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Dominic Reyes – Magiens Verden Magazine Interview – Magic Practice

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

Dominic ReyesInterview with Dominic Reyes, conducted by Sune Alexandersen and published in MAGIENS VERDEN Magazine November 2015

 

– Tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been into magic and how did your interest start?

Hello everyone! I’m Dominic Reyes and I’m lucky enough to get to do something I would quite happily do for free, as a career. For the past 20 years, I’ve been a professional close-up magician, and I also own a bricks and mortar magic shop called The Merchant of Magic (www.MagicShop.co.uk)

I became fascinated by magic as a kid. I loved watching it on TV, but never though it would be something I would do. I played with magic sets given to me at Christmas, but then I discovered ‘girls’ and life got in the way… It wasn’t until my first term at university studying for a Psychology Degree that I discovered my first trick. It’s odd, but it happened because I was trying to buy a unicycle…

The guys in my student house were into juggling/circus skills for a laugh that summer. I got the bug and headed into town to buy a unicycle. You know how it is when you are prepared to do ANYTHING as a distraction from study and revision…  The small shop also had a stand of magic tricks, and I picked up a Vernet Thumb Tip and silk. Just the thing to freak out everyone that evening in the house! It did, and at that moment I discovered my first important lesson in magic:

If you show people something magical and cool, they are going to say ‘Show us more…’ you better have something to follow it up..

I only had one trick!  The next day, I was back at the shop waiting for it to open. I slowly brought every trick they sold. The shop only stocked ten items, but it was enough for me to discover I simply loved performing magic more than anything else. I was hooked for life.

 

You’ve written an excellent ebook on the art of practicing magic, and you’ve even made it freely available. Tell us how did the project start and why did you choose to give it away for free?

Thank you, that’s nice of you to say. The project came about through playing with ‘big data’. The magic shop has been going online for the past 16 years. That’s a lot of data about magicians buying habits. I noticed something interesting in the data. The life cycle of a beginner is roughly six months. After half a year, most people with a casual interest in close-up magic tricks move on to their next new hobby. If they continue past six months, there is a second drop off point after two years. Every day, hundreds of people discover magic, and hundreds forget about it. It’s a constant renewing cycle, and, on the whole, is a good thing. Out of this ‘churn’ rises a handful of magicians that continue to develop and become excellent. It’s just like panning for gold. The more full pans of sand, the more nuggets of gold get found. The sand will simply drop back into the river.

So, why the drop-off? The data showed me a lot more things. It’s a sample over 16 years of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The most significant factor that influenced this drop-off rate was how magicians approach magic practice.

Keeping a magic shop’s customers in love with magic long enough for it to become a lifelong passion, is pretty important to a magic shop. It’s also important to magic as an art. There’s so little taught on the subject. Most magic tricks deal with WHAT to learn, rather than how to approach learning it. How many magic tricks have you brought that come with a study plan?

That’s why I wrote Approaching Magic Practice. It’s my small attempt try to stop people getting frustrated with the lack of progress they often experience in the first few months of learning to become a magician.

I’m getting loads of thank you emails about the book. Almost everyone seems surprised that I’ve made it free. It’s simple really.. I don’t want to SELL it. I don’t want to have to persuade people to read it. I already sell over 20,000 magic tricks through Merchant of Magic. Approaching Magic Practice isn’t a ‘product’. The book is paying something forward and trying to stop people from dropping out of the hobby because they don’t feel they can become as good as they should be.

In the first month of release, the book has already been downloaded many thousands of times from readers all over the world. If I charged for the book, many of them simply wouldn’t spend their ‘magic bucks’ on it. Magicians who don’t have a systematic program of practice tend to focus on buying new magic tricks constantly. They tend to jump from trick to trick, never really mastering any of them. Most magicians want to purchase ‘tricks’ rather than something about practice.. Those people are exactly who the book has been geared to help the most, so making it free, means more people will read it.

 

– Tell us a little bit about the project?

The book is 102 pages of advice I give to magicians that come to the magic shop for personal tuition, or that contact me through my blog. There’s a systematic method of daily practice that you can apply to every magic trick you want to master. I teach the 20/20/20 practice drill method. It’s a tried and tested system that’s ideal for people that don’t have a lot of time on their hands. I’ve tried hard to make it light and easy to read and it’s peppered with questions and answers from magicians that have contacted the shop over the years to ask about learning a technique.

Topics Include:

Why magicians waste so much time getting little result
How to avoid the ‘pitfall of choice’
A structured, focused practice program
Ways to stay motivated
How to judge your progress
The psychology of practice techniques
How to spot and correct errors
Example study programs
Ways to Improve your existing material
How to build presentation into your practice
The 20/20/20 method of practice
Techniques to avoid performance drift
How to set practice goals
The best way to remove a practice plateau

 
What are some common pitfalls magicians fall into when practising?

There’s quite a few, but the good news is that they are all easy to fix. The most common pitfall is the ‘magic binge’. Your excitement about magic means that you practice for hours at a time in huge ‘all evening’ practice sessions. These tend to be unstructured with no set goal in mind. The results tend to be disappointing as you either get ‘burned out’ and stop practicing for a while, decide you just don’t have enough time to commit to regular practice, or you get bored and jump for one trick to the next, so no real progress is made. These binge sessions slowly transform into browsing the internet for new tricks, watching magic DVD’s, reading magic books, or browsing the internet magic forums. That’s valuable research, but it’s not PRACTICE.

To fast track your progress, you need to have a structured program of practice you can do every day. Frequent short sessions are much better than long binges because of the way our brains process information. In the book, I discuss some of the psychology behind this, and how to use that to your advantage.

 

Is there such a thing as negative training?

Yes. Very much so. I open the book with a quote from Michael Ammar:

‘Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Practice makes permanent.  Perfect practice makes perfect.’

If you are not mindful of your technique when you practice, you make small mistakes. These become ingrained through repetition. It’s vital that your technique is as perfect as you can make it as you drill the moves. The key here is to go SLOWLY. Don’t try to build up speed as you practice. Speed happens naturally over time as you progress. Slow everything down as much as possible Aim for perfect technique. Going slow is also a good corrective method if you are trying to remove a bad habit that has developed over time.

 

– Any advice for new magicians? How can they establish good habits early on and is this important?

When someone is just starting out, it’s just important to have fun. Try out all the areas of magic that you can. Find out what you really like to perform. I always recommend going for super easy self-working tricks when you begin. Easy to perform, means that it will be easy to get you performing! Performance is the best way to learn about the type of magician you should become. Will you be fast paced and edgy? Will you be slow and stylish? Will you be dark and mysterious? Serious or comical? How can you begin to practice the presentation of any trick, until you understand WHO the magician is that will be performing it? Once you decide that you are serious about mastering magic, it’s important to become selective…

Studying just moves, controls, and sleights endlessly is like a painter, spending years learning how to perfectly mix the oil paints to every shade of colour… They end up with a huge palette of paints, but no paintings….

Choose tricks and effects FIRST, and then master the controls, moves and sleights you need in order to perform those tricks. Now you have improved your skills with a goal at the end.

Which move should you learn next? Start researching effects that you can build into sets of tricks to form an act. Be selective. Pick tricks that amaze you, but that will also entertain an audience. They need to be perfect for the type of venue you will perform within, and the type of people that will be there.

Once you have selected your tricks, start on JUST ONE, and work on the controls, moves, and sleight of hand that is required to fully master it.

 

Any advice for seasoned magicians? How can old (bad) habits be changed or adjusted?

We get a lot of working professionals coming to the shop for some coaching. It’s usually because they have a growing sense that they are not getting the same reactions that they used to get from their material, but don’t know why. I usually recommend that we record them performing at one of their gigs. If they can set it up, it gives them an invaluable insight that can sometime be quite unsettling. Bad habits sneak into everyone’s performance over time, and then become ingrained through repetition. Luckily, they can easily be removed or adjusted once they have been identified. Approaching Magic Practice focuses on creating good habits right from the start by slowing the repetition of a tricks moves right down during a ‘drill process’. That makes sure that bad habits don’t become ingrained. However, once you are aware of a bad habit, you can slow things down again and start to correct the error through repetition.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how long you have been performing. Using a structured, focuses, and regular practice system will greatly improve the results you get over time.

