talkmagic.co.uk

Tomo wrote:

mafiosoromano wrote:That's ridiculously unnecessary.

No problem. I just have the default attitude that if I give you a fish, you'll eat today. If I teach you to fish, you can feed yourself forever.

Nice philosophy however with this search function, I won't find any fish, only lots and lots of water...

Charles Calthrop wrote:Derailing alert:
I think it was Terry Pratchett who said "Give a man a fire and you keep him warm for the night, but set him on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life".

But the rest of his life will be like 2 minutes after he's set on fire lol.

I never actually found RRTCM that useful. I found Born To Perform the best beginner magic DVD.

Steve

pdjamez wrote:Take a look at the essentials articles on my blog. These might be helpful to you.

Thanks for posting something quite relevant, coherent, and useful!

mafiosoromano wrote:

Tomo wrote:No problem. I just have the default attitude that if I give you a fish, you'll eat today. If I teach you to fish, you can feed yourself forever.

Nice philosophy however with this search function, I won't find any fish, only lots and lots of water...

Don't let Mandrake hear you talk like that

The whole idea of Essential, beyond a certain point, is largely irrelevant as it is so subjective. Who can say what tricks you perform are essential but you? A cardician might say that Twisted Sisters is essential, but to someone who abhors cards it's not so much. The same with DVDs, and books - after the widely-regarded classics such as Royal Road and Modern Coin Magic and Tarbell and Wilson etc. etc. then it becomes what books people like the most - it is such a subjective thing, you see.

Put simply, essential is only essential if it is relevant to you and your perfomring style.

nicely put cardza, and very true...apart from the classics - the rest is down to character and style...one man's daniels is another man's bongo...

Don't let Mandrake hear you talk like that

Can't cut a person down for his opinion... anyway it's no one's fault really, just how the forums are set-up, I've used and moderated a forums similar to this style and I have to say the search was quite similar as well, it was just hard to filter out certain search criteria and what you're left with is a bunch of stuff you're not looking for mixed in with the good stuff.

Cardza wrote:Put simply, essential is only essential if it is relevant to you and your perfomring style.

In a manner of speaking yes, but everyone's has got to start somewhere and the material that helped that "someone" push along could be considered the essentials.

So I'll ask you this, what did you start with?

mafiosoromano wrote:

Cardza wrote:Put simply, essential is only essential if it is relevant to you and your perfomring style.

In a manner of speaking yes, but everyone's has got to start somewhere and the material that helped that "someone" push along could be considered the essentials.

The very point that drove me to create my set of essential articles in the first place.

i have found the articles to be very interesting and very useful for many people. Nice blog

stephenmagic wrote:i have found the articles to be very interesting and very useful for many people. Nice blog

Hey thanks Stephen. If anyone has any additions to the essential lists, feel free to email me.

pdjamez wrote:The very point that drove me to create my set of essential articles in the first place.

I've been thinking of collaborating a good list of tricks and techniques I started out with as well, but I am far too inexperienced to take that step.

Okay then, for me:

Cards Royal Road to Card Magic, Encylopedia of Card Tricks, The Expert at the Card Table and Scarne on Card Tricks.

Coins Modern Coin Magic and Money Magic Tricks.

Micellaneous Mark Wilson's Complete Course in Magic.

Those were the main books that really started me off and I've moved on from there really.

I'd say that Scarne on Card Tricks is an essentual book, but it doesn't teach sleight of hand. It gives you great ideas for creating effects though...