talkmagic.co.uk

Hey everyone I was on msn last night and some guy came on and asked me loads of stuff about magic I basically ignored him coz he was trying to get secrets out of me however he did ask a couple of interesting questions and after I chased him away with a burning torch, I set about working on his questions, which seem to come up a lot on this forum. Specifically

how do I know what tricks are good to be in my act, how they fit well into my act and how good the flow is etc?

I know a lot of tricks, so many in fact I can now base seven or eight tricks in a short routine act. But I know so many tricks I don’t know which ones to put in.


I’ll attempt to answer the questions above then give my top 10 tips for building a routine

As a magician I probably spend more time working on my routines than on the individual tricks, the whole, I believe, is more powerful than the individual parts. Do you ever get asked to do a few tricks and end up spending hours showing all the tricks you know and potentially boring the life out of your audience? It is a difficult problem because as a performer it is only natural to want to entertain for as long as possible however with the right routine you can spend 5, 10 or 15 minutes showing tricks and have the audience blown away, so:

How do I know what tricks are good to be in my act?

Trust your instincts take tricks that you like, that you feel comfortable with, that you get good to great reactions with, these are the ones that you can use in a routine, don’t use tricks that you aren’t happy with or don’t use often as this will show in your routine. Try and keep to a certain style in your routine for example if your doing a card routine keep with the same colour of decks keep to the same performance style and try and have a link within the tricks to lead you on to the next trick like a story or the like

How they fit well into my act and how good the flow is

Once you have a feel for a trick you should be able to judge where in your act you should place it. For example take Daniel Garcia’s “torn” this is a killer effect where you visually restore a torn card excellent effect and you get great reactions, with this kind of trick you don’t want to open with it you maybe want it to be the climax of an ambitious card routine where you start off slow and end on it and thus increase the WOW factor of your overall performance.

In the beginning when I am creating a routine or a show I basically have a list of all my tricks in front of me say 30-50 tricks I first get rid of the ones that I don’t know well or like. I then sort into piles those that have some sort of link say a “voodoo” type feel or an “ambitious” feel that usually leaves me piles of tricks with maybe 5 or so tricks to each pile then you just have to order them with the obvious opener being a simple manipulation or discovery then gaining in impressiveness. This will allow your routine to flow.

An important point to remember is when it’s over, it’s over don’t finish a routine then start a totally different trick let the routine sink in and impress your audience.

Let me give you an example of one of my routines.

This is one of my restaurant routines when I am table hopping. It’s a short show for between 2 and 5 people.

Introduction (hi I’m a magician etc)

Hummer card

(Hand card out for inspection and get card signed)

Ambitious card routine

Torn and restored / mindbender

End

Short simple but very effective it is a constant blast of magic for the audience for almost 5 minutes all the tricks are linked and connected in an obvious manner and the reactions by the audience are incredible plus I perform this so often that it is like second nature to me.

So this is a bit long winded and I’m possible rambling on so I’ll give u my top ten tips for building a routine

1) Choose tricks that you enjoy performing
2) Pick tricks that have an obvious connection
3) Simple is best don’t try to over complicate your routines
4) Be Short and sweet, 5 minutes for a card routine 10 – 15 min for larger manipulations judge by your crowd reactions
5) Consider where you will be performing, don't do an angle sensitive trick if you are going to be surrounded whe performing.
6) Positioning is crucial don’t put a trick that is an obvious closer at the begging coz your routine won’t feel smooth
7) Don’t rush the Climax take your time and build it up no one likes a quick climax
8 ) Don’t be afraid to tinker. Your routine should be unique to you and have your style stamped all over it so tinker until it feels right
9) Have a few different routines for different occasions to allow you the chance to swap about
10) When it’s over it’s over always keep the audience wanting more

Any questions please feel free to PM me

Figo wrote:7) Don’t rush the Climax take your time and build it up no one likes a quick climax

Now that's the best tip I've seen on this site yet

Seriously though, some good points there.

I've got some general guidlines I use when putting together a routine.

I tend to stick to 5 tricks per routine, that seems a good number and isn't too long or too short.

I like to structure the routine so that the first is a sort of 'I'd like to teach you a trick' or 'this is something interesting I found you can do with cards' type of trick. It's a nice way to break the ice and gain the trust of the spec.

If you need to switch decks, look for a reason to do it. Maybe throw in a trick where you need two decks or one that I like is to have a couple of cards signed. Then I usually say something like 'I'm missing a few cards out of that deck now so I'll use this complete one'.

And always try to finish your routine with a clean deck, that way you remove the risk of being caught out by the dreaded 'you're using trick cards' comment.

Always look at things that could go wrong in your routine and have backups ready to recover if that does happen. The other day I was performing a trick where a signed card the spec is holding swaps place with on in my hand. I noticed that it had gone wrong so did some quick thinking and got the spec to place his signed card back in the middle of the deck. And magically brought it back to the top of the deck.

I also like to keep one real killer trick in reserve for an encore trick.

I never practice individual tricks (unless it's something totally new), always as part of a routine. I've got three routines that I commonly use and I know them pretty much as well as I'm going to with the complete script for each routine ingrained in my head.