How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Focused Magic Practice – 4 Quick Tips to Improve Your Magic Training

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How to focus your magic practice

By Dominic Reyes

Dan writes: ‘My biggest problem is committing to my magic practice. Why is it so hard for me to practice as often as I feel I should?‘

Distractions are all too common in the modern world with so many things around us designed to do just that, distract. Magazines, television and the internet are all capable of drawing you in and zapping your focus in a heartbeat. Losing your concentration when trying to get anything done is never a good thing, but when it comes to magic practice loss of focus can be enough to make you want to give up altogether.

Tyranny of the New.

It is for this reason that I thought this post topic would be especially relevant to magicians as we constantly feel the need to learn new tricks and techniques to stay up to date. However, it can be this desire to stay at the forefront of what is happening in the world of magic that can be the biggest distraction from your magic practice. We’ve no doubt all experienced the feeling of excitement when a new trick is brought to our attention, we can’t wait to try it out and we drop everything to do so. This is fine if you are looking for something new, but what if you are in the middle of magic practice on another technique or trick? You’ve dropped something 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, such is the power of distraction.

So, with this in mind, what can we do to minimise these distractions and help us to get some quality, focused magic practise done? Let’s take a look at a few pointers:

Make a decision (and stick to it) – Choose just one or two things to be the centre of your magic practice at any one time. These can be either new magic tricks, techniques or a mixture of both. The important thing is to stick with your chosen task and resist the urge to move onto something new before you have completely mastered them. Turn the psychology on its head and use it to your advantage. If there is something new and exciting that you are itching to work on, use that as an incentive. Tell yourself that the sooner you get to grips with ‘A’ the quicker you can move on to ‘B’.

Have a goal – Setting yourself a deadline can also be a great way to incentivise your task. However, it is important that you are not overly hard on yourself if you don’t meet the deadline, providing you have put sufficient work in. Sometimes it can be difficult to judge just how long it will take to learn a new trick.

Be consistent – Choosing a time and a place where you know that distractions will be kept at a minimum builds a routine that will allow you to focus a lot better. Setting this up will help others can get used to the idea as well. If your family know that you are going to be using a certain room, at a certain time, on a regular basis it will be far less likely that you will incur accidental disturbances.

Meditate – Maintaining focus is very much a state of mind and something that can improve with time. Practising meditation can help with focus as can other relaxation techniques. Of course, this is something that is going to differ within each of us, but it proves that with practice the mind can be retrained to concentrate better and work in a more productive fashion. Take breaks and use a peaceful alternative activity to relax and take time out from focused practice. Read, paint, build Lego or FunWhole models. The key is to change pace, unwind and reset before continuing practice.

By using the tips above you will find that your magic practice sessions will soon become far more fruitful, which means that you will learn more in a shorter space of time. Now, who doesn’t want that?

Beginning to Learn Magic Tricks – Advice For When You Are Finding it Tough

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Advice for magician beginners

If you are a beginner and finding things tough, here's some great advice from Ira Glass that may help you.

One of the interesting parts of running a large online magic shop is the ability to look at trends within the customer base of the shop. We look at the buying cycle of magicians to identify trends. It's important data for the magic shop. If we can tell on average how long a customer will remain shopping for magic, we can use our knowledge of average visit rates and average spend, to calculate the likely sales volume each customer will bring to the shop during their relationship with us. We can use this information to know exactly how much to spend on advertising to bring in new customers.

Whilst crunching this data, we've noticed an interesting data point about beginners learning magic tricks. If you have just started to learn magic, here's something for you:

It's statistically likely that no matter how passionate about magic you might be right now, in 6 months time you will probably quit.

At the 6 month point, there is a huge drop off for magicians who are buying magic that matches the profile for total beginners. Magicians who are ordering more advanced material, don't suffer that drop off. Established professional magicians tend not to drop off at all. It's just the people that have only just started out. Why don't they transition into more advanced products?

