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The Tarbell course taught particular moves and sleights in each chapter then provided routines and tricks using them. No reason why you can't do the same, buy a trick or a book and learn just the sleights required. Buy another, learn more sleights and so on. Self teaching works very well when you're having fun!

That's the reason that I really like Mark Wilson's Complete Course, each chapter details an area of magic and gives you techniques and then some effects using those techniques. It's a great book to just work your way through.

Love my Mark Wilson book.. Still refer to it today, and I've had for over 10 years.

I've got a few from there, can't say I've given it enough attention yet tho, I tend to flick back and forth to stuff I like the sound of

I like this type of thread! I know it helped and inspired me to get out there with my magic...

Here's a link to a post I made a good while back that I think is relevant

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And as always, everyone here was so supportive!

Thanks Chris! Good post. Yes I hope I can say the same for mine...

Speaking of which, tonight I will mainly be cutting out bits of card, playing with string and possibly blue tack and safety pins too...What could I be up to? Preparing some magic of course

The Weekend it hath comethed and is almost upon us. And brings with it my long awaited first proper gig. Of sorts. This being a small place, I kept it under the radar for some time that I would be doing any tricks with the desire to rock up and surprise people (and to help my nerves with less expectation), but of course this being a very small place where everyone inevitably always knows everything sooner or later, word has now gone round and I've folk saying 'Hey, I hear you're the entertainment at the weekend dude!?' (or something similar) There is an air of much interest and anticipation amungst folk which a few weeks ago I would have possibly freaked a bit at haha, but I must say now I'm very calm, cool and collected and am positively looking forward to it. The reason being I've at every oppotunity that seemed apt done a few tricks for someone wherever whenever.

Not actually strictly true as I have also discovered that forcing yourself to practice live is not cool. I mean if you're not 100% up for it and do it because you think you should practice on someone, it doesn't come accross that well and the reaction you get is inevitably mediocre as opposed to doing the exact same trick/effect when you're properly in the zone. Something worthy of note I'd say. Just reinforcing the fact it's all about you as the performer and how you deliver a thing of beauty, in a gold plated envelope or on a scfuffy bit of bog roll beacuse you couldn't quite be assed...

To get back to the chase, I think my confidense now has come from mainly getting so many great reactions, and the fact that word has now started to perculate the local community that I'm quite nifty would still scare me if I hadn't got a good load of nice reactions and some indifferent ones too allowing me to work out why it didn't go well that time. It always leads back to my presentation. I have nobody to practice on or perform to round here apart from people I know. I will get up to the local town and try some proper out there 'wanna see a trick' to some random elements soon but I've found performing to my friends and loved ones good. They're the first to give you a totally honest oppinion and it's great when they also give you that look you're unsure of, and you ask them 'Did you like it?'........And you realise it's that look of ammused frustration as they have No Ideal

I also have to thank the mod's and 'support' here for being wonderful and making this place so great. Definite gold stars all round, big ones.

I have also been pannicing a bit about my number of tricks but have run through them in my head a few times now and realised with delight that I've more than I thought in my pannic to make sure I wasn't caught short. This coming from the fact I'm relying a lot on a lot of self working and automatic tricks and effects which are quite snapy, I don't have a proper show as such and will be running around amungst friends showing different smal groups tricks at dinner and cocktail time so I think I've got the right approach for this party, lots of walk about small simple but crazy tricks, and a few more lengthy ones to get into later once everyone's rtelaxed into the magic vibe and wants a little step up the, erm, quality shall we say, or I'll invent a word here...unbelievedness of the trick you just did. And I don't really want to be repeating stuff too much.

The only thing left now is to don the DJ and check my pocket situation Oh yea and that card...and bluetack...and....

Good luck with the show, I'm sure that it'll go down brilliantly.

Thanks Lady, 5 hours and counting ... The Laird wanted to know if I'd be sawing a beautiful lady in half... I told him that'd be next year.

Edit:

Now 3 hours and counting, I have a bunch of tricks prep'ed up, even thought of this really cool way to link two of them together...thanks artychris for the unintentional inspiration on that one...Eeeeeeeeeeee, I'm off now. Been looking forward to this for weeks and nothing with a capital N will make anything happen other than pure magic. I found out last night there's 'other entertainment' too from Meg the organiser, I said I hoped it wouldn't conflict in any fashion which she assured me it wouldn't but I'm quite niffed now I'm not in the total spot light haha. Just means I'll have to be even better than amazing and leave everyone thinking Mr Cat the Magical (He's half man half soft furry creature) is the only dude you'll need next year. Await with baited breath the next report. I am.

I'm not using that name by the way :p Just a damn sexy outfit.

Mr Cat - pussycat or panther? We shall see!

Haha!! We will Mr ...

Well gosh, I'm totally glad that's over, it went really well at the table for dinner, but there just wasn't room to get about to the other tables due to the seating really and timing of the courses. So I managed to entertain my table anyway with a few warm up kind of things. Funnily the best trick of the night was one that I learned opn yourube where you get a card with a flap cut out of it and somehow it turns upside down under the cover of a napkin with some cunning folding, it stumped everyone and had them messing with the card for a while, I made a few so I could leave them with people to try and figure out, this went really well.

After that things started to go down hill quite rapidly and didn't take any up turns. I got totally busted on the old princess trick from Automata, what do you do when someone says 'oh he's using all the same cards'...it was quite depressing. I even managed to toally mess up some of the most basic tricks, and what I didn't manage to mess up, somebody else did! I had this great routine worked out where I would go from card to matchbox (having pretended that the card was supposed to be somewhere else and opps messed up a bit) on to cups and fireballs where upon I would have revealed under the last cup a blank front playing card folded up with 'look in the match box' written on it, I thought that was quite cool. It would have been but then having got the guy to get a match out earlier before leaving him with the box, I told him to light up the flash paper on top of the cups...the match wouldn't strike! So he goes in to get another, doesn't even look at the card! He just fumbled underneat it to try and get a match until I said ohh what's that haha. He then got it.

