How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Learn Magic Tricks with Context and Meaning – Advice from Garrett Thomas

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Garrett Thomas - Learn magic tricks that reflect your personality

How do we learn magic tricks that have a context and meaning that relates to us as individual magicians?

Ask yourself: what do you love to do? Not just in the sense of magic, but in general. What are your hobbies? What gets you excited and motivated?

We asked master magician Garrett Thomas to take a few moments to give you some advice on this subject:

 


It’s common advice to build your character and persona around your own personality, rather than being a clone of other magicians. However, to do this you need to understand exactly who you are. The old saying goes: ‘You are what you do’.

What else do YOU do?

Draw inspiration when you learn magic tricks, from your passions. If, like Garrett Thomas, you enjoy puzzles, how could you build that into the exaggerated version of yourself that you present as your magic persona?

Ok, I know, your first love is magic.. But what else do you love? The best magic you create in your life will be inspired by what you pull out of yourself, your own interests and personality.  Perhaps you love gambling? If you have a passion for that, outside of magic, then it would be a good fit, for you to learn magic tricks that fit that theme.

Maybe you love reading books on a specific theme? Could you choose magic tricks to create an ‘act’ that reflects and communicate that passion?

Paint by Numbers.

Garrett Thomas suggests that you should look at the magic tricks created by other magicians as a form of ‘paint by numbers’. As we search a magic shop for new magic tricks to learn, it’s easy to forget that we are looking at the collective work of thousands of different magicians. Each of the magic tricks is offered OUT OF CONTEXT from the magicians complete act.

Looking at magic tricks in isolation from their context, does not give us a common theme for the tricks to be presented. The result: We tend to pick magic tricks simply because each magic trick fools us, and we feel we could also use them. We don’t consider if they fit our own consistent theme or personality. It’s very important to think about how any new magic tricks will fit in with the tricks that will also be presented in the set or act you perform. When fitted together will they present a common message about you as a performer, or just be a random series of ‘cool’ magic tricks any magician could do.

The way to stop being interchangeable.

Most magicians are interchangeable. It’s a sad fact that magic entertainment agencies will hire out magicians as an ‘out the box’ product.

Magic Agency: 

 ‘You need some table magicians? No problem! I can supply 3 table magicians for the event, and you get a discount!’


That’s not how YOU want to be sold to a client. You want to be hand picked and a feature of the event. Generic magic tricks make generic magicians. The way to prevent being generic is to have a unique feature. The best unique feature is your personality, communicated to the audience through the act and the magic tricks that form it. THAT is the reason why you should think about context when you choose to learn new magic tricks.

 

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Becoming an Expert Magician – Specialize Your Study of Magic Tricks?

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Expert magician‘I want to become a master magician. I’ve been doing magic tricks for a few years now and like doing card magic best. Is it OK to just do card tricks? I would like to become a master magician at magic tricks, but feel that I won’t be able to make a mark in magic, unless I focus on one part.‘ – Mark

 

What’s your specialty in magic? Are you a ‘coin man’, a card worker, or perhaps a mentalist? When you first start out learning magic tricks, it’s important to get experience across a wide range of magic tricks. You need to find out which types of magic suit you as an individual, which excite you and get your creative energy flowing. As you move along this path, you may find yourself drawn to particular types of magic tricks. When this happens, is it a sign that you should specialize?

We asked Simon Lovell to give you some advice:

 

That’s really good advice! Simon Lovell recommends that you spend the first few years trying out as many new types of magic as possible. Then, once you find a style of magic that you are passionate about, you should specialize and learn EVERYTHING you can about that subject. Through this, you become a master magician.

It’s vital that you develop a broad knowledge BEFORE you commit to a specific field, as you need to discover what’s right for you, and become grounded before you focus in one direction.

Dominic Reyes: By specializing, you develop a full understanding of a smaller subject. You learn it’s history, and it’s current direction and trends. You also discover it’s boundaries and limitations. Through doing this, you are able to touch the edge of current knowledge on that subject, and hopefully, push that edge a little further.

Let’s look at this process of becoming a master magician in more detail

Imagine this circle contains all human knowledge on the subject of magic

The whole range of knowledge in magic

As a kid you pick up a few simple proposition bets and basic magic tricks. You know a little:

Learning a few magic tricks as a beginner

You then start learning easy self working magic tricks. You know a little more:

Starting to learn professional magic tricks

You now start learning sleight of hand and performing skills. You develop a specialty:

Moving past self working magic tricks

You gain experience performing and deepen your knowledge of your chosen specialty:

Gaining experience and developing your knowledge in one direction

Lectures, specialized books, DVD’s and discussion with other magicians takes you to the edge of human knowledge on your branch of magic. You are now a master magician.