I think the video above hits the nail on the head as to the cause of this. Beginners start with high hopes, but it's a long process to become good at anything. Most magicians feel that they 'suck' at first, and hope to work through it as they gain experience. That's a hard thing to do. You have to work through a long period of time where you don't feel that you are any good, and it's so easy to quit at that point.

The way to succeed at learning magic, and the way to move past being a beginner, is to work through that and keep your energy up. Fight the nagging doubts in your head that tell you that you will never master it. Keep going and push past the beginner phase. Every expert goes through this, and every expert makes it through to the other side.

If you need any help of advice about how to do this, just get in contact and my team will do everything they can to help you. – Dominic Reyes

 

 

 

How to Palm Playing Cards and Coins – Tips on Learning to Palm

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How to palm playing cards - Guide

By Dominic Reyes

Duncan writes:

‘One thing I am struggling with right now is palming playing cards. I know this is no doubt just down to practice, and I haven’t been able to  devote much time to it at the moment, but any help/tips would be  appreciated!’

 

Hi Duncan,

Good for you for wanting to develop some sleight of hand. It is possible to do a whole range of close-up magic tricks without having to learn any sleight of hand at all, but seriously, that’s no fun, and sooner or later you’re going to want to add some into the magic you perform. Your question shows me  instantly the cause of the problem you’re facing. I’d like to give you some advice about how to fix this.

Before I do this, I should say that I’m not interested in describing the steps required to perform most palming sleights. There’s a huge range of different techniques, and countless books, and videos on the subject of palming playing cards. Just type in ‘how to palm a playing card’ into google or YouTube and you’ll get more tuition videos and step-by-step guides than you could ever need. However, these all tend to miss out a few important points about learning the techniques.  They go through the moves of holding the playing cards, and how to position their fingers. But they all seem to miss out how to practice the technique correctly.

Your main problem.

You aren’t committed enough. You have to make a resolution to practice magic. Not just occasional practice when you feel like doing it. You need a consistent structured program of learning over a set period of time. It’s this resistance to practice that stops most people moving past performing only self working magic tricks.

‘Do or not do. There is no try.’ – Yoda

Learning a skill is about devoting your time and attention to improving your ability. There are no shortcuts. That being said, here are some tips which will help speed up the learning process:

I’m not sure from your question whether you are learning palming with playing cards or coins, so let’s look at both:

How to palm playing cards.

I recommend that you do a magic practice drill of 10 minutes each morning and 10 minutes each evening. You’ll need to do this in private to start with until your palm technique becomes subtle enough to perform around people.

Building a good close up magic mirror, and using it regularly in your practice sessions will help you identify any weak spots in the angles of your technique.

The key to mastering palming playing cards is to go unnaturally slow at first. You want to learn the process in a smooth and thoughtful manner. Forget about speed, and allow it to increase naturally by itself. Be aware of the positioning of your fingers. You need to eliminate any gaps and telltale signs that you’re holding a card. Over time, you’ll find that this becomes easier and smoother providing you learn at a slow and constant pace.

Small hands and the placement of the card.

As you go through the motions, stop and examine the placement of the playing card in your hand. Don’t worry if your hands feel too small. It’s very unlikely that the size of your hands will stop you being able to palm playing cards. Some of the most talented card magicians have very small hands. It’s all about placement. Work on getting the playing card ready on the top of the deck and take note of the exact position that allows the card to be easily palmed. Now concentrate on the position of the card in your hand. Working very slowly will allow you to examine whether you are placing the card in exactly the right position. If you go to quickly it will be hard for you to notice when you’re placing the card correctly, or if something needs to be adjusted.

Examine your hands.

Take a moment to relax in front of a mirror and notice how your hands look  normally. The first thing you’ll notice is that your hands don’t tend to be extended completely flat. The natural resting position for your hands is with the fingers slightly bent. Now, lift up one arm whilst keeping your hand totally relaxed. Notice how your hand look. That’s the appearance your hand needs to imitate whilst palming a playing card. Don’t skip this exercise, it’s valuable to be able to notice what natural looks like.

Build the motion of palming into a larger gesture which looks normal.

