beginners Archives

What to Do When Your New Magic Trick Arrives

It’s arrived in the post! A large padded envelope has been dropped off by the postman and you are standing by the front door, staring down at it.

You know what’s inside…

After all you’ve been excited about this moment right from the second you clicked the ‘confirm order’ button.

Now it’s finally in your hands

Your next move…

Rip it open, play with the props and experience a small feeling of disappointment? Maybe!

The problem with magic is that the secret is hardly ever as exciting as the magic effect it produces. That’s one of the reasons why TV shows that expose the magicians secrets never do well in the ratings over time. The whole value of magic, its charm and fascination, is in the feeling created by the magician using the props.

The props and techniques are not special in and of themselves. They are by their own nature ‘empty’. For example, there is nothing special in either a coin or a handkerchief. But when the coin is placed inside and transforms into something else, then the magic has been created. The props don’t contain this, it’s the way they are used that makes the magic. When you receive a new magic trick, you are excited about the effect you saw demonstrated and want to perform yourself. But the contents of the package don’t hold any of this, it’s up to you to create it.

So how can you avoid this feeling and get the most from the new magic trick you decided to learn? Choosing it is just the first step!

The Merchant of Magic team have created a free ebook teaching you how to get the best from the next new magic trick you intend to learn. Written by professional magicians, ‘How To Learn New Magic Tricks‘ takes you from the moment you rip open the packaging to your first performance.

3 Things to Do When Your Magic Tricks Go Wrong

by Merchant of Magic 9 Comments

By Dominic Reyes

Opps! The magic tricks gone wrong! You asked them to pick a card and lost it in the deck, then with a sophisticated flourish you proudly revealed completely the wrong card.. Awkward silence..

What to do:

Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal. Magic tricks go wrong sometimes and no matter how much you practice, it can happen. The key is to be prepared in advance. You are not pre-recorded, you are doing something LIVE and part of the thrill for the audience is that it’s real, happening before their eyes, and they can interact with you. The audience has not invested in you, and have nothing to risk from you making a mistake. You are there to entertain them, and if something goes a little wrong, but you carry on and DO entertain them, then they get what they want. After all, Tommy Cooper made a living from making his magic tricks go wrong. The important part is the entertainment.
Having said that, there are some things you can do to make it go much better:

1) Always have an ‘out’

As a magician you are one step ahead. You decide how the trick tricks should end and what that ending is going to be. There is no reason your magic tricks need to follow a pattern unless you told the spectators in advance what the ending is going to be. Avoid doing that!

A few easy outs to get you started:

A playing card is picked and lost in the deck. You intended to find it with a flourish, but something didn’t go right. Just change the ending. Ask them what their card was and act confused that it could not possibly be their card as that one is not even in the deck. Go through the deck to show them it’s not even there, before taking off your shoe and letting their card fall out from inside!

Don’t know an impromptu card to shoe? Rus Andrews BOLD teaches a great impromptu version on DVD or Download

OR

Go through the deck of playing cards looking for their card, then take out your wallet and show that the card is inside a sealed envelope in your wallet

Ask them which playing card they chose and show it’s the only face down card in a face up deck that’s been in your pocket the whole time. We are thinking Invisible Deck here folks!

2) The magic trick goes wrong, and you expose the method and it’s a total disaster.

‘Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.

Except when you don’t
Because, sometimes, you won’t.

I’m sorry to say so
But, sadly, it’s true
That Hang-ups
Can happen to you.’ – Dr. Seuss

Sometimes they will spot the coin, the gimmick will fall apart in your hands, you will flash a card or maybe a heckler will expose the method half way through a trick. These things happen to every magician. The secret is…

Don’t worry about it.

Just stay relaxed and confident and don’t ever apologize or make it a big deal. Just end the magic trick and start a new one. Perhaps with a smile and little positive joke comment. If you stop and act embarrassed, your audience will feel embarrassed too. This can express itself as either sympathy for you or they will mock you, neither of these are good!

When magic tricks go wrong, Don’t frame the error.

If you draw attention to the failed magic trick, your audience will pay more attention to it. (Pretty obvious really.) Instead, just move on and perform your next great trick. The impact of the magic tricks that follow and the magic they create will overshadow the bit of ‘nothing’ that happened between the first trick that amazed them and the next trick that impressed them.

For example: You perform a vanish using a pull and a spectator sees a flash of it flying away and comments on it. Simply say ‘oh, did I not throw it quickly enough?! I tell you what though if you reach in here and grab a card…’ By moving straight on to something else it will help blur the moment and you are away and onto another trick, no hang ups, no framing of failure or apology, just more magic tricks!

3) Minimize the chances of error.

Practice, Practice, Practice and then rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We don’t really need to tell you this do we? Good practice doesn’t just make your magic tricks look good. It irons out the chances of failure and allows you to spot the places the magic tricks could go wrong. You can then build in ‘out’s and be relaxed enough to handle a problem should it spring up.

Do you have a story about when magic tricks go wrong? How did you deal with it? Please share the experience in the comments section below:

A Magicians Thumb Tip Is Your Insurance Policy

by Merchant of Magic 3 Comments

It’s the most common ‘prop’ magic shops sell, if you don’t count Bicycle playing cards. Almost every magician owns one. For many it’s their first introduction into performing magic. Whether they received it in a public magic set, witnessed a sales pitch in a toy shop, or were recommended one by a fellow magician. The Magicians Thumb tip has become an iconic symbol of close up magic.

Why are magicians doing so little with it?

For the last couple years, we have been asking customers in the shop what they plan to do with their thumb tip as they purchase one. The answer 9 times out of 10 is ‘Make a silk vanish’

That’s fine… But it’s really a waste of probably the most useful prop, any magician can carry with them. Used with imagination, the humble Magicians Thumb tip is an entire magic act all in one.

Whenever the team is commissioned to give personal tuition, we always start with the thumb tip. In fact, we recommend that one should go in your close up case and a second one in your car’s glove box, even if you never plan to use it. ‘Why?’ we hear you scream at your screen:

Because it’s the ultimate magicians insurance policy

Simply by carrying a magicians thumb tip, you have a complete magic act ready to go, whenever and wherever you are.

When you travel to a gig and find out you didn’t pack correctly and you have no playing cards.
If your bag goes missing at the airport.
When you are not planning a show, but suddenly need to impress a future client or lead.

Your magicians thumb tip is going to be there as a trusted back up. It’s very small, doesn’t run out, and best of all it allows you to perform magic with the appearance that you don’t use ANY magicians props at all.

‘But my playing cards are my back up!’

Yes, that’s true. BUT if you do happen to have a deck set aside as a backup, you are limited to card tricks all night. Some magicians love that, but many performers want a variety of different close up magic tricks in their sets, and audiences expect that too. Unless you are booked specifically as a ‘card magician’ you really should have a broad range of magic tricks in your working set. A thumb tip will give you that, and you never even have to go near a little silk if you don’t want to.

‘But it looks just like a big plastic thumb’

Don’t be fooled by that. It actually doesn’t matter what the thumb tip looks like. You can spend a fortune of hyper realistic thumb tips, but they will not be any better than the Classic Vernet Thumb tip which is the most popular tip used by magicians all over the world.The super realistic tips are sometimes nicknamed ‘paranoia tips’. We think that’s a bit harsh as they have their place. The team at the Merchant of Magic tend to only recommend realistic silicone ‘tips’, when a magician reports that they don’t want to use a tip because they feel it would be too noticeable. Before we sell it, we always try to point out the following..

The spectators see what they THINK is there, rather than what’s ACTUALLY there.

Thumb tips work so well because the human mind is lazy. It simply can’t be bothered to process ALL the information that flows in from the eyes. It’s just way to much data to process constantly. Instead, it uses past knowledge of the world to ‘shortcut’ much of the processing needed to understand what the eyes are capturing. Your mind knows what hands look like. It’s seen more than a few in it’s time, and it’s own body probably has up to two of them itself. The brain scans over a hand and registers that it looks fairly normal. It fills in the gaps in its perception and moves on.

The danger is when a trigger is given out that the spectator should pay more attention. For example, a magician looking a little paranoid about his hands. Now the data gets processed much more slowly and ‘double checked’. That tends to be why people who are worried about using a thumb tip have bad experiences with them. They ‘telegraph’ the fact that their hand is ‘odd’ and a vicious circle starts. That’s when a hyper realistic tip does have value, as it can break that circle and make the magician relax.

Learn as many tricks as you can with your Thumb Tip

Magic shops are stuffed full of books and DVDs providing ideas for your magic thumb. We recommend that you learn as many as you can. You never have to use a small silk ever again if you don’t want to.

You probably already know a load of different tricks you can do with your magicians thumb tip. If you don’t, we recommend the following resources. View each new magic trick you learn for the thumb tip as another level of insurance, cover and time very well spent. The thumb tip we most often recommend:

The Classic Vernet Thumb Tip

DVD’s to expand your use of a thumb tip:

Patrick Page on the Thumbtip

Examining the Thumbtip

Sankey Hundred Dollar Miracles

The World’s Greatest Magic Series – Thumb Tips

Recommended booklet of ideas for the thumb tip:

101 magic tricks with a thumb Tip

What to do next:
Take a moment to design a small ‘act’ of 8 tricks you could perform with just a thumb tip and some everyday object you would find at almost any gig you do. Grab a small piece of paper and write them down. Put them into groups of three or four tricks that would flow nicely together. Now roll up that paper and put it inside your thumb tip. It’s your insurance policy document. It’s there for you, should you ever need to make a claim.