How to do Magic Tricks

Advice and Support for Magicians

Magicians Training – Bottom Up Vs Top Down

by Dominic Reyes 2 Comments

Problem solving magic rather than adapting

 

Jim Writes: Right now I’m struggling to progress with my magicians training…  I feel like I’ve hit a wall with the sleight of hand. I’m working on The Pass but I know people dedicate a lifetime to that and never feel they’ve mastered it…
I’m also struggling with sleight of hand vs. gimmicks. I know plenty of people use both, but what balance do you strike between the two?

 

Hi Jim

Firstly.. Don’t sweat too much about the pass. It’s really just a time vampire, and doesn’t have a place in practical magicians training because it’s real world uses are nowhere near a match for the effort you will need to apply in mastering it. Most working magicians use alternative methods anyway. You can waste so much time on it and never really use is other than to show other magicians.. Fools gold.

If you feel that you are not making progress in your magicians training, it may be the result of working bottom up, rather than top down.

Bottom Up and Top Down Magicians Training

Imagine you were a cook preparing a meal. You wouldn’t go to the supermarket and choose a range of herbs and ingredients because you like them, and then try to build a menu out of it..  Instead, you would decide which dish you wanted to create, and only then, would you go out to buy the ingredients..

When a magician works ‘bottom up’, he is selecting individual moves and techniques to work on, then he tries to tie them together into magic effects and ultimately an act. This is the bottom up approach to magicians training.

A bottom up approach can be an endless process of study with no GOALS, and therefore no WINS.   The alternative is to use a Top Down Approach. This involves studying magic with act creation in mind right from the beginning. You design a whole project, then search for the elements that will comprise it. ONLY learning the move and techniques required to create that ‘show’. The whole thing has a beginning, middle and an end…   After you create one act, you can then set about designing a different act for another audience or setting.. And so it goes on…

I’ve written quite a bit about the sleight of hand Vs Gimmicks. (See the blog,) but I can condense it into just this…  It doesn’t matter which you use..

The only important thing is the effect.. The presentation.. The show.

You need to choose the most deceptive method for the effects you want to perform. You should be problem solving, not trying to adapt..

Going back to the example of the cook..  Which tools should you have in your kitchen when you create your menu of dishes? It depends on what you want to cook right?  Perhaps you’ll need a hand whisk? The recipe might call for an electric food mixer.. The method is not really important…

Obsessing about gimmicks Vs sleight of hand is not seeing the woods from the trees.. To your spectator, all methods should be invisible anyway. The spectators experience is the most important thing…

In your magicians training, you should use a mix of sleight of hand and gimmicks DEPENDING on which works best for each effect you want in your act. Choose your magic for the effect, not the required method..

Hope this helps you as you can throw away many years running down pointless rabbit holes if you don’t focus on the show BEFORE the techniques

I hope this helps you
Dominic Reyes

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Filed Under: how to do magic tricks Tagged With: magicians training, sleight of hand

Why You Should Learn Self Working Card Tricks

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

Ultimate Self Working Card TricksYou want to be working on your core skill set of sleights, but you also need some great magic effects that you can learn quickly so you can start performing right away. Building your abilities as a magician is not about mastering knuckle busting moves. We all know many magicians who can do amazing sleights and flourishes, but when asked to actually show us a trick, they just look a bit blank and lost. You should perform as much as possible right from the start, so you learn stage craft, timing, audience control and showmanship skills. Adding some self working tricks, is a perfect way to balance both your practice and performance training.

THE PROBLEM:

There are a huge range of magic books and DVD’s available that teach self working tricks, but if you already own a few, you will understand how disappointing many of them can be. Stuffed full of boring mechanical procedures and complicated story plots. There is a massive gap in the market for a good teaching guide that gives professional quality tricks, suitable for magicians wanting to do magic without any knuckle busting moves and sleights.

ONE  ANSWER AND HOW YOU CAN TRY IT FOR FREE:

All the team are very impressed with a magic training DVD for total beginners, and also working pro’s. I think it is a perfect solution to this problem. The guiding principles that started the project is excellent. To put together a set of very strong professional tricks, that are self working, and strip away all the complicated plots and abstract nonsense 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. In fact, we love it so much, we would like to invite you to try the tricks for free.

Ultimate Self Working Card tricks

You probably already have some DVDs or magic books on the subject of self working tricks already. However, these tend to be full of terrible mathematical procedures and magic tricks so well known you could have found them on the back of a box of cereal! 

This DVD is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

You will learn eleven of the best card magic tricks ever invented.

Magic tricks that will simply freak out your audiences. The best part.. Every single magic trick taught to you HAPPENS to be self working. That’s the secret. These magic tricks are easy enough for a beginner, but POWERFUL ENOUGH FOR A WORKING PROFESSIONAL MAGICIAN. Even better, most of this material is very little known. 

There are magic tricks you can perform when a mate gives you half a dog-eared deck… and there are magic tricks that you can do for a large group that will blow their minds.

A team of some of the very best magicians has contributed material.

Presented by James Went (host of CBBC’s ‘Help, My Supply Teacher Is Magic’), Liam Montier, Iain Moran and Owen Packard, the DVD is full of tips & ideas on how to present these tricks. You also get a special bonus section featuring a range of false cuts if you want to develop your magic technique further. (You don’t have to use these. These magic tricks are all 110% sleight of hand free!).

