How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

A Simple Trick Magicians Use to Expand a Group During Close Up Magic

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How magicians expand groups during close up magic

By Dominic Reyes

I want to share with you something that absolutely terrified me when I first started performing close up magic.

I was fine strolling around performing close up magic at large venues with 100 guests or more. My main staple work was at cocktail parties and events where guests networked and were served canapés. I would mix of the guests moving from group to group and slowly work around the room. Every now and then I would be booked to do a gig for a much smaller group. I just didn't know how to work a room with only 6 or 7 small groups of people standing around having drinks.

I was often booked for a couple of hours. How was I going to use up all the time moving from group to group was such few people to visit?

Nowadays I don't have that problem because I use a really simple technique I'm going to share with you now.

It's a handy little trick that many professional magicians use to expand a group.

Using the aside.

aside (əˈsaɪd)

adv
 
Something spoken by an actor, intended to be heard by the audience, but not by others on stage

 
Shakespeare used that device all the time, but my favourite example of it is found in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off and that's how I first discovered it.

If you haven't seen the movie, you really should. Apart from being a classic, it's a great example of using the aside. The lead character in the film constantly breaks the fourth wall by talking directly to the audience watching the film. The other actors are unaware that this dialogue is taking place.

In just the same way, when you're performing close-up magic you can imagine that the spectators within the group that you're performing to are already part of the movie. Everyone else outside that group is the audience.

Whilst you're performing to the group, you pause for a moment and address somebody outside of the group. This will most likely be somebody standing within a group of people behind one of the spectators actively watching you. They're aware that the magic is happening, but they're not part of the group watching.

The aim is to connect with that person and by doing so invite the new group to join in.

There are several things you can say as an aside. The key goal is to let everybody know how much fun your group is having. You're Broadcasting that something magical has just occurred, and something even more crazy is about to happen.

Your aside might be something like:

‘It's going to be really hard to fool these people a second time’

‘These guys here really wants to shuffle cards, should I let them?’
 
‘I know, I just can't believe I just saw that’

Ideally, the comment should be framed as if the group you are part of can't hear what you're saying. You are addressing everybody outside of the group and letting them know about something amazing just happened.

Everybody's style of presentation different. Some successful close up magicians can get away with being more brash others. That doesn't suit me, so I'd rather pick asides that are pretty modest. In a sense, you're telling everybody how amazing you are, and that they have just missed something absolutely incredible. You might not want to be as blatant as saying ‘These guys have just seen something totally unbelievable, and now I'm going to do something even crazier’ but you are communicating that in a subtle way.

Next time you're performing close up magic to a group, notice the group standing next to, or behind your spectators. There's a good chance you'll see someone glancing over and showing interest in what's happening. Seize the moment, use an aside to engage that spectator and start an interaction with them.

Let me know how you get on in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

 

How to Palm Playing Cards and Coins – Tips on Learning to Palm

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How to palm playing cards - Guide

By Dominic Reyes

Duncan writes:

‘One thing I am struggling with right now is palming playing cards. I know this is no doubt just down to practice, and I haven’t been able to  devote much time to it at the moment, but any help/tips would be  appreciated!’

 

Hi Duncan,

Good for you for wanting to develop some sleight of hand. It is possible to do a whole range of close-up magic tricks without having to learn any sleight of hand at all, but seriously, that’s no fun, and sooner or later you’re going to want to add some into the magic you perform. Your question shows me  instantly the cause of the problem you’re facing. I’d like to give you some advice about how to fix this.

Before I do this, I should say that I’m not interested in describing the steps required to perform most palming sleights. There’s a huge range of different techniques, and countless books, and videos on the subject of palming playing cards. Just type in ‘how to palm a playing card’ into google or YouTube and you’ll get more tuition videos and step-by-step guides than you could ever need. However, these all tend to miss out a few important points about learning the techniques.  They go through the moves of holding the playing cards, and how to position their fingers. But they all seem to miss out how to practice the technique correctly.

Your main problem.

You aren’t committed enough. You have to make a resolution to practice magic. Not just occasional practice when you feel like doing it. You need a consistent structured program of learning over a set period of time. It’s this resistance to practice that stops most people moving past performing only self working magic tricks.

‘Do or not do. There is no try.’ – Yoda

Learning a skill is about devoting your time and attention to improving your ability. There are no shortcuts. That being said, here are some tips which will help speed up the learning process:

I’m not sure from your question whether you are learning palming with playing cards or coins, so let’s look at both:

How to palm playing cards.

I recommend that you do a magic practice drill of 10 minutes each morning and 10 minutes each evening. You’ll need to do this in private to start with until your palm technique becomes subtle enough to perform around people.

Building a good close up magic mirror, and using it regularly in your practice sessions will help you identify any weak spots in the angles of your technique.

The key to mastering palming playing cards is to go unnaturally slow at first. You want to learn the process in a smooth and thoughtful manner. Forget about speed, and allow it to increase naturally by itself. Be aware of the positioning of your fingers. You need to eliminate any gaps and telltale signs that you’re holding a card. Over time, you’ll find that this becomes easier and smoother providing you learn at a slow and constant pace.

Small hands and the placement of the card.

As you go through the motions, stop and examine the placement of the playing card in your hand. Don’t worry if your hands feel too small. It’s very unlikely that the size of your hands will stop you being able to palm playing cards. Some of the most talented card magicians have very small hands. It’s all about placement. Work on getting the playing card ready on the top of the deck and take note of the exact position that allows the card to be easily palmed. Now concentrate on the position of the card in your hand. Working very slowly will allow you to examine whether you are placing the card in exactly the right position. If you go to quickly it will be hard for you to notice when you’re placing the card correctly, or if something needs to be adjusted.

Examine your hands.

Take a moment to relax in front of a mirror and notice how your hands look  normally. The first thing you’ll notice is that your hands don’t tend to be extended completely flat. The natural resting position for your hands is with the fingers slightly bent. Now, lift up one arm whilst keeping your hand totally relaxed. Notice how your hand look. That’s the appearance your hand needs to imitate whilst palming a playing card. Don’t skip this exercise, it’s valuable to be able to notice what natural looks like.

Build the motion of palming into a larger gesture which looks normal.

A strange thing about palming is that you’re actually doing something whilst pretending not to be. Because of this, many magicians will hide the small motion of palming a playing card, behind a larger motion of moving their arms or body. This could be pivoting to either the left or right with your body as you make a comment, or address somebody not directly in front of  you. Perhaps you could take the deck of cards with your other hand so that the hand that was holding the deck is free to make a gesture. As you practice you will find many larger motions that look natural to you, and the way you move. Think about how these movements can be used at the moment when a palm needs to take place.

Your eyes and body.

Your eyes are one of the most deceptive weapons you have as a magician. If you make eye contact with a spectator they will almost always return  your gaze. People will look where you look. It’s very important that you’re not looking at the deck of cards at the moment that you palm a card. If you pay attention to that moment, your spectators will do the same.

Offbeat.

The best time to palm a playing card is on the offbeat. That’s the moment of relaxation between two events. Let’s say that you have had a card selected and returned to the deck. At that moment, all the spectator’s attention is focused on the deck of cards. You need to create an offbeat moment. You can do this by looking at the spectator for a second, and making a comment, asking a question, or making a light-hearted joke that requires some kind of reaction. At the moment of their reaction, you have misdirection that you need.

Practice card palming as much as possible, especially when it’s not required.

In the tuition that I run with magicians, one of the most requested techniques is the classic force. It’s a very simple method of allowing a spectator to apparently choose a playing card whilst influencing their selection. Just like palming a playing card, it requires timing to make it most effective. I often advise magicians to practice the technique when it doesn’t matter. Whenever a magician needs to have a card chosen, they can use that opportunity to  try out the classic force. In just the same way, whenever you have the misdirection, you could try to palm a playing card, and then return it back to the deck. If it fails, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t really part of the trick anyway. Over  time, you’ll notice how easy it is to palm a playing card during the offbeat moments within a magic trick. This will give you a huge boost to your confidence in the technique.

Use your pocket.

One practice technique that gets good results is to use your pocket to palm playing card. After you have revealed a playing card at the end of a magic trick, you place it in your pocket. Once your hand is in your pocket, palm the playing card as you take your hand out. You could then reach into another pocket which might contain a card to wallet device, such as the 21 production wallet. This all happens in the offbeat as you’re making casual conversation with the spectators. Using a pocket to practice often allows magicians gain confidence in the appearance of their hand whilst holding a card, without having to worry about loading the card into their palm in full view. It also allows them to perform a card to wallet magic trick, without having to worry about palming the playing card off of a deck of cards in full view of the spectators.

How to palm coins.

The great things about coin magic is that the props that you use of  available everywhere. In fact, you probably always carry a few in your pocket. I found that in the UK the best coins to practice palming tend to be the UK 50p and the UK 2p coins. Both these coins have good definition on their edges, which will make it easier to palm. Start carrying coins with you everywhere you go. Holding a coin at your fingertips and moving it in and out of palm continually. Practice this way for at least 10 minutes each morning and 10 minutes each evening. You can do this while you go about your normal  business. Not only will this slowly build up muscle memory, it will also start to tone and condition your hand.

