How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

How to be Confident When Magic Tricks Go Wrong

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 Magic Tricks Go Wrong - Confiidence

Matt writes: 'What close up magic would you recommend for someone like me? I'm not very confident at performing tricks. The magic tricks go wrong when I try them on my mates.'

 

Hi Matt,

Many thanks for getting in touch. This can be a common problem with people starting out in magic. We will of course help but there is so much more to magic than just the tricks involved, true deception and truly fooling someone comes from a great performance. So we will try to help you with all of it!

The danger of too many close up magic tricks

Firstly, try not try to look at getting lots of new magic. Stop and try to look at why the magic tricks you have tried so far are going wrong. Most problems aren't solved simply by adding more tricks to your workload. Cut right back to a bare minimum of a few tricks to work on. Continuing to pile on new material just avoids having to do the real work of practice. We will of course help out as much as possible but there is only so much we can do, it is your job to make sure you practice, practice, practice and learn all you can and focus on where you think you are going wrong. 

Confidence performing magic tricks

You mentioned in your email that you are not very confident when you perform. Confidence can be a big problem because it will negatively impact what you do, causing your mind to go blank leading to hesitation. When you hesitate, you give people moments to look at things they shouldn't be paying attention to. Essentially when you are not confident and nervous you are not presenting magic like it should be and people will catch you out as they are not misdirected or engaged.

Build your confidence as a magician

Here's some advice from Ben Williams on the subject of confidence: 

'Lacking confience when you perform magic tricks doesn't mean all is lost. When I first start performing I would shake violently, have heart palpitations, sweaty palms, blank mind, just about everything that you could have as a physical manifestation of fear and nerves. I have personally experienced. Here is a blog post I wrote about overcoming nervousness. It talks about some of the things that really helped me, techniques for breathing, focusing your mind and relaxing.'

Running before you can walk

If you have practiced your magic and know what moves you have to do and are not cheating yourself, the rest is all in your head. Magic tricks go wrong if you are not properly practicing your magic before going out to perform them. Lack of practice will lead to you naturally making mistakes. Make sure you are not cheating yourself and performing things too soon just because you are excited. Also, just because it goes right 5 times in a row in front of a mirror that does not mean it is performance ready. When you perform in front of a group the experience is very different to being in front of a mirror.

Caring too much

This is a weird one. You should try to not care so much. Within your performance try not to give off an intense vibe, try to relax and act like it nothing bothers you. If something goes wrong, it goes wrong, it really isn't the end of the world. If people try to make you feel bad for getting it wrong by laughing or stating how badly it went wrong then shrug it off.

Never get into an argument or try to deny that it went wrong, this will only inflame the situation. Instead you can say something like, 'yep, that wasn't at all like when I learned it at Hogwarts!' This will get  a laugh and diffuse the situation for you. If you can relax then so will your audience, they will stop trying to figure out how it works and begin enjoying it!

 

With all of this being said, here are some suggestions of great magic to help you ease into it. These are all pretty much self working, so you can concentrate on your performance. Basically I will list a whole load of links for you to help you out Matty!

FREE ARTICLES FROM BLOG RELATING TO PERFORMANCE

Overcoming Nervousness

Pitfalls of Performing to Family and Friends

 

TRICKS YOU SHOULD LOOK UP

Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks Vol 1, 2 and 3

Sponge by Jay Noblezada

Pen Thru Anything

Invisible Deck by Oz Pearlman

Invisible Deck (Deck alone)

Coin Unique

 

FREE TRICKS AND EBOOKS

Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks Trial

Misdirection E-Book

Duplex Free Trick Video

Turnover Pass Free Video

School of Cool Free Trial

How to Learn Magic Tricks eBook

Free eBook Range

 

We hope this helps Matt, please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.

 

3 Mistakes Magicians Make Building Magic Trick Routines

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Mistakes that magicians make

Gideon contacted the Merchant of Magic because he is having problems routining his magic tricks

Gideon writes:

'I have my first performance in a month (I do mostly close-up magic) and I'm struggling with how to put together a cohesive routine.

