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Hey im a BIG fan of impromptu tricks with reactions that blow people away! Stigmata was a good investment! so any ideas......i like card tricks and any other magic well any ideas.......thanks!

~if you could give a link that would be good!

Beast impromptu magic?

If you're looking for exposure sites, then prepare for a rough ride, sunshine

How advanced are you in card magic? If you're a beginner then go for either Royal Road to Card Magic if you prefer books or Born to Perform if DVDs are your thing. A search on either one will reveal lots of useful information.

Kati

If you are a beginner then you need to look at learning the basics and not being bothered about "Blowing People away". The books young Kati mentioned are very good and i started with RRTCM myself. Gimmicks do not a good magician make it is practise and skill that 'blows people away'

Also look into Giobbi "Card College" or Marlo's "Revolutionary Card Technique" if your prefrence is cards....

As for impromptu, ie: someone hears you do magic...Well, some of the ones I use are Foreign Currency/Slow Burn/Hundy 500 (always in my wallet), An improptu coins across, or any borrowed deck trick. Again, this depends on your skill level and knowledge of the art.......Cheers, JPV

If it's impromptu magic your after why not check out Jay Sankey's "Anytime, Anywhere" or Gregory Wilson's "On The Spot". These are specifically created for the impromptu magician you aspire to be.

I'd suggest you check out the IMPROMPTUE and BAR MAGIC videos at Steven's Magic Emporium... they have some great material that's easy to do and dynamic... but please don't stoop to doing so-called bits of "mentalism" and calling it magic or worse "a trick"... it insults the hell out of those of us that really do it for a living.

First you can learn a lot of impromptu magic from books you can find in any book store under "hobbies" most of the magic books you will find there will be books about party magic (which usually is impromptu in it's nature), My first magic book was a birthday present, it was a big hard cover books called "Magic for all ages" (in Hebrew of course^^), and that’s where I learned my first magic tricks and slights from, and all the tricks there where with things you can find any where, and needed little to no preparation. Also you can look for impromptu magic books in magic shops, but for a lot more money.

Personally I learned most of my impromptu "arsenal" from the Tom Mullica's impromptu magic DVD, you won't find a lot of card tricks there (though the ones that are there are really good), but you will find that at least 80% of the material there, is so simple and practical you couldn't help yourself not doing them the next time you are in a party/bar/restaurant etc.

"On the spot" by Gregory Wilson is also rather good, but I find a lot of the routines there to be too long and more of an "act" then a "show me a fast trick", which does make them less practical in a party situation for example, but rather good if you are asked to put on a short show without you being prepared for it, but on that case I would go to an impromptu card magic act.
I haven't seen Sankey's "Anytime, Anywhere" but it's probably great just like the rest of his material.

Now for card magic, basically everything will do, most card tricks you will find on books and DVDs will only require a simple deck of cards, and maybe a duplicate card at most. But the most important thing is that when you have the knowledge in card magic and slights you will be able to create your own routines and even to improvise routines, if you are a beginner go and buy Royal Road to Card Magic like Katrielalex said. Personally I wouldn't suggest you to buy "born to perform" instead of it unless you find it easier to learn from a video then from reading a book.

Got some time? Hope so...

I see this question a lot on magic boards. Sometimes I take the moment to answer it, sometimes I don't. It comes down to each individual as to what you can and cannot do as impromptu magic.

I've even seen arguments crop up over what "impromptu" magic is, specifically. I mean, if it's set up before hand, is it impromptu? Then, of course, the thread starts to break down as each individual begins picking apart the thought.

I've heard that unless it's absolutely off the cuff, then it isn't impromptu. I disagree with that point of view. If it appears to be impromptu to the spectator, the certainly it IS impromptu. We are people who deal in illusions. Just because there is a prior set up doesn't change the fact that the illusion, in the spectator's mind, is that you are doing a magic trick completely impromptu and, therefore, it is impromptu.

