How To Be Prepared to Perform Magic in ANY Situation

We’ve all been there.

You’re meeting someone for the first time, and they find out you’re a magician. What do they do?

Well, nine times out of ten, they say ‘show me a trick!’.

Great. The only problem is, you’ve left your favorite EXPENSIVE gimmick in a box at home. What now?

Today I’m going to try my best to provide you with three simple solutions to this common situation (none of which require you lugging that super expensive gimmick around with you!) Let’s get into it…

First Solution: Always Carry A Deck of Cards

The best way to get out of this situation is to plan in advance. That DOESN’T mean rehearsing your full stage show every time you go out, but just to have something to lean on if you need to.

For most of us, a pack of cards is ideal.

Why?

For one, they’re comfortably familiar. Everyone knows what a pack of cards is; it gives the audience an immediate connection to you. Secondly, they’re adaptable. Whatever kind of persona you have, whatever style of magic you perform, there is a whole host of different tricks available to you.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, they pack light. Wherever you’re going, you should have space on you for a deck of cards. Personally, I take a backpack to most places I go, and just chuck a deck in there with everything else!

As long as you have a pack of cards with you, you should have a few solid tricks that you can perform impromptu. For example, the Ambitious Card is usually the trick I use when people ask me to show them one.

So, the first step to solving this problem is to be prepared for it; carry cards with you!

Second Solution: Learn Some Mobile Phone Tricks

Now, carrying a pack of playing cards will work for most people most of the time, but it isn’t a perfect situation. The fact of the matter is that you WILL get caught out sooner or later.

That’s why I advise you learn some magic with an object that will almost ALWAYS be present whatever the situation.

A mobile phone.

I love doing magic with people’s phones. It’s some of the easiest magic I know, yet it gets some of the best reactions. I think the reason for that is how personal it is.

With most magic, the props you use are foreign to your audience; they belong to you. There is inevitably a degree of detachment as a result.

However, when you do magic with their PHONE, you’re suddenly using an object that is deeply personal to them. You create this emotional attachment to the magic by using a prop they are very closely connected to.

Some of my personal favorite tricks to perform magic in any situation that use a spectator’s phone included:

Unlocking it.

Unlocking a spectator’s phone is almost like the ACAAN of mobile phone magic; magicians have been looking for the best way to do it for years. It’s a really powerful effect; especially since so many people guard their passcodes so seriously.

I personally use a technique taught by Greg Wilson, but there’s a great book by Michael Murray that teaches a whole bunch of really strong tricks with mobiles, including learning how to unlock TWO spectator’s phones at the same time. Check it out here.

Calling Your Phone

Anyone who is familiar with the TOXIC force using a phone’s calculator will understand just how versatile this technique is.

I use the TOXIC force all the time. Here’s a routine that works really nicely for me…

You start out by setting up their phone with the TOXIC setup. You set the desired number to your phone number. This really only takes a second or two.

Then, you go through the trick the same as usual; you ask the spectator to input numbers, multiply them, input more numbers, etc. Eventually, once they’re happy there’s no way you could have predicted the outcome, they hit the equals sign.

At this point, your phone number pops up. They won’t register it as a phone number straight away, just a bunch of random numbers in a row. You hold your finger down on the numbers until the option to ‘copy’ pops up.

Now, you head over to their ‘phone’ app, and paste in the number, then ring it.

After a moment or two, YOUR phone starts ringing. You answer it and confirm that it is their phone calling you.

This works really well for me, and it’s a great way to get someone’s phone number in an original and fun way!

If you don’t know the TOXIC force, don’t worry. As it happens, there is an alternative method to this that doesn’t require the TOXIC force. You can check it out here!

Third Solution: Ask THEM To Show You a Trick.

This one won’t work in every scenario but I quite like using it now and again when someone asks me to show them a trick.

Instead of instantly diving into the first phase of my ACR, I instead ask them ‘Oh, you’re a fan of magic then? Could you show ME a trick?’.

As it happens, most people know at least one or two basic tricks that they can do with cards. You provide them with the cards and let them do their thing. After they’ve finished their trick, I go into mine.

