How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

The 4 Stages of Becoming a Magician

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The 4 stages of becominig a magician

By Dominic Reyes

How do people decide to learn magic?
Why do most people enjoy watching magic, but becoming a magician is rare?

I think this has a lot to do with 4 stages of becoming a magician:

1) Unconscious incompetence

Remember what it was like before you became interested in magic. Maybe you were just like the majority of people that watch magic on TV? You enjoyed seeing the show, being entertained, and fooled by a magician.

Have you ever watched a Cirque du Soleil show? It’s a wonderful experience, seeing the incredible feats that the acrobats achieve. Most people love to watch it, but don’t have any desire to understand the practice process that the acrobats go through, or the construction and specifications of the springs, trampolines and wires that they use to perform their show. That’s how the vast majority of people view magic. They don’t really want to understand how the magic tricks are done.

2) Conscious incompetence

Because you are reading this blog, I assume that you are a bit different from the people I have described above. You wanted more from the magic tricks and magicians you watched. At first you didn’t have any technical knowledge of how any magic tricks were performed, but the desire to explore and understand the secret of magic was inside you.

This thirst for more information often leads people to seek out the skills they know they don’t yet possess. You discovered that you have a drive to investigate and learn magic. At this stage, most people will spend a great deal of time theorising about how magic tricks are done. They conduct searches online like ‘How did David Blaine push a needle through his arm’ or ‘How did Dynamo put a phone inside a bottle’. They have the desire to learn magic, but lack enough knowledge to perform it themselves.

Maybe you stumbled onto a magic shop website or discovered an introductory book on magic in your local book shop? Perhaps you met someone who was already performing magic, and he or she showed you a few beginners tricks?  The main difference is that you became aware that there were skills that you could learn yourself. You understood that YOU could also do the magic that you saw other magicians perform. You began the process of becoming a magician.

3) Conscious competence

I’m going to take a guess and say that you are now at this stage in the process of becoming a magician. You’re in good company as most people remain at this stage their whole lives. The majority of magicians know a great deal about magic, yet they remain in a state of conscious competence. They consume as much information about magic as they can. They learn basic card magic technique, and build up a range of self working magic tricks and basic sleight of hand that they practice on a regular basis. However, they never really feel that they have mastered any of them to the point that they are automatic.

Do you find that performing a magic trick requires all your concentration and effort? Although you can perform quite well whilst practicing alone, do you tend to freeze when it comes to performing to other people? Do the mechanics of your magic tricks take up all your attention and effort?

If you find yourself identifying with these questions, I have some good news for you. You are right on the verge of the final stage of becoming a magician. You have the knowledge and technique, but need the experience and practice to make the mechanics fully automatic. To push past this, you simply need to narrow down your material, focus on a small range of techniques and tricks, so that you can practice them over and over again. Your magic practice should be structured, consistent, and involve both solitary repetition and live performance practice. The aim is to reach total familiarity with the mechanics so that you can move beyond conscious awareness of mechanical process. You can’t do this if you are constantly jumping from one new magic trick to the next. You have to commit to a limited amount of material that you can repeat over and over until it’s mastered.

4) Unconscious competence

Most professional magicians have a small set of magic tricks that they call their ‘working material’. This has been practiced and repeated to the extent that it has become second nature. The magician is so familiar with the mechanics that they can be performed whilst executing another task, such as delivering a patter line, or reacting to a spectators comments. This is the ultimate goal of a magicians magic practice.

How many magic tricks do you know that have been mastered to this extent? Perhaps none? Maybe just a handful? The ultimate goal in magic practice is to build up a range of magic tricks that you have unconscious competence over. The best way to do this is one trick at a time. Why not choose just one of your favourite magic tricks, and make the commitment to focus all your attention on it until it reaches this stage of mastery? I guarantee that you will find this transforms both your magic and your performance skills beyond anything you ever dreamed possible.

Reference: Noel Burch developed the Conscious Competence Ladder in the 1970s. It has been attributed to Abraham Maslow, although it doesn’t appear in his major works.

Why a Magicians Audience is Smarter than You Think

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Smart magicians audiences

By Dominic Reyes

I'm sure that this doesn't apply to you directly, but it's an observation that I sometimes see amongst magicians. As people start to learn magic and develop their skills, they can develop a strange view about what the public understands about magic, and what will fool them. 

The more magicians study magic, the more they grow to think that the public is stupid.

Have you ever a magician say:

"Nobody ever catches me when I do this.."

