how to do magic tricks Archives

How to Invent Your Own Magic Tricks and be More Creative.

Would you like to invent your own magic tricks? How much of the magic you perform has been created by other magicians? There isn’t really anything wrong with that, but many magicians want to start being creative with the magic they introduce into their act. Let’s look at ways to develop ideas for new magic tricks and develop creativity.

‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’ – Walt Disney

Instead of hunting for the next new magic trick that will freshen up your act, could you invent something new? Even if you don’t feel you can create full, brand new magic tricks, you may be able to adapt or change existing material to give it your own special twist and brand it with your personality.

Take a step away from the magic you are currently performing and think to yourself:

‘If I could perform any magic trick, what would I like to do?’

This is where Walt Disney’s wise words come into play. The first step is to be able to ‘dream’ or ‘imagine’ what it is you wish to achieve. This can be tough, starting from nothing. However, to be creative you don’t have to start from a blank canvas. Use what is around you and inspires you.

Buy yourself a pocket sized notepad, or use an online notebook like Evernote. Ideas and inspiration are all around us. It could come from listening to a conversation, an event you witness or a poster you see. It’s very easy to have ideas, but just as easy to forget them. Any ideas you have, make a note. Even if its just a word, note it down. See something that gives you an idea? Take a picture of it on your phone. Start capturing ideas as you go about your day. In time you can then refer to your random notes and scribblings. You’ll be surprised how inspirational and these ideas can get your creative juices flowing in all sorts of directions.

Here are some of my suggestions to help inspire ideas and help creativity to flow.

Movies.

Movies are great for ideas. But only if you are watching them with the thirst for new ideas in the back of your mind.

‘I was watching the old horror movie ‘The Fly’ recently. There is a scene where the main character has developed two transportation pods. He enters one, dematerializes, and is then rematerialized into the second. However, one day he transports himself and a fly enters the pod. Lo and behold they materialize as one being.

This immediately hit me as a great theme for any transposition magic trick, or even any routine where two signatures appear together on one card.’ – Paul Knight

Being creative with your magic does not necessarily mean creating a new routine. Simply taking a magic trick you already do and changing the theme and patter can change the whole appearence of the trick.

So when you are next relaxing watching a film keep in the back of your mind the opportunities for any possible ideas or themes you can employ in your magic.

Music.

Music can be very inspiring and help hugely with creativity. By simply playing music as you practice you will be surprised how easy it is to stray from your usual patter and handling. Just experiment and open up. Remember there are no rules.

Books.

Not just magic books, read as much as you can both fiction and non fiction. It’s amazing how many plots can spark ideas for magic. Good authors can engage readers on both an intellectual and emotional level. This is an important skill to master for your magic. The more you read, the more you will grow a feel for how a good story is created, as well as discover interesting plot ideas you may never have considered.

Latest trends.

What’s being discussed on the internet?
What meme’s are going around?
What are the top 10 games or apps at the moment?

Trending topics and current news can give you some awesome ideas for new presentations and magic tricks. Finding fun or interesting topics that are popular has never been easier. Your facebook stream will be stuffed with meme’s and ideas. Get ideas from sites like Boingboing or Lifehacker add them to a newsreader app or service and start building a reader list of interesting sites that can give you ideas.

The secret to magic creativity.

To build your creativity, you need to feed it. Start looking around at all the weird and unusual stuff. It’s all around you! Here’s the real secret:

Ubiquitous capture

Ubiquitous capture is when you record ideas, information, thoughts, and experiences wherever you are. The goal is to reduce the amount of time taken between when the idea appears and when it is written down, recorded or captured.

Capture the things you find, even if you don’t know why or how you could ever need it. If it’s interesting to you, capture it. The more you do this, the more you feed your creativity with little ‘idea seeds’. They can stay buried in your note system, until one day they pop out and give you a great idea for a new presentation, or even a magic routine itself.

10,000 Hours of Practice to Master a Magic Trick? No Thank You

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

The fastest way to practice magic tricks

Would you like to be able to practice and learn magic tricks faster than you thought possible?

There is a rule becoming a master any anything. It’s called the 10,000 hour rule. Proposed by Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, the 10,000 hour rule claims you need 10,000 hours of practice to master any skill. That’s around 10 years of consistent magic practice!

Have you got time for that?

Would you like a quicker way?

Let’s look at some ways that you can cut that time down, and still get the same results. The 10,000 hour rule refers to practice through simple repetition. Is it possible to looking at your practice technique, and introduce some smart behaviour into your routine that could cut the time needed to master a magic trick?

Practice your magic tricks just before you sleep.

Sleep is a lovely thing, and it’s very good for you, but it’s also a time when your brain processes the information that it has taken in through your day and sorts it for long term storage. Information is consolidated during sleep as memories are created and associated with previously stored information.

If you study your magic shortly before you go to bed, you should find that you retain much more of the information than if you studies earlier in the day. Bookending your day with your magic practice sessions can greatly boost the effectiveness of your practice.

Commit to formal magic practice.

What did watching all those kung-fu films teach you? The Zen masters know a thing or two about mastering skills!Instead of just going through the motions as you perform your moves, focus on every detail. Slow your practice down so you can pay attention to the process just as much as the result. Practice in the present, thinking about what you are ACTUALLY doing, not about the past or what you hope for the future. Continually ask yourself how you could adapt or change the process to improve the final result). This is a move away from mindless ‘reps’ as you examine each step of the movement and timing the technique requires.