 

You will be able to perform:

Contact Colors (Aldo Colombini)
Impossible (Mike Austin)
Shuffling Lesson (Chad Long)
Henry Sugar (Liam Montier)
Pre-Prefiguration (Larry Jennings / Mark Elsdon)
Your Aces Are Marked (Terry Lagerould)
Shufflebored (Simon Aronson)
The 7/16 Club (Alex Elmsley)
Impossible (Larry Jennings)
4,5,6 (Al Thatcher)
Unbelievable (By Shields, F. Michael And Bascom Jones, Jr)

Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks is an essential collection for anyone wanting to add some strong useable card magic to their magic.

NO SKILL!!

NO MOVES

NO DIFFICULT SLEIGHT OF HAND

NOTHING.

Just you, your own deck of playing cards and some of the most stunning magic ever taught.

With material from the likes of Simon Aronson, Chad Long, Aldo Colombini and Alex Elmsley you get a total insight into some of the most respected magical thinkers alive today.

 

Download a sample here

 

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Filed Under: how to do magic tricks Tagged With: beginners, free magic Tricks, recommended, sleight of hand

Magic Tricks Difficulty Level Easy – Why That’s Wrong

by Dominic Reyes 2 Comments

Difficulty Level Easy - WRONG By Dominic Reyes

If you read that a magic tricks difficulty level is easy, don’t fall into the trap this guy did..

On the whole I hate magic forums. If I didn’t have to post on them as part of my job, I’d avoid them. Why?.. Because usually they are just a place where great magic tricks go to die.

Don’t get me wrong, the magic community is a great asset for magicians, and sharing ideas can really help. But there is just so much bad advice on most threads when it comes to performing.

I can live with the ego’s, pent up resentment, lost ambition, and armchair experts. I just get mad when beginners read advice from other beginners, that is plainly wrong and could set their magic practice backwards.

Here’s just such a comment I read on a popular forum:

XXXXX writes: ‘Difficulty: Easy: That to me states no practice required.‘

XXXXX is a regular customer of MoM, so I was pretty surprised to read this comment. I know that he likes to ‘troll’ on the reviews section of forums, playing the popular game ‘expose a tricks secret through 20 questions’, or posting comments designed only to annoy. I assumed the post was probably just there to wind people up, but a real beginner might actually think this guy (with a lot of previous posts) knows what he is talking about..

Just so YOU don’t come across that post and take it seriously. Here’s what he could have written:

Difficulty Easy: That means the mechanics of the trick are easy to learn, or that the props are easy to operate.

I’m sure you can probably word it better than that. So perhaps leave a comment in the section below. Anyway, the point is that ‘EASY’ DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN SKIP PRACTICE..

Luckily a magician quickly replied on the forum thread: ‘If you want novelty gags then that’s a different thing. Magic takes practice.‘

Without sufficient practice you will, at best, give an ‘average magicians performance’. YOU are better than that..

If a magic trick is described by a magic shop as easy. It’s to help magicians that need to choose tricks that are not complex, dependent on sleight of hand, or assume advanced dexterity or misdirection/audience control skills. That does make them a great fit for beginners, but it doesn’t refer to practice at all.

Never attempt to perform a trick to the public on the day you learn it. I urge you to practice the method and get comfortable & confident as you turn the trick into a solid routine over time. You must drill, and rehearse every trick, it’s presentation, timing, context within your act, meaning within your performing persona, etc etc.

This takes time and effort. If you would like more information on this. Please read this free copy of the book Approaching Magic Practice.

  • 6 Free Magic Tricks From Jay Sankey
  • Anniversary Waltz Free Magic Download
  • Approaching Magic Practice Ebook
  • Approaching Tables Ebook
  • Recommended For Magic Beginners
  • Cagey Tutorial
  • Choose Magic Set Kids
  • Cloud of Smoke Free Ebook
  • Double Lift Project Free Download
  • Duplex Free Magic Download
  • Epoch Free Magic Tutorials
  • Electric Touch Free Ebook
  • False Shuffles and Cuts Magic Download
  • Faster Than Light - Magic Download
  • Finger-Exercises
  • How to Break In Playing Cards
  • How to Learn Magic Tricks
  • Tips for Leaving a Magic Gigi
  • LSQ Ebook - Free
  • Magicians Fees Ebook
  • Mistakes in Magic Ebook
  • More Icandy
  • The One Minute Magic Business Ebook
  • Pitfalls Magic Family and Friends
  • Safe - Free Magic Ebook
  • School of Cool Free Download
  • Sleight of Hand Beginners Course
  • Split Free Magic Video Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Vol 2 Download
  • Sweet 360 Free Magic Download
  • The 80's Called Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Vol 3
  • Think Tank Free Magic Download
  • Turnover Pass Free Download
  • Self Working Card Tricks Download
  • Understanding Misdirection Free Ebook
  • Watch It Free Ebook
  • Wedding Exhibition Guide for Magicians
  • Confidence For Magicians
  • The Indian Shuffle

Filed Under: how to do magic tricks Tagged With: magic practice, practice, sleight of hand, Video Podcast

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