What’s the point?

Firstly, it gives me time to think! I can plan out my routine better and get a feel for their personality and what would impress them.

Secondly, it helps break any tension. All the pressure is taken off you; it becomes a shared experience rather than just you performing for them.

Finally, and this is just a nice little bonus, I find it tends to make them MORE impressed by my magic once they’ve had a go. This isn’t a case of showing off! It’s simply that they suddenly understand firsthand how difficult it can be, and so are more impressed as a result!

I hope some of these tips were useful to you! Let us know if you have any other go-to responses when someone asks you to show them a trick.

NEXT:

Is studying magic worth your time?

How magicians introduce themselves

Getting caught doing a magic trick

About the author: Benji is a hobbyist magician from the UK who also runs a magic site over at thedailymagician.com.

Magic Causes A Magicians Pants to Explode

by Dominic Reyes 2 Comments

Professional Magician Michael Gee was so shocked when his magicians pants exploded in the middle of a trick..

Michael Gee writes:

Ok, nobody laugh! So I’m at my afternoon’s event today. I lean over whilst offering a card… “pick a card, any card”. I then hear the loudest noise coming from my back region. Not realising what what it was, I put my hand around only to find this huge tear in the material from top to bottom! Nightmare!!

Nobody knew what had happened apart from me. I immediately sat down on the nearest chair and said “I need to sit down to finish the trick from here, it’s part of the trick!”. I then had to somehow tell my client what had happened so that I could fix the problem.

Luckily my client found this hilarious and said “of course you can sort it out”. I always carry an emergency sewing kit with me at all times but have never had to use it. Certainly came in good use today. I stitched up the trousers and continued with the show after all, the show must go on!!! Has this happened to anybody else or just me?!!

It’s not the first time, and it’s not going to be the last.. It’s another warning for magicians to expect the unexpected at every gig! How would you have handled this situation?

Michael is a professional magician, and a member of the Magic Circle with a lot of experience, so he had the good sense to have a sewing kit in his close up magic bag, but imagine if he didn’t… What would he do… His trousers (or his ‘magicians pants’ if you’re across the pond) couldn’t take it any more…

You can pick up a basic sewing kit for pennies at most thrift stores or simply remember to throw one in your wash bag the next time you are in a hotel room that has free grooming packs in the bathroom. I know a few magicians that simply keep a roll of duct tape in their magic bag for the same reason ( as well as a hundred other uses).

This brings us nicely onto the topic of the best things that professional magicians keep in their close up magic bag.

Here’s a post we made all about:

Your Close Up Magic Case – 8 Essential Items all Magicians Need to Carry

You may also find this post useful. Magician Paul Knight goes through his personal magic case and tips you in on the most useful items he takes to every magic gig:

What You Really Need In Your Close Up Magic Case

Have you ever had a disaster happen when you were performing? Have your magicians pants exploded too? How did you get through it? Let us know in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

What next?

You might be interested in our suggestions for creating a plan to move your magic from being a hobby to providing an income: The Plan – First Steps To Becoming a Professional Magician

Dominic Reyes – Magiens Verden Magazine Interview – Magic Practice

by Dominic Reyes 1 Comment

Interview with Dominic Reyes, conducted by Sune Alexandersen and published in MAGIENS VERDEN Magazine November 2015

– Tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been into magic and how did your interest start?

Hello everyone! I’m Dominic Reyes and I’m lucky enough to get to do something I would quite happily do for free, as a career. For the past 20 years, I’ve been a professional close-up magician, and I also own a bricks and mortar magic shop called The Merchant of Magic (www.MagicShop.co.uk)

I became fascinated by magic as a kid. I loved watching it on TV, but never though it would be something I would do. I played with magic sets given to me at Christmas, but then I discovered ‘girls’ and life got in the way… It wasn’t until my first term at university studying for a Psychology Degree that I discovered my first trick. It’s odd, but it happened because I was trying to buy a unicycle…

The guys in my student house were into juggling/circus skills for a laugh that summer. I got the bug and headed into town to buy a unicycle. You know how it is when you are prepared to do ANYTHING as a distraction from study and revision… The small shop also had a stand of magic tricks, and I picked up a Vernet Thumb Tip and silk. Just the thing to freak out everyone that evening in the house! It did, and at that moment I discovered my first important lesson in magic:

If you show people something magical and cool, they are going to say ‘Show us more…’ you better have something to follow it up..

I only had one trick! The next day, I was back at the shop waiting for it to open. I slowly brought every trick they sold. The shop only stocked ten items, but it was enough for me to discover I simply loved performing magic more than anything else. I was hooked for life.

You’ve written an excellent ebook on the art of practicing magic, and you’ve even made it freely available. Tell us how did the project start and why did you choose to give it away for free?

Thank you, that’s nice of you to say. The project came about through playing with ‘big data’. The magic shop has been going online for the past 16 years. That’s a lot of data about magicians buying habits. I noticed something interesting in the data. The life cycle of a beginner is roughly six months. After half a year, most people with a casual interest in close-up magic tricks move on to their next new hobby. If they continue past six months, there is a second drop off point after two years. Every day, hundreds of people discover magic, and hundreds forget about it. It’s a constant renewing cycle, and, on the whole, is a good thing. Out of this ‘churn’ rises a handful of magicians that continue to develop and become excellent. It’s just like panning for gold. The more full pans of sand, the more nuggets of gold get found. The sand will simply drop back into the river.

So, why the drop-off? The data showed me a lot more things. It’s a sample over 16 years of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The most significant factor that influenced this drop-off rate was how magicians approach magic practice.

Keeping a magic shop’s customers in love with magic long enough for it to become a lifelong passion, is pretty important to a magic shop. It’s also important to magic as an art. There’s so little taught on the subject. Most magic tricks deal with WHAT to learn, rather than how to approach learning it. How many magic tricks have you brought that come with a study plan?

That’s why I wrote Approaching Magic Practice. It’s my small attempt try to stop people getting frustrated with the lack of progress they often experience in the first few months of learning to become a magician.

I’m getting loads of thank you emails about the book. Almost everyone seems surprised that I’ve made it free. It’s simple really.. I don’t want to SELL it. I don’t want to have to persuade people to read it. I already sell over 20,000 magic tricks through Merchant of Magic. Approaching Magic Practice isn’t a ‘product’. The book is paying something forward and trying to stop people from dropping out of the hobby because they don’t feel they can become as good as they should be.

In the first month of release, the book has already been downloaded many thousands of times from readers all over the world. If I charged for the book, many of them simply wouldn’t spend their ‘magic bucks’ on it. Magicians who don’t have a systematic program of practice tend to focus on buying new magic tricks constantly. They tend to jump from trick to trick, never really mastering any of them. Most magicians want to purchase ‘tricks’ rather than something about practice.. Those people are exactly who the book has been geared to help the most, so making it free, means more people will read it.

– Tell us a little bit about the project?

The book is 102 pages of advice I give to magicians that come to the magic shop for personal tuition, or that contact me through my blog. There’s a systematic method of daily practice that you can apply to every magic trick you want to master. I teach the 20/20/20 practice drill method. It’s a tried and tested system that’s ideal for people that don’t have a lot of time on their hands. I’ve tried hard to make it light and easy to read and it’s peppered with questions and answers from magicians that have contacted the shop over the years to ask about learning a technique.

Topics Include:

Why magicians waste so much time getting little result
How to avoid the ‘pitfall of choice’
A structured, focused practice program
Ways to stay motivated
How to judge your progress
The psychology of practice techniques
How to spot and correct errors
Example study programs
Ways to Improve your existing material
How to build presentation into your practice
The 20/20/20 method of practice
Techniques to avoid performance drift
How to set practice goals
The best way to remove a practice plateau

What are some common pitfalls magicians fall into when practising?

There’s quite a few, but the good news is that they are all easy to fix. The most common pitfall is the ‘magic binge’. Your excitement about magic means that you practice for hours at a time in huge ‘all evening’ practice sessions. These tend to be unstructured with no set goal in mind. The results tend to be disappointing as you either get ‘burned out’ and stop practicing for a while, decide you just don’t have enough time to commit to regular practice, or you get bored and jump for one trick to the next, so no real progress is made. These binge sessions slowly transform into browsing the internet for new tricks, watching magic DVD’s, reading magic books, or browsing the internet magic forums. That’s valuable research, but it’s not PRACTICE.