Put differently, the ambitious card isn't ambitious at all, it's double lifted. So, is that actually the DL trick, or is it the ambitious card trick? Well, it appears to be an ambitious card, so it IS an ambitious card. I hope that you are following my drift, here.

Carry a double sided coin with you. Do a coin switch using a borrowed coin and have at. There ya are, impromptu magic.

What about the old coin through table? An underutlized trick in my opinion, but then again, I'm glad, because I do the trick myself, impromptu, and I'd hate it if somebody said, "Oh, I've seen this before!" The fewer of you doing this gem, the better.

You know the schtick - you're going to push a coin through the table so you cover it with a salt cellar, then put a napkin over the salt celler. Next thing you know, the salt cellar penetrates the table. Me, though, I don't stop there, I then actually put the coin through the table because it's what I promised. Just because I blew it and put the salt cellar through the table accidentally doesn't change the fact that I did not do what I promised.

Now, how much more impromptu can you get? You use their salt cellar, their napkin, their coin and their table. And, it's written up in hundreds of books on magic.

Oh, did I tell you? You have to buy books.

Further impromptu is easily achieved if you do sponge balls. You don't need your sponge balls if you have paper napkins that you can roll up into balls. Or, how about paper balls over the head? You just go into the place's toilet area and grab yourself a roll of paper. Impromptu magic.

Got that TT handy? Now how the hell many ways can you use that thing? You want impromptu miracles, they can be found in that little gizmo that takes up next to no space in your pocket. Miracles on demand. But, you have to be creative.

I hate to tell you this, but I practice my impromptu magic as much as I do my formal magic. Nothing is more magical than picking up any object and doing magic with it.

Have I mentioned that you should buy books? I hope so, because there are hundreds upon hundreds of impromptu tricks between the covers of those things. If, of course, you are creative.

Recently, Andyb reviewed "The Encyclopedia of Cigarette Tricks" (Clark) in the reviews section (click here). As I noted on that thread, there is a gold mine of impromptu magic to be found in those pages. It is a book on doing tricks with cylindrical objects - you know, like crayons, straws, pencils, pens, lipstick cases...Creativity - it will carry you far.

What about matches? Give me a pack of matches, book or box type, and I'll give you an entertaining, 10 minute set. By the way, match magic can be found in most every general book of magic on the market. Oh, yea, before I forget, buy books. You can make matches repel each other, jump at a touch, make an "x" jump from one match to the next, do torn and restored effects, make them light (not burn) twice...You can do a lot with matches.

A pencil and a coin. There's impromptu magic just waiting to happen. In the DVD mentioned above, by Gregory Wilson, you'll get a whole routine you can do, 100% impromptu, using a pen and a coin. Know where Gregory got that routine from? Mostly, he came up with it himself from stuff he pieced together from various books. Books.

But, then again, he's creative and he has books.

Three paper cups, some balled up napkins and a butter knife - you have impromptu cups and balls. You can find that on Ammar's cups and balls DVD. Want me to tell you where he got it from, or can you guess?

Well, I could go on for another hour, but I think I've beaten this horse into the ground. If you made it this far, congratulations!

Mike.

Hi there, one of the best impromptu card magicians is a guy called Paul Gordon. Check out his web site and books he's great.

Enjoy....

Even if the spectator sees you set up some cards, it doesn't ruin the effect. I let them see me arranging cards when I do the jumping gemini, so in a way, that is impromptu and the effect is just as impressive because they see me take the cards out of a deck I've already been using.

I've found that most stuff can be done "impromptu". If you wanna do a trick that the speccie can see as "unprepared" then it's really not that difficult to set your deck up with a four of a kind on top or whatever whilst performing a different trick if you think about what tricks you do and what you can do in between them and during them. Just use your noggin'.

^

You are completly right. There are so many effects you can do with just four or five cards and the set-up wouldn't even be noticed.