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

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

by Merchant of Magic 5 Comments

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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