Know your strengths.

You can get anywhere you want, with enough hard work and commitment. But some people have an easier journey than others. We can develop skill over time, but you will have a natural talent for some aspects of magic. Perhaps you are a natural actor, maybe your mind is hardwired for creativity. If you have a talent, find it and use it to your advantage.

Channel your time and effort towards magic tricks you already have a natural ability for, build a compatible set of skills to complement it. You will be practicing magic that you already have an advantage to use.

Stand of the shoulders of giants.

Pretty much everything in magic has been done before. New magic is often a variation of previous techniques with a new spin added.

The core principles are classic principles – adapted and refined from magicians that worked on designing magic tricks long ago.

Read as much as you can, and study the classics from famous magicians. Learn from other magician successes and their mistakes – You can learn faster by avoiding errors that have already occurred.

As you build up your core knowledge. Seek out new magic tricks that take the principles that you already know. The core sleights from your already mastered material, and build up a working set of material around those moves. It’s possible to do a wide range of different coin magic tricks that secretly all use the same 2 or 3 moves. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel every time you add a new magic trick.

The 10,000 hour rule isn’t set in stone. You can create shortcuts in your practice by spending time, designing a strong practice program. Take just 1% of the time you spend browsing the internet for new magic tricks, and spend it organising your practice regime. By practicing smart, you can get to the mastery of any magic technique or trick, much faster than you ever thought possible.

Why a Card Magic Trick Only Works 1 in 20 Times? – Magicians Problems

by Merchant of Magic 17 Comments

How to learn a card magic trick for consistancy

James is having trouble learning a card magic flourish. He writes:

‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the chance to receive these update emails. I have been doing a card magic trick for 1-2 weeks now and I can do a few basic flourishes and card tricks.

Currently I am focusing on flourishes and I am attempting a trick that is above my skill level but it’s a flourish I really want to learn. I can flip the deck successfully 1 in about every 20 flips. I practice about 1-2 hours a day along with various card tricks in an extra hour totaling about 3 hours a day. Any advice would be really appreciated.‘

Dominic Reyes:
Sounds like you may be practicing too much. I know that sounds crazy, but you’re learning motor skills, so small amounts of practice often, is better than 1-2 hour chunks. Set up a practice drill, so you run through the card magic trick 15 times in the morning and 15 times in the evening, every day for 21 days. Slow it down to the slowest you can do it, yet it still ‘work’.

It’s a good sign that you are getting the card magic trick 1 in 20 right. It means that you have the ability. You just need to build consistency in technique.

The danger is that the 19 failed attempts are reinforcing the wrong actions. That’s why you need to slow down the action, so you can check everything (finger placement, Deck placement, pressure applied, thumb placement etc). Speed can build up later, on it’s own. You just want to focus on how the times that the card magic trick worked are different to the times it didn’t. It’s all really just physics, so the times that work WILL have something different happening from the times that don’t.

Focus on learning just one card magic trick or routine at a time. Splitting your practice time on several magic tricks slows you down. Choose ONE routine or card magic trick to master and make the commitment to work on just that project until you are happy with it. Jumping from trick to trick makes you a ‘jack of all trades, but a master of none’. It’s not a race, so make sure you are not trying to learn magic too fast

Adam Symons:
To learn a completely new sleight, first work out what the slight is trying to accomplish – with fans and flourishes, etc this is self evident, but with things like false deals, shuffles etc, it pays to have a clear idea of what the outcome of the move results in.

Oftentimes, an author has solved a card problem for themselves and the method they put out is one that works for their hand size, so by getting a sense of what the mechanics are trying to achieve you can begin to translate the action into something that works for you. If you’re having trouble mastering something, THINK! Break the move down into it’s component parts… Are you gripping the deck too tightly? Is the deck int the wrong position in your hands? Would you get a better result with your fingers in a different position?

Pay attention to the quality of the deck, newer, more slippery cards behave differently to an older, broken-in deck. Practice with your head as well as your hands – a lot of card manipulation boils down to an exercise in controlling friction (you’ve either got too much, or too little giving you the problem).

For beginners, work on the basics first (Charlier cuts, pressure fans) before going for that hotshot cut, to improve hand strength and co-ordination. And don’t give up! If it was easy, there’d be no value in the skill!

Daniel Chard:
It’s key to remember that all sleights are a means to an end, they are much better in the context of a structured routine as appose to just learning them for sleights sake!

I agree with mastering one effect at a time! Then once the routine/move/ flourish gets to a habitual stage (where you can perform it where you can perform it in your sleep, you are ready to move on!). Make sure their used in context, I use flourishes extensively in my work, but they have their place!

Take sleights and work them backwards, change the grip, handle them differently, change the timing.An interesting philosophy for moves:

If you can’t hide it, exaggerate it!

Exploit the part of move you can’t do, and try to come with a novel way of getting around it!

Learn at your own pace, but once you are ready take it out in the real world to test your effect, move in front of an audience! You will learn more in those few minutes of performance then any magician can teach you. Speak with trusted magic friends, ask for constructive feedback.

I hope that this has proved helpful and good luck with your journey.

Do you have any practice advice that will help James with mastering a ‘knacky’ card magic trick? What was the hardest flourish you mastered, and how did you work on it? Please share your ideas in the comments section below: