talkmagic.co.uk

It's my opinion, not that I've been in the game that long, that you not only have to know the secrets, have the skills and practice, practice, practice, but you must learn to be magical. Magic is not about showing someone you have a practiced skill, it's about performance and wow factor.

Sure, you need to do the leg work, but a good magician can make a simple trick more magical than someone baffling people with sleights and misdirection.

from my 1 year of experience, start from the basics. and you can go anywhere you want with that.

i started out with Born to perform and one sankey's anytime anywhere. Oz's Born To Perform taught me all the basics and the routines that i use all the time. and sankey's works are also very good because he teaches the some of the slights in the dvds.

i later bought bobo's coin book and royal road to card magic and mark wilsons's book (and haven't really looked at those alot...) for references that i might use later on.

from there, i was able to go into XCM, coin magic, card magic, mentalism, and alot of fun little tricks (self tying shoelace, stigmata, greed, etc)

i made the mistake with buying alot of effects when i first started (OMG CUPS ) and i dont even use 2/3 of them on a regular basis

luckly i found this forum and saved my self alot of money and learned alot of things, well that was my rant

I bought two packs of bikes and practiced springing on an old Number 1 I had lying around.

I used the Royal Road and got on with it.

I bought the Devil's Picture Book, because it had the right flavour of magic for me. I use a lot of the principals from there.

The rest was practice, videoing myself and "performance".