Also, I'm having trouble with making my classic pass undetectable. Can you help?'

 

We can certainly help! There are 3 common mistakes that magicians make when trying to build their magic tricks into a cohesive routine or act.

1) Forgetting about pocket managment

When creating your routines, it's important that you think about pocket management. This is one of the most common mistakes magicians make. It's nice to have routines that all have an underlying theme, but for general close-up magic it is not so important. Make sure your tricks flow and and that you notice how much attention you pay to your spectators as opposed to yourself and your props.

Have you tried practicing your routines fully in whatever you will wear when you perform? Are you planning where every prop will go for the beginning of your routines, but failing to think about where you  will ditch them or put them back when you have finished? If you are mid-performance and searching or fidgeting for props in your pocket,  this can cause confusion and make you lose the flow of the routine. It is these moments that can knock you the most when you perform.

When practicing, wear you suit jacket or whatever outfit you will perform in. Run through three or four routines, and make a note of where you put things back at the end of the routine. Try to pay attention to keeping your props organised. This way, when you approach the next group you are not fidgeting around looking for a sharpie or a coin, or worse still an important gimmick like a coin bender!

2) Failing to remember that the tricks must compliment each other

Try to look at things that will compliment each other without cluttering up your pockets. Add a little variety, it can be boring to do three transposition magic tricks in a row. For a magician, it can seem interesting if tricks get gradually more impossible or use a different method each time. Unless you convey this point to the spectators, it won't translate.

3) Picking tricks that are secretly identical

Sometimes a magic trick can seem different to us because we know the method, but the spectators may see it as the same effect. For example, you could have one playing card in your wallet that your spectators somehow name. This is the same sort of trick as having your spectator name a playing card, and you then show it to be the only one reversed in a deck of cards.

 

Performing a perfect pass

With regards to sleight of hand moves such as the Pass. The pass, when it was first originally taught, was never meant to be seen. It was regarded as invisible because performers used it with the correct misdirection. Sleights like this were never meant to be invisible to a watching eye. On more than one occasion, I've stood still and paused (before needing to do a move with cards) when everyone was looking at my hands. I couldn't do the move without pointing it out. So I just sat there; relaxed, and said with a chuckle:

“Well, I'm not gonna do anything if you look that close!”

That's kind of a funny thing to say, but it can give you ample time to do a move under the laughs and misdirection.

Do not sweat the invisible-ness of your pass just make sure you are more engaging and entertaining to look at than your cards, and you will be fine. If you can perform a competent pass without looking or and fidgeting with the cards, then that will suffice. You can always use you body to cover actions such as the pass. Turn from side to side as you perform it. Sometimes when I am at tables, I will crouch down to the table edge, so I am more on their eye line, and it is when I crouch down that I perform the move. Think about this as well, if you've seen some videos on YouTube or the internet, of people doing really invisible passes. Imagine if there was more than one camera set up on them. You only see one angle. If you had 8 or 9 of those cameras chances were, you would see a massive flash of what's going on.

I hope this helps Gideon, great work on getting out there, just make sure you have fun. If you do simple things and have fun it will be better than you doing complicated tricks and being nervous or unsettled throughout your performance.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you and let us know how the gig went!

 

The Best Magician Performing Speed

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Slow Down - Best Magician Advice

To become the best magician, slow down! Magic is not a race!

We had this email sent in from a customer asking for advice about slowing down his performance:

'I'm a 66-year-old magician and to this day I still rush whenever I'm in front of an audience. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it is still apparent. Any help in this area would be greatly appreciated. Cheers' – Don Podlas

 

Some advice from Ben Williams:

I know what you are experiencing when you rush a performance! It is a very common problem, just as common as being nervous before a performance. The best magician advice I ever had on the subject was from the late Ali Bongo at my Magic Circle exam was 'just slow down!’. That resonated with me and made me look closer at how I appeared while I performed. I actually thought I was going slow! 

