Mark is new to magic and is learning sleight of hand. He is working on controls and sleights rather than tricks and effects..

Mark asks: 'I am new to card magic or any magic for that matter. I have been strictly working on my card handling with barely any work on tricks, just the occasional tricks to show to my kids. I really like working on controls, trying to get the card from middle to top and bottom but am struggling with most of them. What would be your recommendation of a control I should use or practice that is the most practical?'

Hi Mark,

It's great to hear that you are putting in so much work into your card skills. The results you get are directly proportional to the quality of magic practice you are prepared to do.

Sleight of hand and comic collecting

Did you read comics when you were a kid? I did, in fact, I still read the odd issue of The Walking Dead from time to time. I even collected a few titles when I was back in college. Some of my friends got really into it. They would buy every issue (sometimes two copies) and store them carefully inside a Mayar protective sleeve, with an acid free backing board to keep them in A1 condition. Those comics became 'investments' in their eyes, and they loved every moment of collecting.

There's a little problem with this that used to worry them. The paper in 20th century comics was CHEAP. It contained acid, which over time eats away at the paper. Even though they had done everything they could to keep their 'archive' away from conditions that would damage the paper, it was the ink and paper itself that would slowly fall apart and turn to dust over 20,40,50 years..

Learning sleight of hand as a collection of moves is a bit like comic collecting. When you build an archive of sleights they build up and get mastered over time. But as soon as you stop drilling them, they start to corrode.

Honestly ask yourself: How many of these moves will you remember in 10 years time?

The only techniques you will be able to remember and perform well, will be the ones you constantly perform.

Time destroys muscle memory. Without regular repetition, your controls and moves will degrade until you are disappointed with each one. You need constant performance to keep things fresh and remember all the mechanics. If you collect moves outside of performance pieces (tricks) to use them, you may end up like the old comic collector that goes up to his attic to find his stacked up boxes of comics are just filled with bags of paper dust.

Sleight of hand and painting

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, then MASTER the controls, moves and sleights you need to perform that effect. 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 REALLY 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 also 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. That's what I recommend you work on next.

But that doesn't answer my question!

OK.. lecture over.. If you really want a suggestion of a move or control to work on, you should make sure you master at least one variation of these:

The Double Lift

The Top Change

The Over Hand Shuffle Control

The Mercury Fold

One Handed Card Palm

A Series of Good False Shuffles and Cuts

The rest; the controls, shifts, placements and changes are just icing on the cake…

Self Working Coin Magic Tricks – Metal Sheep

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

Do you currently perform any coin magic? It's amazing how many working magicians shy away from coin magic because they think it is too hard to learn.

It's easy to spend so much time working on your card magic that you don't want to 'start right back at the beginning' learning the basic mechanicis of coin technique.

You don't have to do that

Watch this video showing you a trick called Metal Sheep. This is a brilliant example of self working coin magic tricks that you can start performing right away. It fits perfectly into any close up magicians working set of routines.

The best part… There is no sleight of hand!

That's very rare for good quality coin magic, so I know you will love this:

As Gary Jones shows you in the video, you can do self working coin magic tricks easily at any tables or at the bar. Just approach, show the guests some coins, and then blow their minds. There are no funny angles, complex techniques that can go wrong on the night, or boring plots to spoil the flow of the action. It's simple, easy to follow and totally plays with your heads. Best of all it's so easy it should be made illegal by the sleight of hand police!

Why the book is usually better than the film

90% of coin magic tricks tend to involve productions and vanishes. That's great and it's definitly eye candy. However, coin magic can be much more than a series of moves where coins appear and vanish. Metal sheep adds MYSTERY into your magic. Ben Williams recently wrote about how visual magic tricks are killing magic. He argues that sometimes a closed fist, or a sealed box increases the experience of magic for the spectators because it allows them space to 'wonder what could be inside'.

What's happening in the magicians hands?

How is the transformation happening?

It's powerful for the same reason that films are usually disappointing if you have already read the book. There's no space for YOUR imagination in a film. Metal Sheep allows the spectators to use their imagination when they think back to what happened in the magicians closed hands.

Metal Sheep is just one of the magic tricks taught on Automata

The DVD is packed full of working material that is sleight of hand free, so you can start building it into your armoury of working magic right away.

LEARN MORE ABOUT AUTOMATA HERE

How to Palm Playing Cards – The Best Top Palm Technique

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

By Ben Williams

Sarah writes: ‘Could Merchant of Magic give me some advice on how to palm playing cards and improve my top palm.’

‘I do have quite small hands, and I’m using a poker deck, but I don’t think small hands are the problem. I’m reluctant to use a bridge deck as all the decks I use are poker sized…

With the right misdirection, I can get away with my top palm, but not consistently. I’ve tried the method outlined in the Royal Road to card magic, and Dai Vernon’s method, but I still feel that it looks obvious that I’m palming a card and more often than not, I don’t get it into quite the right position and end up with edges showing! I feel I must be doing something wrong!

I understand that misdirection can make all the difference, but can you recommend any resources or suggest any ways that I can improve the technique itself? Thanks very much!’ – Sarah

How to palm playing cards without mistakes

Hi Sarah,

Of course, we can help, there is a tonne of different places to study palming playing cards, I will list a few great DVDs at the bottom of this page.

Firstly, let’s see if there is any advice that may be useful to you…

With regards to the top palm, it’s a bit like a pass, at first it is impossible to do, then it becomes something you can carry out under misdirection, then it becomes something that is invisible. I am glad that you have taken the time to lay a playing card on your hand to see if it is physically big enough to hide a playing card, not many people do this and swear it is the size of their hands and they cannot hide the card. However, usually it just needs an alteration to the position of the cards, or how they hold them that solves the issue, not stretching your hands!

The real secret of how to palm playing cards

First of all, practice as much as you can. When it comes to a sleight that can be helped by misdirection, it usually means that it can be harder to execute and potentially risky (which the top palm certainly is!). It is important to get the muscle memory down so that your hands can do the move without your brain thinking. Unfortunately, this only comes with time and repetition. The key is to be able to perform the move without thinking and whilst being able to do other things, it should become an automatic process like turning on an indicator whilst driving, or moving the mouse for your computer.

How I palm playing cards using the top palm

I don’t have an outstanding palm, but I do know when to misdirect, or I can easily orchestrate the misdirection needed. This is how I get into the moment where I can create some misdirection. Firstly, I top palm with two hands. I can one handed top palm but it is only 75% and I have never drilled it to 100% so I do not do it on gigs usually. I perform this top palm by getting ready into position, so that I am ready to palm. When I am ready with my hands in position I simply ask if they would be impressed if I had predicted what their card would be. The moment their eyes come up to me, I perform the top palm. It happens the moment their eyes move up to me, not once they have locked on me. You can wait until their eyes have ‘arrived’, but you run the risk of being too late and letting them catch up with you and spot the palm. As mentioned, my palming technique is not the best technique in the world as the thumb is a tell tale sign so I use misdirection rather than when being burned, but it is practical.

Spectators that don’t look away

Here is how to deal with an awkward spectator who just won’t look away. If anyone is burning my hands too much, I will tell them to watch harder! This is purely beneficial to me, not them. As they watch closely they will be focused intensely on your hands, I simply wait and make them wait for something… And I do nothing! I then break their concentration swiftly by saying sharply, ‘of course, I won’t do anything if you are looking!’ This is a joke, but it serves a purpose, the first sentence tells them to pull focus (on beat), the more a spectator focuses, the more they relax when their concentration is broken (off beat), this is a very basic explanation of the on beat and off beat. The stronger the On Beat, the stronger the Off Beat.

How to palm playing cards and make it look invisible

If you wish it to be invisible, then I am afraid, this will only happen over time as your fingers and muscles finesse the move. My advice for practicing would be to practice very slowly at first, analyze each move individually and try to see where the pressure in your hands causes an effect to the playing cards. If you can understand why sleights work, it is much better than simply understanding how they work. Again the goal is to have these sleights become an automatic process, which can only happen if it is drilled again and again and again.