A strange thing about palming is that you’re actually doing something whilst pretending not to be. Because of this, many magicians will hide the small motion of palming a playing card, behind a larger motion of moving their arms or body. This could be pivoting to either the left or right with your body as you make a comment, or address somebody not directly in front of  you. Perhaps you could take the deck of cards with your other hand so that the hand that was holding the deck is free to make a gesture. As you practice you will find many larger motions that look natural to you, and the way you move. Think about how these movements can be used at the moment when a palm needs to take place.

Your eyes and body.

Your eyes are one of the most deceptive weapons you have as a magician. If you make eye contact with a spectator they will almost always return  your gaze. People will look where you look. It’s very important that you’re not looking at the deck of cards at the moment that you palm a card. If you pay attention to that moment, your spectators will do the same.

Offbeat.

The best time to palm a playing card is on the offbeat. That’s the moment of relaxation between two events. Let’s say that you have had a card selected and returned to the deck. At that moment, all the spectator’s attention is focused on the deck of cards. You need to create an offbeat moment. You can do this by looking at the spectator for a second, and making a comment, asking a question, or making a light-hearted joke that requires some kind of reaction. At the moment of their reaction, you have misdirection that you need.

Practice card palming as much as possible, especially when it’s not required.

In the tuition that I run with magicians, one of the most requested techniques is the classic force. It’s a very simple method of allowing a spectator to apparently choose a playing card whilst influencing their selection. Just like palming a playing card, it requires timing to make it most effective. I often advise magicians to practice the technique when it doesn’t matter. Whenever a magician needs to have a card chosen, they can use that opportunity to  try out the classic force. In just the same way, whenever you have the misdirection, you could try to palm a playing card, and then return it back to the deck. If it fails, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t really part of the trick anyway. Over  time, you’ll notice how easy it is to palm a playing card during the offbeat moments within a magic trick. This will give you a huge boost to your confidence in the technique.

Use your pocket.

One practice technique that gets good results is to use your pocket to palm playing card. After you have revealed a playing card at the end of a magic trick, you place it in your pocket. Once your hand is in your pocket, palm the playing card as you take your hand out. You could then reach into another pocket which might contain a card to wallet device, such as the 21 production wallet. This all happens in the offbeat as you’re making casual conversation with the spectators. Using a pocket to practice often allows magicians gain confidence in the appearance of their hand whilst holding a card, without having to worry about loading the card into their palm in full view. It also allows them to perform a card to wallet magic trick, without having to worry about palming the playing card off of a deck of cards in full view of the spectators.

How to palm coins.

The great things about coin magic is that the props that you use of  available everywhere. In fact, you probably always carry a few in your pocket. I found that in the UK the best coins to practice palming tend to be the UK 50p and the UK 2p coins. Both these coins have good definition on their edges, which will make it easier to palm. Start carrying coins with you everywhere you go. Holding a coin at your fingertips and moving it in and out of palm continually. Practice this way for at least 10 minutes each morning and 10 minutes each evening. You can do this while you go about your normal  business. Not only will this slowly build up muscle memory, it will also start to tone and condition your hand.

As you continue to practice, you will notice that you become less aware of the  coin in your hand. It’ll become an automatic behavior. You’ll also start to notice that other people quickly become less aware of the fact that you’re playing with coins all the time.
I hope these quick tips will speed up your mastery of palming. There are lots of different ways to palm a playing card. Each magician should find a  technique that they feel most comfortable with. The method you use isn’t that important. What makes a magician an expert at palming playing cards is the amount of care and attention they have put into their practice sessions. It’s about how much they really want to learn the technique and are prepared to swap their time and effort for the skill. Most people are not prepared to invest very much time in learning to master the move. They study the technique, but don’t put in the leg work to acquire skill in its performance.

If you really want to learn how to palm, start right away. Pick up a deck of playing cards. Commit to practicing the technique for 10 minutes right now. All you need to do is repeat that over and over again. Keep going in this way for 21 days, and I can guarantee you’ll be completely amazed by the results.

If you have any tips on practicing palming playing cards, or any questions  you would like discussed, please leave a comment at the bottom of this page: