talkmagic.co.uk

All Hail Winston Shakespeare, from Barnt Green!

That's the guy - runs the papershop on the corner!

lol
Fire blanket at the ready

Toady, great posts m8.
I am going to take Toad as an example for a second, I hope he doesn't mind.

For a living HT sells a computer service and in doing so he has to give a broad spectrum of advice and consider his answers based on his past experience and the factual position of the subject as it stands at that time.
In short he has to know what he is talking about, or look like he does.

Now HT is, in the many areas of computing, what a lot of people would call unskilled purely due to him being somewhat new to the field. He needed help to do many simple things on his computer. This wasn't due to him not wanting to learn or read a book but due to the computing world being a vast and complicated body of knowledge and the secrecy of some in that field. As he has never had anybody willing to start from the beggining with him and answer "simple" questions and hold his hand through the learning process the whole subject overwhelmed him to the point of confusion and thus he was unable to get out of the starting blocks.
After a couple of nights of going through stuff with him he is now doing things with his computer he always wanted to do but found himself unable to do or even find the knowledge to learn it from a source he knew was trustworthy enough to bother learning. He is now even teaching others how to do these things and has moved on vastly in his knowledge and confidence in this field.
Now if I had given him a windowsXP manual and said "m8, if you want to be able to call yourself computer savvy you have to read and know that lot" he would now either still know nothing or he would have gone through months of stress and toil to have an understanding that far outreaches anything he ever wanted or needed. In short he would have wasted his time, or he at least would feel that way, if he had bothered to struggle through blindly.

Would it be fair to call him a noob? Yes. Would it matter to him? No.
Now I have studied RRTCM, BOBO, first book of Card College, ETMCM1, Ninja1, Ninja2, Crash Course1, Crash Course2, Street Magic Course, 13 Steps to Mentalism, Most of Scotts books, Kenton Knepper and Bob Cassidy.
Are people that watch me perform more entertained than people that watch MagicDiscoMan perform? I obviously haven't seen him perform but I would say no. I may well be able to technicaly do more, impress a fellow magician more or indeeed do a longer show but the audience cares not a jot about this imho.

I think we are in danger here of looking snobbish in our outlook, David Blaine, the height of his card skills that I have seen is the pass move, he is a very rich man.
HT has little but improving computer skills yet he earns a living from that field.
MagicDiscoMan is by the past definition not worthy of the title magician yet he earns more from magic than most of us, or has done.
Are we really saying that unless you know this much (this being defined by us) you are not practicing the art? If I know 60% of the French language can I not say that I talk French?

It is this kind talk that, imho, leads to this board (and every other magic board) having a pile of people that join and never post, I know if I was new and had read this thread I would now be posting elsewhere, scared to dip my toe in and feeling that I would not get the help I wanted but the help somebody else considers is best for me.

The poor guy that started this thread had done ONE trick and stated he just wanted to get the "wow man that's cool" chat back onto him.
RRTCM, BOBO etc was not either helpfull to him or the right step yet after reading all our posts on easier, better ways to go, he still ended with the opinion that learning cards and money was required.

I fear that this domination of artistic expression not only puts people off (as it nearly did with MagicDiscoMan when he joined) but also wastes time for them.
They need the bug and with it the drive to go further, not somebodies expected level of knowledge before they are accepted into the fold.
I have read lots but I am still quite new to magic and I woulf fully expect that MagicDiscoMan, Tom, Mandrake, Seige, Bananarama, Mog, Nick and many others would give a far more confident and entertaining show.
I'm happy to say that and I should not feel inferior due to that or indeed due to me not having read them.

I'm really not having a go at anyone in a personal way, I really love chatting on this board and it's the people I am diasagreing with now that make the board, I trust the chats are taken as that, chats

Let's try and remember the small guy and remember that in order for there to be a definition of somebody or something, it stands to reason that within that definition there must be different levels yet they all still fall within that box.

BaB now goes and wraps cold peas round his aching fingers

blimey a lot of posts happened while i typed huh

Yes I would also like to say that being able to chat like this, openly and friendly is also GREAT and the reason we come here

As I once said to Mandrake, oooohhhhhh I love a good debate me

Hmmm... got the flaming I expected/deserved.

BUT...

IMHO, MagicDiscoMan is NOT performing 'off the shelf'. And neither is David Blaine. They are both using props as a means to an end in their own acts and performances.

There, I said it. Performances.

That's the defining factor here.

It's not magic snobbery, more a 'definitions' war.

