How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Magic Tricks Addiction – Do You Have a Problem?

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magic trick addictionIf you are serious about studying magic, it means putting in the hours needed to practice, consistently, and over a great deal of time. There’s no shortcut, unless you want to be just an average magician. However, even dabbling in magic can have a serious consequence:

 
Magic addiction.

The trouble is we love magic. We especially like being fooled and enchanted by tricks. After all, that’s why we first became interested in it. We decided we wanted to be able to do it ourselves, so we started to learn. That’s when reality kicked in as we discovered that knowing the secret of a magic trick, instantly removed its ability to fool us. What’s left is the hard work of study, repetition and constant adjustment of technique, as we work to master each magic trick. That’s a whole load of boring, compared to the feelings a new magic trick gives us. The result is a pile of half mastered tricks and ‘itchy fingers’ for the next new magic trick that’s about to be released.

Habit Vs. Addiction

A habit is a pattern of behavior that becomes entrenched and is repeated on a regular basis. An addiction works quite differently to a habit.  A behavior appears to satisfy a craving, but in reality, it is the cause of the precise craving it appears to cure. Addicts engage in an endless quest to satisfy their cravings, and in doing so, they create more.

The endless quest of magic.

This conflict between the love of being fooled, and the dull reality of practice is one of the reasons magicians learn so many tricks. Far more than they would ever be able to master. The thrill comes from searching for new magic tricks, wondering how they are done, and anticipating learning the secret.

Once a magic tricks, secret is theirs, they find little satisfaction from it anymore, and a new search for another trick begins. It never ends. If you don’t believe me, and you think you WILL one day know enough magic, spend an afternoon in a magic dealers hall. You will find loads of older magicians, who have been ‘learning’ for decades, yet are still frantically searching for the ‘next trick’ to master.

I’m not saying that this addiction for new magic is a terrible thing. Perpetually learning is extremely positive. I’m not aware of any health risks associated with continual study. It’s a lifelong passion to learn and be creative.

The Cure

Well, here’s the truth: There is no known cure.

Once you have been bitten by the ‘magic bug’, it’s already too late. You love learning, mastering new skills (or at least intending to do so) and enjoy the feeling of wonder and excitement that a new magic secret promises you. More than that, you want to create those feelings in other people too.

Don’t worry about it though. You can’t overdose, it’s slightly cheaper than most harmful chemical addictions, and it will bring you so much joy throughout your whole life. It will keep your outlook on life open and will entertain so many people through the years.

I’m a magic addict, and I’m dang well proud of it, you should be too!

Problems Buying Magic Tricks – Price Vs Equipment

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Magic Value and PriceImagine that we released a new magic trick. It’s an electronic, state of the art device that can tell what colour a spectator is thinking about from across a room. It’s an astounding electronic box that does all the hard work for you. The downside: It requires 6 AAA batteries and you need to wear an arm strap. It sells for £100

A year later, we invent a new version of the device. This one does exactly the same thing, but it only needs a paper clip, a straw and 2 magnets to make it work.

Should the simpler, easier method sell for more than the first version? Perhaps a retail price of £150? After all, it works better and doesn’t require batteries. There’s no arguing that these extra features are of immense value to the user.

Maybe instead, we should sell the new simple version for the same price as the original? Perhaps discounting the older electronic version for half price, as a cheaper alternative?

Which one should be more expensive: The one with more equipment, or the one with the best method?

The gimmick is often a disappointment.

How you answer the questions above, has more to do with your attitude to magic, than the economics of selling magic. Do you view commercial magic as something that has a value proportionate to the props and manufacturing process involved, or as an exchange of a method and ideas needed to perform a magical act?

As new magic tricks (and old tricks that have been re-imagined) are released every day, it’s exceptionally easy to forget that their worth is in the magical ‘effect’ that they allow you to perform, rather than the props required to achieve the magic trick.

Rage.

