Why Magicians Want To Teach Performance and Practice Skills

Why does a magic shop publish a blog just about performing, practicing and developing as a magician?

Why does the blog recommend that you slow down your spending on new magic tricks, and focus on the material you already have?

Why not just post news and reviews about the magic trick products that the magic shop sells?

The answer is so simple that we don’t even need to explain it. You can see why we love running the blog just from comments like this one from a customer to the magic shop:

‘Thanks for the help and advise I’ve received from the team so far.

In September 2012, I performed my first gig at a small wine bar in my local town, and now a year on and some great times performing magic at events, I’m enjoying learning, practicing and performing as a magician!

I couldn’t have done any of it without help from Ben Williams, Dominic Reyes , and the team at the Merchant of magic!! I recommend them for their experience as professional magicians. Their tips and stories help anyone prepare for the scary first gig, or even an unusual performance in difficult circumstances! Thank You!’ – Joel Spaven

It’s not about the magic shop.

Thanks Joel, but the hard work came from YOU. Like many of our customers, and especially the magicians that have personal tuition from us, we only point them in the right direction, suggest magic tricks that are the best for them, and show them where to find out more. Your success moving into performing for the public comes from you taking ACTION! Making a conscious decision to move your magic forward, rather than staying ‘safe’ and not getting out there to perform.

For us, it’s not really about selling in the end. If it was, we wouldn’t choose magic as a product! All the team are working magicians, madly and deeply in love with magic. The shop supports us, feeds our families and allows us to focus on magic full time, but it’s purpose is to push magic forwards, allow beginners to discover magic, push past the casual hobby stage and build a lifelong passion for studying magic and most importantly PERFORMING.

People lose interest in magic.

Over the years, we found out some interesting stats about magic, and peoples interest in it. The average period of interest a beginner has is around 6 months. 63% of beginners drop out of practice after 6 months dabbling in developing the skills of a magician. After that, a second ‘drop out’ period occurs at 2 years. One of the biggest factors for continuing learning magic past the 2 year period is PERFORMING. If a beginner starts performing during that initial 2 year period, they are highly likely to continue their interest in learning magic for many years to come.

The mission.

It’s these statistics that motivate the team. We want to find a way to push people past those ‘drop out’ danger zones. Give them motivation to practice, and gently encourage them to start showing people the magic tricks they have spend so long practicing. That’s what a real magic dealer should contribute to the magic community, and it’s the mission statement of the merchant of magic team.

How Magicians Find Their Core Skills – Advice from Gary Jones

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

Dominic Reyes up with professional magician Gary Jones, and he took time out to record a short video about discovering your own core skills in magic.

Gary Jones makes a valuable point here. It's so easy to feel that we need to master every move in magic. This gets reinforced as we watch other magicians perform, especially if you watch a lot of magic DVD's. We see many magicians, each performing their own magic tricks with an expert ease. In truth, we are seeing each performers BEST material. The half practiced, off the mark, or near miss material never gets the spot light. As a result, it's easy for us to assume that each professional magician is a master of all the classic techniques, and we should be the same.

In reality, each person has different strengths and weaknesses. One performer may naturally have a talent for manipulation, another may excel at palming, a third may not have much dexterity, but they are highly empathic and express that though skilled communication. Although some magicians achieve perfection across everything they work on, most tend to find a few core moves of techniques that they find easy to use. Once they have this core set of skills, they adapt and develop magic tricks that use these advantages.

DO THIS:

Make a list of the techniques that you find easy to perform.

Look at your other magic tricks and think about how they coul be adapted to use the moves you already have mastered.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel. Use your existing strengths, adapt your material and make the most of what you already know.

What Does a Good Double Lift Look Like – How to do Card Magic Tricks

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

Zoby writes:

What makes a good double lift, and how do I perform it?

That's a good question which has an annoying answer. The reason it's annoying is because the answer is different for each person.

Everyone develops their own style of technique, so each move performed should blend into your existing styleof card magic. If you tend to handle playing cards in a way that looks like you don't have any card skills (See the card magic of Lennart Green as an example of this), it will look very odd to suddenly perform a complex flourish as you turn a playing card over. Each move you perform should be invisible. Making every action look natural, and in keeping with all your previous actions with the playing cards, helps achieve this overall impression.

What to do:

Pick up a deck of cards and turn a single playing card over. Don't think about how you will turn the card over, just do it.

A good double lift should look EXACTLY like that.

Anything you add to the action, weakens your technique. Film yourself performing the simple action of turning over a playing card. You want to record your natural method, before you start playing with that action. Refer back to it as you learn the double lift. The closer you can get the sleight to resemble your natural action, the better your double lift will become.

How to learn the double lift:

If you are looking for expert tuition on a double lift, including a range of magic tricks that use the move as their core technique, these sources may be ideal for you:

Double Take By Gregory Wilson

Advanced Card Control Series

It's important that you choose a source of instruction that gives you some card magic tricks that use the double lift. Once you drill the technique in isolation, you need to be able to rehearse the move within the context of a full magic trick or routine, This will help you to develop the timing and flow of the move.