If you film yourself practicing routines, the chances are, mostly, that you will not be going too quickly. You may speed up when doing sleights like the shuttle pass, (this should be addressed if it does occur) but in general you will be relaxed as the performance is only to the camera. All of this changes when you are in front of an audience. Fear, adrenaline, guilt, excitement, all of these will play a factor in your performance. Rushing your performance is a common result of these feelings. 

Something psychological happens; subconsciously you will want the tough part (usually the most important part) of the routine to be over and done with so that you do not have to worry about it. As a result, we speed up our performance at these times.

Here are a few reasons why people may rush during a performance. Remember if you are mindful of these then you can counteract the urge to rush.

1) Fear of being caught performing a magic trick

Fear is a big one, the main reason probably. Most people speed up when doing the dirty work for fear of being busted. It feels more safe to do things at speed as you think maybe a spectator will not see it. You must remember though that true, deceiving sleight of hand must be natural and we do not naturally do things at lightspeed!

If you look at how you would pick a coin up and naturally and legitimately. You place it in your other hand slowly, you do not rush or do some flamboyant over the top action, you simply put it there at a natural and slow pace. Therefore, when you do this action as a feign or sleight for a vanish, it should look exactly like when you do it normally if you want to deceive people badly. If you were to speed up at the moment when you 'place the coin or item into' your other hand, then it could cause alarm bells to ring in the spectator's mind. Alarm bells are the opposite reaction that you wish to receive! 

2) Chasing the reaction to magic tricks

Chasing the reaction is another classic reason for rushing a performance. When you get to the end of a routine, and the reaction doesn't burst out immediately, it can leave you feeling like you have to fill in the gap. So you speak and fill in the gap and move on to the next trick too quickly. You don't 'let the magic breathe'.

Sometimes to speak after an effect can kill the magic entirely, sometimes your audience is just gobsmacked or in awe or just in a moment of pure astonishment so they cannot speak. Let the moment sink in, pause, let the magic breathe and the reactions will come, sometimes it takes a few seconds for the spectators to catch their breath!

Do not rush straight into your next performance. Smile and look around at your spectators, maybe comment if they are silent, you can say something like, 'I take it this is stunned silence!' Mostly that will snap them out of it, and they will let you know how good it was. If it was bad, they would also let you know, but in this case at least you know for sure and can work on what may have gone wrong!

3) Magicians not paying attention to your audience

If you do not pay any attention to your audience or spectators, then you will not notice clues like when they aren't following you.

You must remember, when you have practiced your routine hundreds of times, so you know it inside out, your spectators haven't. It will most likely be the first time they have ever encountered a magician in real life.

Things that may be second nature to you are still very alien to your spectators. If you are rushing your performance, your spectators will do things like go glass eyed and phase out or frown slightly, small reactions to their confused state. If you see any of these signs, you must slow down. You may get a poor reaction because they didn't really understand a part of the routine or part of what you did as the performance was rushed.

A reaction could be poor because they feel that there was something dodgy going on due to fast movements. This way your spectators feel like they are being deceived and not amazed as they are kind of following the trail of dodgy motions and not being sucked into your performance.

Slower is better when performing magic tricks

I hope these things help you to understand a bit as to why you may rush your performance. My advice for slowing down in performance is simple. Breath slower, speak slower and move slower. It may seem like silly advice but when I say this. What I mean by this is to be mindful of how quickly you are speaking and actually focus on speaking slower. Breath in-between sentences, pause for dramatic effect and be clear and enunciate your wording. Also, take deeper breaths, this will slow your heart rate down and help you to relax more. If you slow down your breathing you can use that as a kind of metronome for the rest of your performance, or as a regulator to keep reminding you to slow it down. 

We hope this helps not only Don but anyone else who reads this. I can promise you, if you slow down your performance will improve.