Happy Toad wrote:when you say "Some of the people we get in must be the best actors in the world if they can make a living out of this gaff" I doubt very much they are trying to make a living out of magic and perhaps this thinking is the reason for your frustration. Just accept them as people for whom magic has caught their attention, maybe for a fleeting moment, they have come to you and your response may determine just how far they end up going.

In this case I was talking specifically of those I knew to be full time professionals.

I agree that this thread, whilst being a really good one, has kind of gone off the origninal course. For people who only know a couple of tricks obviously the best course is to buy new, easy to work stuff but my opinion is that they should not concentrate solely on that.

My advice has been based on the way I got into magic, I had been studying books that came off the shelf and out of libraries for years before I even knew that magic shops existed. From this basis I was strong in basic sleights and that was the obvious way for me, I sort of ssumed that this is the way everyone got into magic. Obviously that assumption was short sighted of me, clearly more people get into magic via the internet these days and have instant access to magic shops selling easy to do miracles but I still beleive that getting hold of basic books will give you a firmer grounding.

I want to be clear here that I am not trying to belittle anyone who has taken a different route, I am just expressing my own opinions which you are quite welcome to ignore if you don't agree with them, but I would apreciate it if we didn't start telling each other that they're wrong and this is the right way to do something as this is far more likely to drive newcomers away than giving them slightly daunting advice based on our own opinions and memory of our route.

Nick

lol
BaB gets the mortars out and ties a union jack to his pants

Suggest that when this thread quietens down a bit it is split off from the original one requesting advice?

and a warning about strong opinions being expressed placed on it!

The thing to remember here is that this is a FORUM... where DISCUSSIONS take place...

This is NOT a careers advice centre!

These are OPINIONS, and I stand by Nick when I say that my opinions are my own, and should only be taken as texture.

It's threads like this - with a rich variation in response, yet retained respect and mutual appreciation - that makes TalkMagic a wonderful place to be.

AMEN

Couldn't agree more

MagicDiscoman, has by his own admission looked a RRTCM and decided to stick with gimmicked cards. Much the same as I have. Not saying that either of us won't learn over a period of time the sleights. In fact I know I want to.

THe whole issue here is should people that just start in magic immediately need to start learning sleights and such.

Magicdiscoman is someone that has made a living from magic without the need for studying books like RRTCM, because he has made the most of self working tricks and his presentation skills. He is not alone.

Therefore can anyone be right in immediately giving advice to the newbie such as, get away from gimmicks asap, you need to get RRTCM and BoBO's and spend the first year studying them?

I believe this would put many right of magic. Marvin certainly know a thing or two about interesting people in magic and it's all with easy self working tricks.

Sure some people would love to start in the deep end with something like RRTCM, but lets not try and force everyone into the same little box.

I had been studying books that came off the shelf and out of libraries for years before I even knew that magic shops existed.

Exactly my own experience! The books I saw mainly concentrated on self working card tricks, mathematical 'tricks' (most of them included the irritating secret' that opposite sides of a die add up to 7 which 'most people don't realise' -yeah, right!) and the rest involved gaffed items which were easy to make up at home. There were certainly some card sleights included as well as coin and rope routines. Think Nick Einhorn's Book, but 40 years ago, small print and no photos - only black & white sketches!

I don't think that anyone has either consciously or otherwise demonstrated magic snobbery in this thread. When Nick made his comments about not using purely mechanical items he qualified his statement in saying that they were just not for him. Similarly Seige's comments on our "art" would seem to be fairly obviously just his opinion, take it or leave it.

Similarly, I don't really believe that this thread has digressed particularly from the spirit of the initial question, which was "I've done a trick, I liked it, what do I do now?". Now everyone could have said, "well you buy another trick and learn to do some more, dummy".... pretty dull stuff. Instead he got 4 pages of everyones rants and opinions a load of good information and a sense of the passion everyone here has for magic. He may well go away thinking "what a load of effing fruitbaskets" and fair do's if he does. I would say he's more likely to go away with something more long term to think about and something that's more likely to inspire him to persist. If he had the "go and learn another trick" response, he would probably have gone and learned another trick, but what after that?

Hmm after posting ( but showing before my last post ) I see a number of new posts asking for things to quieten down lol
Shame cos I was enjoying it, but hey I don't want to offend anyone

Hopefully it's provided some good food for thought.

Now who wants a debate on whether debate is a good or destuctive thing

Nothing like a good old rant to blow the cobewbs away Toady.