The other more successful stuff was the old newspaper artricle cut out and I predicted the top line of where the spectator would choose me to cut it in half, that went down a treat, as did 2 card monte. I guessit wasn't all bad, but certainly very very far from the gloriousnes I had hoped for, and to redeem myself at the end of the night I broke out Up the Ante...everyone was sitting on the floor and the cards got all the way round and the girl nex to me dropped them everywhere!! Total disaster and that was me done, I had to leg it.

I discovered that having too many packs of cards is a total pain in the butt, and not being totaly 110% organised is a massive massive mistake. I expect playing it by ear can sometimes be cool, but nmot last night. I think I went a bit over loaded and with not enough of a clear plan and set routines. I discovered that people really seem to love little gimmicks more than your regular card tricks, some kind of challenge, and stuff with everyday objects. I did have a bunch of other stuff that would have gone down well but got distracted by my disapointment at the stuff that went totally awry and forgot about it until I got back, largely due to overloaded pockets and not being able to find what I wanted when I wanted it.

I guess the moral is less is more, and more can be a massive mess of disorganisation if you're un lucky. Which I was.

Oh well, I'm sure everyone had fun and it's probably only me who's totally gutted haha, but hey, I'll get over it. I think I might try more of a stage show next year, and have a proper plan. Oops. And I really do need to figure out some kind of cool get-out when I either get rumbled or someone drops my lovingly pre-set cards all over the floor! Any tips? I never even got to use any of my flash paper

Luke! We've all had the odd bad night!

Things don't always work out, and that's part of the excitement of doing magic! Audiences, especially in close up, are unpredictable, and sometimes tricks just go wrong...

So, without being to critical on yourself, look at what didn't work, why, and what you would do differently next time! (Even if it was entirely the spectators fault, how could you have managed the spectator differently?)

It sounds like there were some successes as well

Two card Monte is a great trick! And the newspaper thing worked nicely too!

It sounds like the first gig was a bit of a learning curve... And that's just what it was... The first one! The next one will be so much better for all you've got from this one...

Stick with it! I know that you're on the right track!

(If it helps, I got completely busted with the matchbox penetration trick the other day! The young lady in question stuck the toothpick through the matchbox two or three times, then I opened the matchbox and dropped the slab of metal into her hands...! For a moment she was amazed... Then she took the gimmick and just disassembled it! She must have seen the look on my face... "Well, its a bit obvious, isn't it!" She said! These things just happen sometimes! The perils of being a magician!)

So.. I'm looking forward to the next field report!

Ha, thanks chris

Yea I'm sure in my head it's much worse than in reality, apparently folk were saying I was great, just one of those times when you imagine it going so much better, whereas it was just 'OK'. I'm sure I'll hear some reports back from folk soon enough.

Once I got busted first off I just got a bit flustered about that and I don't think I reall recovered properly. It was definately a big learning curve, but everyone was happy enough and of course it is a laugh when stuff goes wrong unless you're that tioghtly wound up about it going perfectly which I was, just need to relax a bit. I really did struggle with keeping all my props organised tho, that could have been a lot better. I know for next time!

If it goes wrong, just own up and, with a boyish grin (!), hope they understand - far better than trying to bluff it out as some people might do. You'll approach things differently next time now you have that under your belt. As for the amount of stuff, as I've mentioned on odd occasions, I use Eugene Burger's advice and tell the group/table/whatever, 'I have three things to show you...' That way they know I won't be there all evening and, equally importantly, they know when the third one is over and they can (hopefully) applaud. I keep an extra 2 effects handy in case of emergency but I find it best to leave 'em wanting more rather than overstaying.

Thnaks Mandrake, yea I failed to do that (behave in a nicey fashion when rumbled), still have to learn to deal with getting busted! That's a big one worth a thread but maybe it's been done somehwre. If not I'll start it.

But hey I just went 'next door' and hung out for a bit. I took a pack of cards with me and sure enough someone said hey I hear you're a bit of a groover with the old magic thing... I pulled out the cards and said hey wanna see a trick. You know the answer.

I did two card monte knowing one particular guy there whom is very sceptical and had the eagle eye going on.... it went amazingly. So then I pulled off a couple of other classic self workers; The classic 'how well are you matched?' as mentioned earlier, and also the 'listen ear' as featured on 'Strike Six' by Matthew Dowden. The hilarious thing was the deck was totally clean but I managed to get it set up for various stuff without anyone noticing. I just organised stuff, placed it down and talked for a while until I felt it safe to move on to another that I'd set up earlier. I can't believe what I got away with tonight. I'll say that all my spec's were fairly wrecked but I'm not sure it made a huge difference.

One pack of cards, un gaffed, one bunch of folks half cut, and one guy asking to see some stuff. I thought 'Yes, it's on'...The dude wanting a trick said 'Can you do any Dinamo stuff...' but after three tricks he was well blown away

And then I taught him a fourth one. A lovely self worker that's no massive chunk off the magic circle's nose. Always a winner, and then I grabbed my coat to words of "Hey come back and practice any time, we expect more amazement!..."

I like getting out there.

Edit: For thos of you who aren't familiar with 'listen ear', let's just say I managed to organise a whole suit of cards in order just where I wanted them...and nobody noticed, I was just playing with my cards. Really!? Oh yes. Just need to try this with some sober folk now and if I can do that....blimey. Funny what you can do with cards once eveyone thinks that's what you 'just do'. Bit like being a photographer and playing with your camera and framing folk up. After a while nobody cares.