s imagine you video recorded each trial repetition, and could watch the last attempt. Does that combination of ingredients give you the desired result? Does that combination of elements convey the natural movement you are attempting to mimicked?

If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is. Which might explain why few take the time to practice this way. To stop, analyze what went wrong, why it happened, and how they can produce different results the next time.

Simple though it may sound, it took me years to figure this out. Yet it remains the most valuable and enduring lesson I have ever had. The principles of deliberate practice have remained relevant no matter what skill I must learn next. Be it the practice of psychology, building an audience for a blog, parenting, or making the perfect smoothie, how I spend my practice time remains more important than how much time I spend practicing.

How to Accelerate Skill Development

Here are the five principles I would want to share with a younger version of myself. I hope you find something of value on this list as well.

1. Focus is everything: 
Keep practice sessions limited to a duration that allows you to stay focused. This may be as short as 10-20 minutes, and as long as 45-60+ minutes.

2. Timing is everything, too: Keep track of times during the day when you tend to have the most energy. This may be first thing in the morning, or right before lunch. Try to do your practicing during these naturally productive periods, when you are able to focus and think most clearly. What to do in your naturally unproductive times? I say take a guilt-free nap.

3. Don’t trust your memory: Use a practice notebook. Plan out your practice, and keep track of your practice goals and what you discover during your practice sessions. The key to getting into “the flow” when practicing is to constantly strive for clarity of intention. Have a crystal clear idea of what you want (e.g. the movement you want to perfect, or specific articulation, intonation, etc. that you’d like to be able to execute consistently in the tricks ‘patter’), and be relentless in your search for ever better solutions.

When you stumble onto a new insight or discover a solution to a problem, write it down! As you practice more mindfully, you’ll began making so many micro-discoveries that you will need written reminders to remember them all.

4. Smarter, not harder: When things aren’t working, sometimes we simply have to practice more. And then there are times when it means we have to go in a different direction.

Dominic Reyes told me about the time he started learning the ‘bottle through table trick’. For some reason, he just wasn’t getting the right misdirection at the critical moment of the trick and couldn’t find a way to build it into the style of the trick that preceded it. He kept getting busted. It would have been very easy for him to simply abandon the trick and add something else to his act at that point. He kept at it, but didn’t seem to be making progress and started to dread performing it.

Instead of stubbornly persisting with a strategy that clearly wasn’t working, he forced myself to stop. He brainstormed solutions to the problem for a day or two, and wrote down ideas as they occurred to him. When he had a list of some promising solutions, he started experimenting.

He eventually came up with a solution that worked, and it’s now one of the tricks he enjoys performing the most.

5. Stay on target with a problem-solving model: 
It’s extraordinarily easy to drift into mindless practice mode. Keep yourself on task using the 6-step problem solving model below.

  • Define the problem. (What result did I just get? What do I want this move to look like instead?)
  • Analyze the problem. (What is causing it to sound like this?)
  • Identify potential solutions. (What can I tweak to make it look more like I want?)
  • Test the potential solutions and select the most effective one. (What tweaks seem to work best?)
  • Implement the best solution. (Reinforce these tweaks to make the changes permanent.)
  • Monitor implementation. (Do these changes continue to produce the results I’m looking for?
  • Make Your Time Count

It doesn’t matter if we are talking about perfecting card technique, improving your coin work, becoming a better mentalist, improving your marketing skills, or becoming a more effective pick-pocket.

Life is short. Time is our most valuable commodity. If you’re going to practice, you might as well do it right.

This article is an edited version of an original article by Noa Kageyama, Ph.D. It has been reproduced and edited in parts to relate to the subject of magic practice, with the permission of the author.

About Noa Kageyama, Ph.D.

Sport & performance psychologist Dr. Noa Kageyama serves on the faculty of The Juilliard School and the New World Symphony, where he specializes in teaching performing artists how to utilize sport psychology principles to perform up to their abilities under stress.

Also a conservatory-trained violinist with degrees from Juilliard and Oberlin. Dr. Kageyama’s work has been featured in media outlets ranging from The Wall Street Journal to Musical America.

The Merchant of Magic highly recommends you visit his excellent website Bullet Proof Musician Although written specifically for musicians, it has a wealth of information that will improve your magic practice.

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Filed Under: Card Magic Tricks Tagged With: beginners, learning magic, magic advice, practice

Comments

  1. Kevin Craig says

    September 4, 2012 at 8:43 pm

    Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. I agree with a lot that has been written here but would add that visualisation is one method that I use, as do some athletes, this is not simply a matter of seeing what you want to happen but looking at each element in detail and visualising it in perfect performance. I would also suggest that real life performance, in front of your public will soon weed out any elements that need ajusting. I know that some magicians would say that an effect should not be aired before it’s perfect, but perfect for whom?

    Reply
    • Llewellyn Mngadi says

      March 6, 2019 at 11:12 am

      Hello. My name is Llewellyn Mngadi. I AGREE with you 100% !!! I also use VISUALISATION when I practice my magic. I also LOVE to practice in front of the MIRROR !!! MIRROR practice often makes the DIFFERENCE between a PROFESSIONAL magician and a SLOPPY magician !!!

      Reply
  2. Peter Hart says

    May 17, 2013 at 3:16 pm

    Some very good advice. I would also add that your audience see what they expect to see, so don’t be too hard on yourself if you think you’re not nailing the routine. Odds are that when performed in front of a “muggle” it will work a treat.