Many beginners face this problem when they start buying magic tricks. It has a name in the magic community: Jiffy Bag Rage. The name stems from the fact that many magic tricks come with just a few props and a sheet of instructions sealed in a clear plastic jiffy bag. The magician has been excitedly waiting for the trick to arrive and thinking about what the method will be. When it finally arrives, there is a moment of anti-climax when they open the jiffy bag and discover the secret. At that moment,  the ‘mystery’ of how doing the magic trick is removed, and all that is left is a few very basic props and the prospect of starting the process of practice.

When you first examine a new trick, it’s vital that you remember the feeling you had BEFORE you received the trick, when you watched it being performed and experienced the amazement and wonder of the magic.

The birthday magic catch 22.

There is time of the year when this becomes a crucial issue: Children’s Birthdays. Magic shops help parents choose gifts for their children. The magic they buy is a gift and one of many items that the child will be receiving. It has to compete with all the toys that will also be given to that child. In this situation, the product is often judged on its physical appearance rather than the magic it produces. It’s totally understandable to want impressive packaging in these situations because of the products function is as a gift.

Kids birthday gifts can put a magic dealer in a tremendously difficult position. There are many incredible  tricks that would be perfect for a child wanting to learn magic, but they usually come in everyday packaging or just a jiffy bag. It’s the tuition that has the real value to the child, but the packaging creates value for the parent. This is a reason why so many magic sets sold in toy shops are so poor. The manufacturers know that the person buying the set is a gift giver and is attracted by the huge box, graphics and images on the outside, rather than the content.

A good magic shop, is concerned with the quality of tuition, so may well recommend a collection of tricks, or a pack that has excellent tricks, but is not dressed up in a gift box. The magic shop knows these tricks will be the best for teaching a child magic, but not the best at competing with the boxed toys that children are used to receiving from the toy industry.

A magic secret

These challenges faced by the best magic shops, is not your problem as a magician, but there is something useful you can take from this:

Don’t be fooled by the packaging and props of any magic trick you consider ordering. Those things are designed by manufacturers and by marketers to sell you magic as a product or toy, rather than teach you to perform a magical ‘effect’.

Read the trick descriptions and watch the magic video demonstrated. Decide if the magic trick, is right for you, regardless of props included. If it amazes you, entertains you, and fits in with your style and your other tricks, that should be the reason to order and learn it.

Keep in mind when you get the trick, the TRUE value is in how practical, effective or useful the trick will be to you. It’s in the creative genius of the method and the thought process, real world testing and refining that a magic creator has put into its development.

How many batteries that are required or if the instructions come with a DVD rather a booklet, is a distraction from its true value to you.

 

You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, or a magic trick by its props. The value of a magic trick is in the experience it creates for the spectators, not the equipment or method used to achieve it.

 

DO THIS: Make a quick list of your favorite tricks. The ones you perform all the time. Notice how many of them just came from a book or a DVD or require only a few basic props. What does that tell you about the relationship between excessive, complex equipment/props and value for money?

What do you think? Share your thoughts about this in the comments section below:

Why Magic Shops Don’t Want You to Learn Sleight of Hand

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Magicians Sleight of HandWhen I first decided I would learn how to do magic, I firmly believed that I could ignore sleight of hand altogether. I wanted to have fun with some magic tricks, show them to my friends and fool them. The thought of spending countless hours, alone with a deck of playing cards, left me completely cold. I saw magic as nothing more than party tricks. Maybe because of the way I discovered it, I thought that would be the perfect way to get exactly what I wanted, by the most direct method and in the least amount of time.

How I started out.
Like so many other people, I got the ‘magic bug’ by accident. I spotted a magic trick display in a high street shop. It was a circus equipment and juggling supplies shop, which had become a big craze in the UK through the early 1990’s. I popped in to look at the uni-cycles that were on display in the shop window. They looked awesome (and pretty expensive for a jobless student), so my eye soon wandered to the cabinet next to the bikes. I came face to face with a Thumb tip and silk, together with a video cassette that promised to show me 25 tricks with the thumb tip. I liked the idea very much, and headed home clutching the bag, planning to ‘do the heads in’ of my friends that evening.