 

– Are magicians learning too much?

I think we constantly feel the need to learn new tricks and techniques to stay up to date. This desire to stay at the forefront of what is happening in the world of magic can be the biggest distraction from your magic practice. We’ve all experienced the feeling of excitement when a new trick comes out, we can’t wait to try it out, and we drop everything to do so. If you are in the middle of magic practice on another technique or trick, you’ve dropped it before you have mastered it. Often, by the time that you resume your practice on that particular skill, it is almost like you have never even looked at it before. I don’t think magicians learn too much; we should all be constantly learning. The problem is trying to learn too many tricks at once.

 

Sign off

It’s a pleasure! I’m really pleased with the reception that the book has had. Your readers can download a free copy at:

http://magictricks.magicshop.co.uk/magicians-practice-magic-tricks-ebook

I’d love some feedback from your readers about the book. Did they find it useful? What else should I have included?

I can be contacted directly at http://www.dominicreyes.me

Best wishes and good luck with your magic

Dominic Reyes

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Filed Under: how to do magic tricks, how to start earning magic tricks, interviews Tagged With: dominic reyes, Magicians, Practice magic

Ready to be a Magician for Hire?

by Dominic Reyes 2 Comments

Magicians for hire - Ready?

By Dominic Reyes

How can you know when you are ready to become a magician for hire?

Many magicians struggle identifying when they are ready to start performing magic to the public for money. Being a magician for hire is very different from performing magic for fun to your family and friends, and it may not suit you. The process of practice is so long, and without defining waypoints, that there is no feedback or signal that your magic has reached a standard to start performing. Here's some pointers to help you know when you are ready:

Being good at sleight of hand is not enough.

It doesn't matter how many colour changes you can do, the quality of your shuffles, or the height of your muscle pass. The number of sleights you master has little to do with your ability to entertain people with your magic tricks outside of your circle of magician friends. Double check that you have done the following:

  • Have you developed a few sets of magic tricks that go well together and have complete presentations?
  • Did you check that the tricks are entertaining and that a live audience of NON MAGICIANS enjoy them?
  • If you have built up a collection of tricks that are grouped together as opener effects, middle tricks, and closers?
  • Have you practiced them as a group, moving from one trick to the next with a smooth transition?
  • Did you work on your pocket managment for the sets of tricks? 

To move from practicing magic tricks and performing them casually, to becoming a magician for hire, you need a fully developed 'act'. A selection of strong magic tricks that an audience will really enjoy and that work well together, not just in isolation.

What does 'ready' to be a magician for hire really mean?

'Ready' means that you have thought about how you present your magic as a PRODUCT. Your magic is ready to be presented as a form of entertainment to groups in a professional manner. You have practiced and worked though a period of rehearsal to perfect the flow of the performance and it's transition both in and out of play. 

Being ready means that you have worked on your appearance, your marketing, your website, and identified your client base. You have researched who will book you and how you can contact that market to offer your services.

The switch from development to business.

A magician for hire becomes a business. Have you created a business plan? Thought about the fee you will charge for your magic and how you will pay tax? How will you advertisie and promote your services locally? Turning your magic into a commercial activity is 90% business and 10% delivery. When you started developing as a magician, 100% of your effort was focused on creating your product. Now that should be ready, so you switch attention to business development whilst ensuring that you keep fresh, grow and focus your skills. 

If you have only worked on your performance, it's time to start learning about marketing. Read as many books as you can on the subject. Attend local business networking events. Talk to your bank and create a business plan. You will be starting your own business as a magician for hire, and there is as much to learn in that area, as the magic you have already spent your time mastering.

You have developed your character and style as a magician.

What will make you stand out as a magician? Why should people book you as their entertainer rather than all the other magicians for hire in your area. 9 times out of 10 the reason will be your character and personality.

  • Have you developed a performing persona that is communicated through your advertsing?
  • Does the persona really suit you and do you feel natural performing in that character?

Clients book magicians to compliment their event and to fit in with the guests they will be entertaining. If you identify your target client base, you can ensure that your character and persona is attractive to that market. Have you given this much thought yet?

Your personality as a performer.

Are you really a likable person? When you are with a group of people, can you hold their attention and be missed when you leave the group? Your social skills are key to your success as a magician if you want to be anything other than an average magician. Magicians that get a lot of repeat bookings tend to have very good social skills. You don't need to be a natural at this, but you DO need to have worked on it. Read books on networking, social skills, and how to hold a conversation. Practice your conversation skills as much as possible and find ways to become better at public speaking and socialising. 

Have to tested your performance?

How do you really know you are ready to become a magician for hire without getting feedback? Your family and friends will rarely give you useful or honest feedback. Perform for the public in not commercial ways, perhaps going charity events, community projects. Have your performance filmed and watch it back with a critical eye. Check that you are the best you can be.

 

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Filed Under: beginners, how to do magic tricks, how to start earning magic tricks, magic advice, performing for the public Tagged With: Magicians for hire, Marketing for Magicians

How to Open a Magic Shop – Advice on Starting to Sell Magic Tricks

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

Merchant of Magic Podcast #7

The Merchant of Magic Podcast 7 – How to Open a Magic Shop

In this episode of the Merchant of Magic Podcast, Dominic Reyes talks about how he started the magic shop and gives tips and advice to magicians thinking about opening a magic shop and selling magic tricks online.

If you are not interested in selling magic tricks as a business, then you may want to skip this episode, as it's not focused on performing magic. It's about setting up a new business, finding stock, designing a magic shop website, advertising, and growing your online magic shop business. It covers some of the most common mistakes that magicians make when they try to set up and open a magic shop.

'Pretty much every week I receive a few emails from magicians asking me for advice about how to open a magic shop and sell magic tricks online. I email back some tips, discuss some problems they may face, and answer some of their questions. So, rather than sending out the same email over and over again, I've decided to record this episode to give some useful advice to help magicians start off their magic shop in a way that will give them the best chance of success.' – Dominic Reyes

 

Subscribe to the Merchant of Magic Podcast on iTunes

 

 

  • 6 Free Magic Tricks From Jay Sankey
  • Anniversary Waltz Free Magic Download
  • Approaching Magic Practice Ebook
  • Approaching Tables Ebook
  • Recommended For Magic Beginners
  • Cagey Tutorial
  • Choose Magic Set Kids
  • Cloud of Smoke Free Ebook
  • Double Lift Project Free Download
  • Duplex Free Magic Download
  • Epoch Free Magic Tutorials
  • Electric Touch Free Ebook
  • False Shuffles and Cuts Magic Download
  • Faster Than Light - Magic Download
  • Finger-Exercises
  • How to Break In Playing Cards
  • How to Learn Magic Tricks
  • Tips for Leaving a Magic Gigi
  • LSQ Ebook - Free
  • Magicians Fees Ebook
  • Mistakes in Magic Ebook
  • More Icandy
  • The One Minute Magic Business Ebook
  • Pitfalls Magic Family and Friends
  • Safe - Free Magic Ebook
  • School of Cool Free Download
  • Sleight of Hand Beginners Course
  • Split Free Magic Video Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Vol 2 Download
  • Sweet 360 Free Magic Download
  • The 80's Called Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Vol 3
  • Think Tank Free Magic Download
  • Turnover Pass Free Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Download
  • Understanding Misdirection Free Ebook
  • Watch It Free Ebook
  • Wedding Exhibition Guide for Magicians
  • Confidence For Magicians
  • The Indian Shuffle

Filed Under: How to Open a Magic Shop, how to start earning magic tricks Tagged With: How to open a magic shop, How to Run a magic shop, How to sell magic tricks

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