An expert in a field of magic

Once your at the boundary of your field you focus on your creativity:

Area of focus as you study magic tricks

You push at the boundary for a few years:

Working at the edge of magic knowledge

Until one day, the boundary gives way:

Creation of magic tricks

And, that dent you’ve made is your contribution.:

The magic tricks you develop

Of course, the world looks different to you now:

How the world of magic looks when you specialize

So, don’t forget the bigger picture:

 

Your contribution to magic

It’s important to understand that the goal is not the specialization itself.  The specialization is a tool cut through the huge amount of information on magic, so you can understand just one part fully. Your goal is to become the best performer you can become, in the time you have.

Specialization allows you to become an expert magician. It’s important if you want to become one of the core creators of magic in the field. However, specialization doesn’t need to be on the mechanics of magic tricks. Becoming a master magician in performance, misdirection, comedy in magic, dexterity… All these abilities could also become your specialty.

The core message is to gain a broad knowledge first, then COMMIT to mastering something. Choose a specialty and push yourself to know the subject fully, then push a little further and make a contribution.

Useful Posts:

Eric Jones: Master magicians don’t mind being caught out

Master magicians and creators of magic tricks – Talk to them

My hands are too small to do sleight of hand magic tricks

Special thanks to Matt Might for The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D.

Recommended book: Simon Lovell – Second to None

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How Does Dynamo Do His Tricks?

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Magic Shops are asked how Dynamo Does his Tricks
How does Dynamo do his tricks? This is the most common question the team at the Merchant of Magic is asked. In fact, a day doesn’t go by without someone doesn’t phone the magic shop to ask just that question.

Why do they want to know?

Many callers have just seen an episode of Dynamo Magician Impossible on TV. They have been amazed by the show and simply want to work out Dynamo does it. For other’s, the dynamo TV series acts as a gateway, inspiring them to learn magic for themselves. They call the shop for help taking the first step in magic training.

How should a magic shop answer this question? There are several possible answers a magic shop could give:

How does Dynamo do his tricks? Answer: It’s a secret.

Magic shops use a code of conduct developed by magicians over the years, to allow the exchange of magic secrets amongst themselves. Training and magic tricks need to be exchanged, but magic shops agree not to actively promote exposing the secrets of magic tricks to the general public. When  a person that magic shop doesn’t know, calls to ask: how does Dynamo do his magic tricks? We assume that the person is simply a member of the public and is looking for answers to a puzzle rather than seeking to learn magic.

 

How does Dynamo do his tricks? Answer: With a huge production company on TV

Much of Dynamo magician impossible is TV magic. That’s very different to the type of magic tricks that would work if a magician were performing magic tricks live.

Dynamo’s TV show is a polished product, produced, edited and directed. It’s the work of a huge team of people. When people ask magic shops: How does dynamo do his magic tricks, they are hoping that it will be something they can simply buy and perform themselves. This is often not the case. Some possible answer:

 

How does Dynamo do his tricks? Answer: That’s the wrong question to ask.

The saying goes:

‘The only silly question is the one that isn’t asked’.

That’s true, but there are better ways to ask the question. How about:

That’s true, but there are better ways to ask the question. How about:‘How can I do magic tricks like dynamo?’

It’s great to be inspired by famous magicians, but one of the real magicians secrets is not to try to become a clone of any single magician.

 

If you enjoy the type of magic Dynamo performs (Street Magic), look for magic tricks you could do in that style. Be original, yet with a popular theme. Clones are never as successful as the original. As a magician, you need to step out in your own direction. Use other magicians as inspiration and learn as much as you can from them about presentation and performance, but don’t follow too closely in any one person’s footsteps. If you do, you will encounter all the problems they have faced, but very little of their luck or breaks.

Ask a good magic shop for help choosing magic tricks in the style of Dynamo Magician Impossible and they will be happy to help you. If you ask them: How does Dynamo do his tricks? They won’t answer that question directly. However, they will be happy to talk to you about your performing style, persona and the magic tricks you already do. Then, they can suggest magic tricks that would fit you perfectly. The best magic shops are staffed by working magicians so they will have invaluable free information for you on how to get it right.

 

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