How it went:
The Thumb tip and Silk worked like a charm. There wasn’t really any presentation,  other than ‘Hey, look at this’, but that didn’t bother me at all.  Suddenly, I had magical powers!  The next morning I was at the doors to the juggling shop just as the doors opened. Thoughts of uni-cycles had gone from my mind completely. I only wanted to look at the magic cabinet again and see what the next miracle, I would be doing that evening, would be.

Back to the magic shop
Trick number 2 was a Svengali deck. Another instant miracle that promised to make me an instant card expert. That evening, I convinced most of the student bar that they should NEVER play cards with me. On it went, each trip to the shop armed me with another incredible ‘skill’ and my reputation as, ‘The magic man’ spread like wildfire.

The end of the line.
It was 2 weeks later that I hit a problem. I had brought every trick in the shop, except for one dusty item that was at the bottom of the display cabinet. It was a little brass ring box. The guy behind the counter told me that it was pretty hard to do, so I had stayed well clear of it. But now, I had no options left. If I was going to add another trick to my ‘skills’ I would have to go for something a bit more ‘advanced’.  The brass ring box brought me slap bang to a halt. The instructions said:

‘Use your favourite method to vanish the ring’

That was it.. Nothing else was said about the first half of the trick. The rest of the instructions went into great detail about how to make the ring appear inside the locked ring box.

Grrrrrrrr!

My favourite vanish? What does that mean? I don’t even have a single method, let alone a favourite one!

There you have it ladies and gentleman, the moment when I hit the wall that most beginners will face sooner or later: Time to learn sleight of hand.

Magic and Music
I think sleight of hand is very much like music. Sure, you can download as many songs as you like. Beautiful creations that are expertly created. But you will  always be consuming other peoples work. It doesn’t have to be like that. As you start to learn how to make the individual notes and chords of an instrument, you become free to make your own music, just the way YOU like it. In just the same way, by ignoring sleight of hand, you will tend to be a consumer of other people magic, rather than a creator of your own.

Magic Shops are happy to be like Spotify.
Magic dealers have always known two things to be true:

1) Most people that start learning magic the same way that I did. Beginners go through a process of looking for instant miracles when they give magic a try.

2) Most beginners give up as soon as they hit the ‘sleight of hand wall’.

This is something that drives me nuts: From a commercial point of view, there are dealers that feel that keeping beginners buying ‘gimmicked’ tricks that do all the hard work for them, makes perfect sense. The magicians remain consumers, and a large percentage remain interested in magic for longer.

Statistically, the more experienced a magician becomes,

the less they spend on magic tricks.

They slowly shift from buying gimmicks, to restocking on consumables like bicycle playing cards etc, and many dealers seem to want to slow this transition down.

It’s in a magic dealer’s advantage to focus on items that don’t make magicians self reliant. 

Now, as regular customers of The Merchant of Magic know… The magic shop has always tried to fight this. That’s why I insisted that the shop runs personal sleight of hand tuition and workshops even though they are not really commercially viable. If I can push magicians past the ‘consuming’ stage, I believe I can open up a whole range of new magic possibilities for them.

I’m not saying gimmicked tricks are a bad idea. Many of the best close up magic tricks are heavily gimmicked. My point is that you should, as soon as possible, start to learn some basic sleight of hand so you can build and structure your OWN tricks.

When you learn sleight of hand, you get a set of building blocks that you can use to adjust and adapt the tricks you already use. It allows you to invent your own tricks and stops you being limited in the tricks you can add to your act. Don’t train yourself to just be a consumer of other peoples magic tricks. If you acquire the tools and building blocks to build magic tricks, you free yourself from the constraints imposed by other peoples thinking.

It’s vital that, when you choose a magic shop to build a relationship with, as you learn your magic, that you pick one that encouraged you to learn sleight of hand as well as gimmicked tricks.

DO THIS: Choose a core sleight of hand move that you will commit to practicing on a regular basis. Learn sleight of hand with just one move and build in a regular practice time for the move. Here are a few moves that would make a great starting point:

The Double Lift

The Elmsley Count

The Retention of Vision Vanish

The Classic Palm