practice Archives

Card Tricks for Beginners – Which Are Best?

One of the most frequent questions we get from people starting to learn card tricks, is how to begin. They want a first step, and ask us what card tricks for beginners we recommend. This is where the problem comes in:

Do we recommend a book or DVD on card tricks, that are self working and easy to perform, or do we suggest a beginners book that teaches the basic sleights used in card tricks?

Two Choices of card tricks for beginners:

Self working card tricks – There are some awesome books and DVD’s that will get the beginner doing card tricks right away. Our current favorite choices currently are these:

Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks
All the team are very impressed with a magic training DVD for total beginners, and also working pro’s. The whole team were instantly impressed with the guiding principles that started the project. To put together a set of very strong professional tricks, that are self working, and strip away all the complicated plots and abstract nonesense found in most collections of this nature. The project fits perfectly with the teaching principles MoM uses with magicians that come for personal tuition to the shop, and we now recommend this DVD to all our students doing training with us.

Born to Perform Card Magic
An idea stepping stone into card magic and the DVD Ben Williams always recommends to new students. It covers the basics’s but does so, by introducing actual tricks that use those principles.A good mix of card tricks, which progress the student though each stage of development, without simply jumping from new sleight to new sleight

Magic is all about performing. The study of magic is a means to an end, not the end itself. Starting with some very easy card tricks that you can go out and perform right away, builds confidence, and helps you to understand timing and presentation. The goal of magic practice isn’t to spend countless hours in solitary practice, although over time that will also be necessary. The sooner a beginner can start learning through real world performance the better.
We see far too many eager beginners get disheartened after spending hour after hour learning more and more new sleights and moves, with no purpose to them other than the thrill of mastery. After years of practice, it often dawn on them, that they don’t know a full set of interesting card tricks, to create a show, and at this point they often give up.

If you choose to learn card tricks rather than just card moves, you build your skill set over time, only as you need each move. In the end, you will slowly progress your sleight of hand anyway, but will have a group of tricks you can do, right from the start as a base to develop from.

Card Tricks with Sleights – The other route would be to suggest the beginner to study a book or DVD that focuses on the core moves required in most card tricks. We tend to recommend these:

Amazing Book of Cards
One of the clearest, and easy to follow books on card tricks we have found. As well as teaching how to do 52 tricks with a deck of cards, it combines friendly, concise text with full-color photos. It won our backing bu including an excellent full-length DVD that teaches the lessons and most importantly, shows the subtleties of performance. This is often lacking in beginners books.

Encyclopedia Of Card Sleights By Daryl
Stuffed full of juts about every core move a beginner needs, this is an ideal source of material for magicians wanting to perfect a move.
Daryl is a brilliant teacher, and his love for magic shows thoughout the series. Each volume has been carefully chaptered with clear menus to let you jump directly to any sleight or explanation you’re looking for. Unlike many other DVD’s on sleights, Daryl goes well beyond the mechanical process.Focusing your time on perfecting your sleights will really pay off in the long run. As long as you find a useful purpose for the technique, there is a beauty in making something perfect, that can be very addictive. Developing your techniques can also encourage creativity in magic. The move techniques you master, the easier it will be to adapt your existing card tricks and develop new ones. The key to progressing quickly, is to concentrate on just a few moves at a time, and work on them over a long period of time. Remember, that just because they are not routines, you will still need to perfect the timing and flow in exactly the same way you would with a full card trick routine.What do you recommend? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below:

Are Your Magic Tricks Angry With You?

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

Present day…………

You have been practicing your new magic tricks for a good month now, and thoroughly enjoying the practice. You feel you have reached that point where you have cracked it. The trick is now second nature, and you feel confident enough to take it out into the real world. How exciting! They won’t know what hit them! Today is that day to release the beast!

Three months later……….

As you are sitting there watching TV, or reading a book, you hear a tiny pitiful voice from your bottom drawer. “Hey! You! Yes, you! Remember me? Yes, it’s me, the new, amazing act changing effect you invested so many hours and hard earned money on. We were getting on so well. I thought we had a long future together. You promised me so much, and now here I am, forgotten, unused and unwanted. I thought you liked me! You’ve changed. I deserve an explanation!”

Are your magic tricks angry with you?

If you don’t perform, you are just practicing.

I think we have all been there. I know I have. Another example was when I decided to have a good clear out of magic tricks I didn’t need anymore. 9 times out of 10 I found myself revisiting each trick as I rummaged through my magic draw. 3 hours later I had made no progress whatsoever and had just toyed with each trick. I discovered tricks I had never even touched!

If you don’t practice, you are just shopping.

So in either case scenario, no progress has been made and all that resides are disappointment and frustration. Essentially, you have collected a box of magic tricks that will be unlikely to see the light of day. To put it another way, an expensive box jam packed to the brim with lots of nothingness. You had just as well pop down to your local convenience store and spend fifty pounds on all the items you will never eat and leave them in a bag in your cupboard to go stale.

If you only shop, you are just collecting.

So, how do we cross this barrier without the tricks falling by the wayside? Let’s go back to where we began. Essentially the crucial point, which can determine either success or failure, is a choice. And the first thing you need to be aware of is your style. That will directly affect your purchase choices. When you perform, what personality shines through primarily? Do you find yourself more comfortable joking with the audience, or do you feel more comfortable with the serious approach? Do you want your tricks to come across as puzzles or magic?

Your performing persona should essentially be a magnified version of yourself.

If you are struggling to establish your performance style, don’t panic! Your style should be natural. Ask your friends and family what the main qualities of your personality are. Take note of what they say and then when performing magnify these qualities. You will feel more comfortable as this character, and enjoy the performance. Spectators will pick up on this instantly, and then feel better watching you perform.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, it was built stone by stone.

Ok, so you now have an idea of what your style is. But you still have an overflowing box of unused tricks. Grab that box, take out one magic trick that you know fits your persona, and start practicing that one trick. Keep in mind as you practice, you need to emulate what you will be saying as you practice it. This is a huge step towards the actual performance of it, as it will then become a part of you. Practice it for two or three times a day over the course of a week, speaking out loud as you practice. It will begin to feel like a glove (maybe slightly ill fitting at first, but a glove nonetheless). Then, quite simply, go out there and do it! And enjoy it too! This will sound like taboo, but the only thing stopping you now is fear of failure. This fear will always be there so long as you let it. One performance will change this, and remember……….. Enjoy and exaggerate your qualities! Don’t think of it as you performing the trick, think of it as performing for you, and then take full credit for it!

3 Danger Signs For Successful Magicians

by Merchant of Magic Leave a Comment

You leave the group with applause and congratulations ringing in your ears. As you pack up, the client comes over and thanks you from the bottom of their heart for doing such a great job and tells you that everyone is talking about it. You feel great, and head home, knowing you did a great job.

That’s a dangerous thing to get used too.

1) Working alone, surrounded by people.

Successful Magicians working in a lonely business. They travel from gig to gig day after day, and although they perform for hundreds of people, they are separate from them. Even on large events with multiple magicians, they meet at the start while everyone sets up, then divide the room or tables and get to work. At the end, they will all met up, and motivated by the excitement and adrenaline of the evening, joke and discussed magic while the close up cases are packed. Then it’s on the road again and so it goes on. After a while, they can start to work within their own bubble, isolated from real criticism of their act or performance.

2) Believing your spectators feedback

If you are not careful, you can fall into the trap of believing all the praise you receive from your audience. You entertained them, and they loved it, but they only saw you that single time. They can’t give you feedback on anything other than that single performance. If you are starting to take shortcuts, cutting corners or just becoming too familiar and bored with your routines, they can’t pick up on that until it’s so bad, you give a terrible show. Never think that because the show went well, it means you gave as good a performance as you have in the past. You need to be introspective and critical of your own performance to guard against this.

3) Losing the fear.

Do you find you still get a little nervous before a gig?

Despite working for years, many performers still get a panicky or tense feeling before a new gig starts. That’s stage fright. It’s perfectly normal, and unless it becomes unmanageable, it is actually one of your best friends. As you go on from great performance to great performance, you can lose the fear that something may go wrong. That can cause you to stop being introspective and lessen the desire to perfect your existing material. If you find you no longer get that feeling, it may be a warning sign that you need to spend some time checking that you are still giving your work the same energy and attention to detail that you did earlier in your magic career.

Do This:

Try to get any performing video footage you can of your routines each time it’s recorded at an event. Look back on a few of these over time and see if the energy you had when you first started performing is still there.
Take your spectators praise with a pinch of salt, keep being critical of your own performance.
Look out for losing your fear of performing and view it as a possible warning sign.

Being aware of the danger of success is vital as your career in magic develops and you become successful magicians. You are only as good as your last performance, so make sure it’s consistently the best it can be.