As you continue to practice, you will notice that you become less aware of the  coin in your hand. It’ll become an automatic behavior. You’ll also start to notice that other people quickly become less aware of the fact that you’re playing with coins all the time.
I hope these quick tips will speed up your mastery of palming. There are lots of different ways to palm a playing card. Each magician should find a  technique that they feel most comfortable with. The method you use isn’t that important. What makes a magician an expert at palming playing cards is the amount of care and attention they have put into their practice sessions. It’s about how much they really want to learn the technique and are prepared to swap their time and effort for the skill. Most people are not prepared to invest very much time in learning to master the move. They study the technique, but don’t put in the leg work to acquire skill in its performance.

If you really want to learn how to palm, start right away. Pick up a deck of playing cards. Commit to practicing the technique for 10 minutes right now. All you need to do is repeat that over and over again. Keep going in this way for 21 days, and I can guarantee you’ll be completely amazed by the results.

If you have any tips on practicing palming playing cards, or any questions  you would like discussed, please leave a comment at the bottom of this page:

 

The 4 Stages of Becoming a Magician

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The 4 stages of becominig a magician

By Dominic Reyes

How do people decide to learn magic?
Why do most people enjoy watching magic, but becoming a magician is rare?

I think this has a lot to do with 4 stages of becoming a magician:

1) Unconscious incompetence

Remember what it was like before you became interested in magic. Maybe you were just like the majority of people that watch magic on TV? You enjoyed seeing the show, being entertained, and fooled by a magician.

Have you ever watched a Cirque du Soleil show? It’s a wonderful experience, seeing the incredible feats that the acrobats achieve. Most people love to watch it, but don’t have any desire to understand the practice process that the acrobats go through, or the construction and specifications of the springs, trampolines and wires that they use to perform their show. That’s how the vast majority of people view magic. They don’t really want to understand how the magic tricks are done.

2) Conscious incompetence

Because you are reading this blog, I assume that you are a bit different from the people I have described above. You wanted more from the magic tricks and magicians you watched. At first you didn’t have any technical knowledge of how any magic tricks were performed, but the desire to explore and understand the secret of magic was inside you.

This thirst for more information often leads people to seek out the skills they know they don’t yet possess. You discovered that you have a drive to investigate and learn magic. At this stage, most people will spend a great deal of time theorising about how magic tricks are done. They conduct searches online like ‘How did David Blaine push a needle through his arm’ or ‘How did Dynamo put a phone inside a bottle’. They have the desire to learn magic, but lack enough knowledge to perform it themselves.

Maybe you stumbled onto a magic shop website or discovered an introductory book on magic in your local book shop? Perhaps you met someone who was already performing magic, and he or she showed you a few beginners tricks?  The main difference is that you became aware that there were skills that you could learn yourself. You understood that YOU could also do the magic that you saw other magicians perform. You began the process of becoming a magician.

3) Conscious competence

I’m going to take a guess and say that you are now at this stage in the process of becoming a magician. You’re in good company as most people remain at this stage their whole lives. The majority of magicians know a great deal about magic, yet they remain in a state of conscious competence. They consume as much information about magic as they can. They learn basic card magic technique, and build up a range of self working magic tricks and basic sleight of hand that they practice on a regular basis. However, they never really feel that they have mastered any of them to the point that they are automatic.

Do you find that performing a magic trick requires all your concentration and effort? Although you can perform quite well whilst practicing alone, do you tend to freeze when it comes to performing to other people? Do the mechanics of your magic tricks take up all your attention and effort?

If you find yourself identifying with these questions, I have some good news for you. You are right on the verge of the final stage of becoming a magician. You have the knowledge and technique, but need the experience and practice to make the mechanics fully automatic. To push past this, you simply need to narrow down your material, focus on a small range of techniques and tricks, so that you can practice them over and over again. Your magic practice should be structured, consistent, and involve both solitary repetition and live performance practice. The aim is to reach total familiarity with the mechanics so that you can move beyond conscious awareness of mechanical process. You can’t do this if you are constantly jumping from one new magic trick to the next. You have to commit to a limited amount of material that you can repeat over and over until it’s mastered.

4) Unconscious competence

Most professional magicians have a small set of magic tricks that they call their ‘working material’. This has been practiced and repeated to the extent that it has become second nature. The magician is so familiar with the mechanics that they can be performed whilst executing another task, such as delivering a patter line, or reacting to a spectators comments. This is the ultimate goal of a magicians magic practice.

How many magic tricks do you know that have been mastered to this extent? Perhaps none? Maybe just a handful? The ultimate goal in magic practice is to build up a range of magic tricks that you have unconscious competence over. The best way to do this is one trick at a time. Why not choose just one of your favourite magic tricks, and make the commitment to focus all your attention on it until it reaches this stage of mastery? I guarantee that you will find this transforms both your magic and your performance skills beyond anything you ever dreamed possible.

Reference: Noel Burch developed the Conscious Competence Ladder in the 1970s. It has been attributed to Abraham Maslow, although it doesn’t appear in his major works.