To fast track your progress, you need to have a structured program of practice you can do every day. Frequent short sessions are much better than long binges because of the way our brains process information. In the book, I discuss some of the psychology behind this, and how to use that to your advantage.

Is there such a thing as negative training?

Yes. Very much so. I open the book with a quote from Michael Ammar:

‘Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect.’

If you are not mindful of your technique when you practice, you make small mistakes. These become ingrained through repetition. It’s vital that your technique is as perfect as you can make it as you drill the moves. The key here is to go SLOWLY. Don’t try to build up speed as you practice. Speed happens naturally over time as you progress. Slow everything down as much as possible Aim for perfect technique. Going slow is also a good corrective method if you are trying to remove a bad habit that has developed over time.

– Any advice for new magicians? How can they establish good habits early on and is this important?

When someone is just starting out, it’s just important to have fun. Try out all the areas of magic that you can. Find out what you really like to perform. I always recommend going for super easy self-working tricks when you begin. Easy to perform, means that it will be easy to get you performing! Performance is the best way to learn about the type of magician you should become. Will you be fast paced and edgy? Will you be slow and stylish? Will you be dark and mysterious? Serious or comical? How can you begin to practice the presentation of any trick, until you understand WHO the magician is that will be performing it? Once you decide that you are serious about mastering magic, it’s important to become selective…

Studying just moves, controls, and sleights endlessly is like a painter, spending years learning how to perfectly mix the oil paints to every shade of colour… They end up with a huge palette of paints, but no paintings….

Choose tricks and effects FIRST, and then master the controls, moves and sleights you need in order to perform those tricks. Now you have improved your skills with a goal at the end.

Which move should you learn next? Start researching effects that you can build into sets of tricks to form an act. Be selective. Pick tricks that amaze you, but that will also entertain an audience. They need to be perfect for the type of venue you will perform within, and the type of people that will be there.

Once you have selected your tricks, start on JUST ONE, and work on the controls, moves, and sleight of hand that is required to fully master it.

Any advice for seasoned magicians? How can old (bad) habits be changed or adjusted?

We get a lot of working professionals coming to the shop for some coaching. It’s usually because they have a growing sense that they are not getting the same reactions that they used to get from their material, but don’t know why. I usually recommend that we record them performing at one of their gigs. If they can set it up, it gives them an invaluable insight that can sometime be quite unsettling. Bad habits sneak into everyone’s performance over time, and then become ingrained through repetition. Luckily, they can easily be removed or adjusted once they have been identified. Approaching Magic Practice focuses on creating good habits right from the start by slowing the repetition of a tricks moves right down during a ‘drill process’. That makes sure that bad habits don’t become ingrained. However, once you are aware of a bad habit, you can slow things down again and start to correct the error through repetition.

It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how long you have been performing. Using a structured, focuses, and regular practice system will greatly improve the results you get over time.

– Are magicians learning too much?

I think we constantly feel the need to learn new tricks and techniques to stay up to date. This desire to stay at the forefront of what is happening in the world of magic can be the biggest distraction from your magic practice. We’ve all experienced the feeling of excitement when a new trick comes out, we can’t wait to try it out, and we drop everything to do so. If you are in the middle of magic practice on another technique or trick, you’ve dropped it before you have mastered it. Often, by the time that you resume your practice on that particular skill, it is almost like you have never even looked at it before. I don’t think magicians learn too much; we should all be constantly learning. The problem is trying to learn too many tricks at once.

Sign off

It’s a pleasure! I’m really pleased with the reception that the book has had. Your readers can download a free copy at:

http://magictricks.magicshop.co.uk/magicians-practice-magic-tricks-ebook

I’d love some feedback from your readers about the book. Did they find it useful? What else should I have included?

I can be contacted directly at http://www.dominicreyes.me

Best wishes and good luck with your magic

Dominic Reyes