    Reply
    • The Merchant of Magic says

      May 17, 2013 at 3:33 pm

      Thanks Peter. Your right, but there’s a big BUT! It’s very easy to give ourselves excuses, and find reasons to take short cuts. Don’t assume things will fly by spectators. Test first.

      We often see terrible magic with the excuse ‘they never notice’. They often do, but are too polite to mention, the moment passes or the next move fools them.

      Never stop trying to be the best you can. Remember that you don’t actually have to be THE best, but always work towards being it. It’s that journey that counts.

      Reply
      • Llewellyn Mngadi says

        March 6, 2019 at 11:23 am

        My name is Llewellyn Mngadi. Mistakes sometimes HAPPEN during a trick, but as a PROFESSIONAL magician, you must ALWAYS strive to be FLAWLESS !!! It is very POSSIBLE to be a FLAWLESS MAGICIAN !!! It just takes hours of DEDICATED PRACTICE. Magicians should NOT make excuses for their SLOPPINESS !!! There is NO excuse for SLOPPINESS in MAGIC !!! Cheers.

        Reply
  3. Clever & the crazy rabbit. says

    August 5, 2013 at 4:42 pm

    There are some usefull things like “The key to getting into “the flow”
    and some nice comments to 🙂

    But some of this I have heard before:
    Define and analyze the problem – and start all my worries? (I’m an overthinker and I would never stop if i started this)
    Make Your Time Count! – and get stress? (I don’t even have a watch)
    Don’t trust your memory or your notebook in the washing-machine! (Not again!)
    Start with total panic and then trust somebody else to fix things for you… (Become hypnotized facing fake problems that sombody from a newsletter can solve!).

    Just follow the rule to be perfect – and that would be nice, right?
    (What? A rule? Are you saying i’m not perfect?)
     
    I know it helps to have some sort of IQ… (Doh!)
    But here’s the advices I find most important:

    1. Cut and repeat (as small and slowly as needed).
    Yes! Cut the task down into smaller and smaller pieces until it works easily.
    I learned the moonlight sonata in this way: One tone at a time.
    When I was sure about the first five tones, I went ahead to the next five etc.
    .. From there it was easy to get success. And I never learned to read music, just listen.
    The same applies to everything else I learn:
    to speak 13 languages ​​(one is my native language)
    to play several instruments
    to remember all the plants, birds and insects in my area (I know more than 2000 species in Latin)
    to play with magic tricks, etc.

    Remember that an error is just a reminder that you need to slow that part down (until it’s not an error anymore).

    2 Make it fun.
    Yeeeeeehaaa! If it is not fun, use your imagination to at least make the task enjoyable …
    Otherwise, find a new interest that you are passionate about…
    Collect dust or stamps perhaps?

    3 It is a procces.
    Never say: “I can not” in any form this will show up. No more “Yes, but…”, “I’m just not the type that…” or “I’ll never learn”.
    Simply say: “I am practicing this”.

    4. Live healthy.
    Yes, you won’t regret this! Eat all your broccoli, use that old bicycle etc.
    No refined sugar, dairy or gluten products that disturbs your body.
    Then you can trust your memory and everything else will fall to place.
    It is proven that my memory is 60% better than the average person now.
    I think that it’s normal and that everybody else are just playing Russian Roulette with their health.

    Clever & the crazy rabbit.

    Reply
    • Dominic Reyes says

      August 8, 2013 at 12:13 am

      Great Comment! I especially like number 3:

      3 It is a process.
      Never say: “I can not” in any form this will show up. No more “Yes, but…”, “I’m just not the type that…” or “I’ll never learn”.
      Simply say: “I am practicing this”.

      Thanks for sharing this!

      Dominic

      Reply
  4. George Karitu says

    December 21, 2013 at 7:15 pm

    Dear Domonic,

    Thanks I would like to learn some exiting magic that could make people happy.But I am too green.How do I start.Example, I was very exited by everything Dynamo did and wonder if I can do even one of them.But also Confirm.Didd he really walk on water?,Is levitating anything realy possible?Is it really possible to make yourself unliftable etc? Ypu ean Magic is real and not spiritual?

    George,

    KENYA

    Reply
    • Dominic Reyes says

      January 2, 2014 at 10:42 am

      Hi George

      Great news that you have decided to start learning magic! You can get some excellent books on magic technique from your local library, or invest in them from a magic shop. If you have one near you, try to support your local magic shop. If not, we have a range of good places to start here : http://www.magicshop.co.uk/BEGINNERS__-_START_HERE/c91/index.html

       

      Good luck, practice every day and let us know how you get on!

      Dominic

      Reply
    • Llewellyn Mngadi says

      March 6, 2019 at 11:31 am

      Hello George. My name is Llewellyn. You can be a BRILLIANT magician if you want to be !!! Magic looks AMAZING and DIFFICULT to do, but the SECRET behind the MAGIC is very, very, very SIMPLE !!! You will even LAUGH at how SIMPLE it is to FOOL people !!!

      Reply
  5. dave says

    April 4, 2014 at 2:10 am

    wow….. loved reading this. lost the technique of good practice techniques…and…this definitely was an eye opener! Thank you very much Dominic!!

    Reply

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