"Your spectators will not notice this…"

Become aware of these sayings, and you will start to hear them more and more as you talk to magicians. You will also start to see them mentioned in magic trick instructions (Usually during a weak point in a magic tricks method).

I have no idea why this happens, it could just be human nature. As magicians gain experience and knowledge, it's easy for them to develop a feeling of self importance, and an overly relaxed attitude about the observational skills of other people.

One of the biggest pitfalls to becoming a successful magician is fooling yourself that your audiences doesn't have the intelligence or attention to detail to spot parts of the mechanics used in magic tricks. The temptation is to ignore the small details. It's as if magicians feel that they have superhuman perception that 'normal people' don't have. Trust me, if you can spot the discrepancy or error in a magic trick that you have recorded in performance and watched back, some of your spectators will also notice it. They may not point it out, or become distracted by the flow of the trick and move on, but they HAVE noticed it.

On the  whole, people are very clever. A group can have intelligence that is greater than the individuals that make up that group. Assume your audience is highly educated, clever, and very hard to fool. Find the weak points in the method of every magic trick you perform, and work on changing them to remove the faults. It doesn't matter how small or hard to spot a fault in a magic trick may be. If there are clues to the secret of a magic trick, someone WILL spot them eventually and call you out. Your goal is to tweak each magic trick to reduce that chance as much as possible. Anything less than that is taking a shortcut and compromising your potential to perform the trick as best as you possibly can.

 

Advice for beginning to learn magic tricks – David Regal Interview

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David Regal Magician Interview

One of the most recommended books on learning how magic works and how to perform it with impact is Approaching Magic by David Regal. It's been a best selling magic book consistantly since it's first publication, and finds a home on most successful magicians bookcases.

If you are very new to learning magic, I should give you some background on David Regal. David is a television writer and one of the worlds most respected creators of magic tricks for magicians. He served as head writer for Nickelodeon’s Rugrats, and has written for many sitcoms, including multiple episodes for Everybody Loves Raymond. David Regal magic tricks are performed worldwide.

 

Dominic Reyes caught up with David Regal to ask him for some quick tips for magicians beginning to learn magic tricks.

 

If you were at the start of your magic career again, what three things would you do differently?

1) I’d have studied more about all types of fabrication. Woodworking, metalworking, plastic, etc.


2)  I should have kept a list of magic that I’ve seen and loved, so I could better try and understand the qualities I admire, both in performance and the principles involved.


3)  I’d have learned false transfers earlier in my development. Why? I feel a false transfer is the ultimate lie in a craft built on lies, and the least armor a performer can wear. Getting into magic, we often try to cover ourselves with armor via method; but a false transfer, well performed, teaches us and corrects us – it opens a door.

 

Have you found that being a writer for shows such as Rugrats has helped with your creativity?

I see the problems one faces when writing episodic television, and the problems one faces when structuring a magic routine or seeking a method, as identical. Both involve what I see as multiple knots, tied one upon the other. Issues that lack solutions. There are many ways one can reach the end – the best are the most elegant, and generally seem simple in retrospect.

 

Are there any amazing creative tips you learned from them that you would like to share?!!?

The best creative tip I can offer is:

Begin.

Most people never do that out of fear of the immensity of the task. Most important, when you begin, have intent. Without intent, it is difficult to evaluate one’s movement. Don’t expect to succeed every time – you will and you won’t. Simply have intent, see where you arrive, and compare it to that intent.

 

What came first for Clarity Box, the method for the trick or the idea for the trick?

Most things start with a problem I’d like to solve, or an image I’d like to create. I wanted to have a clear box that exact size of The Clarity Box, that would do what The Clarity Box does. I drew it while on an airplane, on the barf bag, and took it home with me. I made the first one out of come pieces of clear plastic I’d purchased for another magic trick I was working on, one that never worked right. I taped it all together and tried it out in front of the bathroom mirror.

 

If you could give a complete beginner one piece of advice what would it be?

A great thing about magic is no matter what age you are when you start, there is always something wonderful that you can do. Find a trick you love performing that fits your skill level, and do it well. Simultaneously challenge yourself. Work on something that you find more difficult. Work on it for weeks, months, maybe a year. Show your magic tricks to a friend who will be honest with you about the good and the bad. There is great satisfaction to be found when one both enjoys the pleasures that come with performing magic for others, and privately works on that “next thing.”

 

The Merchant of Magic offers a full range of magic books, tricks and DVD's by David Regal. You can visit the David Regal section here.