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Easy Card Tricks – For The Magician Or The Spectators?

I am going to recommend a few easy card tricks for you. Before I do so, I want to give you a warning:

The magic shop often gets asked to suggest easy card tricks for a customer to learn. Surprisingly, the request doesn’t always come from complete beginners. Many professional magicians are searching for quick and easy card tricks they can add to their working sets, in a hurry. There are three problems with this question:

1) What makes card tricks easy?

2) Is the magician looking for something easy for the themselves or for their spectators?

3) Why is the magician putting that criteria above everything else?

Why label them easy card tricks?

No magic trick is really easy. Yes, many tricks can have basic methods, but the performance of any magic trick is far from easy. We have all seen seemingly easy to work magic tricks performed terribly. The power of a magic trick is in its delivery and performance. As Rene Lavand teaches us in the quotation above; A trick is created, refined by many. However, it’s quality is totally dependent on each and every performance of it. It doesn’t matter how well designed the method may be, or how many variations and modifications have perfected it over time. A thousand magicians may have worked on improving it’s method. All that work falls away the moment YOU, at the end of the process, begin to perform it. Your practice, commitment, and effort to make it entertaining is the quality it will be judged on, by the audience.

Easy card tricks for you or them?

One reason even experienced magicians look for easy card tricks, is that they want tricks to allow them to forget about the sleight of hand. They like tricks that are ‘safe’. There isn’t anything wrong with magic tricks that avoid technical skill. The value of a magic trick is in the reaction it creates for the magicians audience. As a magician, the spectators are your customers. A straightforward method allows you to give more work and attention to your presentation, which is where the real magic is created.

A basic magic trick can often be easier for your spectators to follow and understand, especially if you are freed from the binds of technique to become an actor during the magic tricks performance. Many master magicians can present a spellbinding performance, whilst doing the hardest sleight of hand, but technical ability is not a prerequisite of expertise in magic. Acting is just as valuable as sleight of hand for the expert. If your motivation to search for easy card tricks is for the benefit of the spectators rather than a shortcut for yourself, it’s not a foolish quest.

Why is ‘easy’ so valuable to you?

‘Easy’ isn’t a terrible thing. However, it needs to be lower down your list of requirements. If you genuinely intend to perform the magic you choose to learn, make the presentation the most significant factor in its selection. Choose magic tricks that amaze and inspire you. Magic tricks that blow you away when you watch them performed.

Forget about the work or effort required to learn them, that’s only an indication of how much time and effort you will need to put in. If you begin your search intending to only put in the minimum amount of effort possible, you probably won’t be prepared to give the right amount of time to the presentation, to make ANY trick worth learning.

An ‘easy’ list.

OK, I’ve given you my warning, here’s a short list of a few quite easy card tricks you can start learning right away:

Invisible Deck

3 Card Monte By Michael Skinner

White Star

Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks

BIGGER Finish – Jay Sankey

Learn ultimate selfworking card tricks

Learn Magic Tricks by Creating a Story – Link Your Magic Tricks Together

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

When you learn magic tricks, do you consider creating a story that the set of tricks will communicate?

For many magicians, their magic act is a collection of unrelated magic tricks. Each magic trick gets great reactions but doesn’t flow into the next magic trick that the magician presents.

If you learn magic tricks without thinking about the act that will contain them, you miss out on one of the most powerful ways to lift yourself above the level of an average magician: The Story.

Magic Tricks with meaning

Creating a story will give your magic tricks a purpose other than fooling the spectators. They give your magic meaning. Stories engage and draw in your audience.

Everyone loves stories. Humans are hard wired to seek them out and remember them. It’s how we learn and bond as a society. Information without a story is just a collection of facts or trivial. The tale binds information together, giving it a value greater than the sum of its parts. Don’t present your magic tricks as pieces of trivia. Improve them exponentially by creating a story to go along with them.

The story first.

Creating a story can be difficult. Here are some ideas to help spark your imagination:

A life experience you encountered.
Something to inspire people.
A cautionary tale.
A fable.
A proverb.
An urban legend.
An event in your past.
A story about a spectators experience.
A story from your past.
A story from their future.

Instead of a set story, you could form a story made on the spot by the magician and spectators together. A piece of improvisation, structured by the tricks.

Select and learn magic tricks that will, by being placed together, create and focus on communicating the story.

Do This:

Write down a few plot ideas, for stories that would suit your persona.

Mark out ‘events’ or focus points in each story that could be communicated with magic.

Learn magic tricks that will fit into those points

Over time, build up the collection of ‘meaningful’ magic tricks to create a piece of close up magic theater.

Learn Magic Tricks with Context and Meaning

How Long to Learn Magic Tricks as a Professional Magician?

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

Marco asks: ‘How long should you need to learn magic tricks to become a professional magician?‘

That’s a really good question, but it does need some clarification.

To answer it, we need to define what a professional magician means.

It could have two meanings:

1) It could mean a someone who performs magic tricks to the public for money. A professional treats a subject as a business. For professional magicians, the factors that are important to success are just as much about marketing and business as they are about how to learn magic tricks.

2) Professional magician could refer to someone who attempts to master each magic trick that they choose to learn. They treat the subject seriously and develop their technique and performance skills. Unlike a causal performer, you treats magic as a toy or recreational activity, the magician takes on a professional approach to developing their skills.

For Marco’s question we have assumed option 2. A way to rephrase it would be to ask:

How long does it take to learn magic tricks?

In short, the answer is as many as possible!
The first thing you need to do to learn magic tricks proficiently is get a good practice routine set out. Some of the magic tricks you should learn will need you to practice individual sleights and moves separately before rolling them all into one routine, which can then be drilled. Other magic tricks will require you practice the whole routine from start to finish as they only work when performed in a flowing manner.
There is a book called Outliers in which the author Malcolm Gladwell talks frequently of the “10,000-Hour Rule”. This rule states that the key to success in any line of work, to a large extent, is a matter of practicing your specific task for a total of 10,000 hours.

This is a good guide for how long one must practice to learn magic tricks inside out and upside down. This amount of practice will shape you into a technical and very skilled magician. Unfortunately, it won’t make you an amazing entertainer. This is something to keep in mind when performing professionally; entertainment is paramount.

In order to learn magic tricks to a professional level requires far more skills than sleight of hand. More experienced magicians will already have developed their performing style and have knowledge that they can apply to each new trick that they take on. How long it takes to learn a magic trick, really depends on your previous experience, just as much as the amount of time you can commit to learning.

The secret to learn magic tricks faster.

The secret isn’t sitting alone running through a magic trick 10,000 times. It’s about practicing the moves, rehearsing the presentation and then getting out and performing it as much as possible. Professional magicians may perform some of their magic tricks 20-30 times per night. That’s a LOT of repetition. If you are not doing magic commercially, you still need to drill a new trick as much as possible, so you can master it.

Learn magic tricks that are good for beginners.

We shan’t give you actual names of magic tricks to learn as everyone is different, but we can guide you by telling you what to look for in a good magic trick when you begin your journey.

In general, you should learn magic tricks that are short in execution and routine, long winded routines can become boring for spectators. It can take a lot of your attention to remember all the process involved in a long routine; this will definitely show in your performance, which is not good.
Try to learn magic tricks that can be described in one sentence. For example, ‘I selected a card and it appeared on the other side of the window!’. If you find magic tricks to learn that are easily explained then your audiences will talk about your performance to others, this is a good thing.

It is best to learn magic tricks that are not too far out of your comfort zone. It is great to push what you do but as far as practicing magic that you intend to show people it is best to learn magic tricks that are not too advanced. Performing magic tricks above your technical abilities will show when you perform them to people, and they may see through your technique; this will ultimately end up ruining the magic.

Don’t try to learn magic too fast. Slow down, master the basics first. By all means practice magic tricks that are out of your comfort zone as this is the only way to push forward. However you should resist showing people these magic tricks until you have perfected them and can perform them with patter flawlessly.

How to learn magic tricks : Practice A Better Way To Practice

Learn magic tricks with context and meaning

Learn magic tricks with coins

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