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as you all know im new to the world of magic and for that reason am performing all these tricks for the first time.
i find myself sitting in my room spending forever going over the patter and rehearsing the moves but i still find myself worried about fumbling in my first performance, i just cant help it. I also find that this worrying does lead to me fumbling a sleight. This i cannot keep doing.
how do you guys prepare for the first trick, like do you go through it with your eyes closed or in front of the mirror or looking at a point on the wall or is the first time always the same with every new sleight and trick?
Any tips?

Cheers,

I think it's very useful to have someone that makes a sypathetic audience. After you've practiced to the point you can do it comfortably on your own, then do it on that person that won't make it difficult for you.
I have someone that I do it with that is very easy to fool and in the worst case I don't mind desperately if I muck it up. I also have someone that is very switched on and I know if I fool him, I'll fool anyone. I never use him till i've really got it working perfectly and then sometimes I discover it's not as perfect as I'd thought.
Above all, don't forget it's fun.

Think my mum and dad will do for them.

The old rule about practice, practice, practice - then more practice is important but there comes a point where you have to get out into the world and just do the thing in front of total strangers. The first time is the worst (so they tell me - I haven't got that far yet!) What we tend to forget is that whilst we know all the moves, sleights etc and how well or otherwise we’re doing, the spectators know nothing at all and are just watching the trick. Don't over worry about it - give it a go and learn from any mistakes. Be honest with the audience if you make a mistake - they'll appreciate honesty far more than bull!

another point worth mentioning, it's easier if you start with self working tricks, this builds the confidence, then you can do something a little more difficult.
The first time I did any tricks in front of strangers I was dead nervous, but I chose very easy to do tricks one of which was the disappearing card case and I got great reactions. It certainly makes it much easier for the next time. I kept thinking that this time I'd get sussed, but now I fully expect to get away with it

any reccomended self workers? What did you start with?
my tricks that i own at the moment (packet ones these are, obviously i own normal cards and some books) are:

Twisted Sisters
Locked Deck
Raven x2
Svengali
Stripper
Healed and sealed
mene tekal
and a couple of other gaff decks like forcing deck and stuff.
What would you reccomend or should i get a couple of self workers?

try this as an opener trick, use your svengali to force a card, have this card stripped in your stripper deck.

force the card and let them hold on to it without showing you, get them to concentrate on the card as you shuffle your other deck second spec say stop when suitably shuffled, strip cut the force card to the top of the deck, give second spec this card to hold.
get each spec to face each other then symultaneously turn there cards round.

dead easy opener and you can dress it up as sympathetic telepathy, works great with girls they will think your so sensitive

Can't go wrong with the one I mentioned. Disappearing card case. It's just £4.50 including P&P so won't break the bank either.

http://www.worldmagicshop.com/product_info.php?name=Disappearing+Cards+%26+Case&products_id=53&ref=3

Just to raise the temperature a bit I'm going to advise learning lot's of sleights and not relying solely on self workers as you start out.

Now I'll go and hide from the people with the loud voices and sticks saying 'do easy stuff'!

Since we had a good debate about this a few days ago I'm not going to go into details here (though I have saved back the argument that if you know lot's of sleights you won't be caught out by tricks that require ones you don't know and they don't describe) but people will advocate both paths and you have to choose what is right for you.

If you find that your sleights fail you under pressure then you definately need more performance experience with stuff that needs less technical skill. Once you get used to performing it loses the nervy edge that makes your hands shake and sweat and spreads your cards all over the floor.

Plus, if you're practing your sleights you don't have to think up excuses to explain what your doing all the time on your own in your room.

I have the ID box i just found it, had it for a while. what presentation would you match this illusion up with. any other trick using it as an ending?

nickj wrote:Plus, if you're practing your sleights you don't have to think up excuses to explain what your doing all the time on your own in your room.

What do you mean nick?

I have got RRTCM, is this best to learn sleights from or are there any DVD's you would particularly recommend?

Well even when you are doing nothing no-one ever believes that you can actually spend hours doing it! Claiming to be practicing your card handling is probably more socially acceptable than than computer games from your parents point of view too. I well remember plenty of times when I had to claim I was doing something other than what I was actually doing when I was 16, normally only cos I wasn't doing what I'd been nagged at to do though! (I hope I didn't give the impression that I meant something else!)

RRTCM is good but old so it doesn't contain some of the more modern moves such as the Elmsley count as has been mentioned elswhere. I think that if you work through it and pick up any instructional videos or books that catch your fancy as you do so you will be well set. If you want another comprehensive set of sleights for all occasions you could try Jerry Andrus' "Andrus Card Control" these are all of his sleights. There are loads of sleights in it (very few take up a whole page in the book and there are 120 A4 pages with a seperate book containing 1048 diagrams!) and a couple of tricks, but all of the sleights are different to the commonly used ones like the pass and double undercut and suchlike.

One thing I would mention is that if you get to a stage where you just can't master the next level of difficulty leave it for a while. You will find that as you become more comfortable with the moves that you know and with holding cards all the time it will become easier to learn new stuff. I found a lot of the Jerry Andruss stuff very hard when I first got the books but now when I look at it it doesn't seem quite so bad.

Right Luke, I guess the fact you'd shoved it away somwhere and not used it, means that you were not too impressed by the look of it. If you find the review you will find a post by me saying exactly this, as it's just what I did. I thought it looked tacky and it wasn't until i got the reactions that i warmed to it.

Personally I do a very simple presentation with this, though would be interested to hear what others do. I take it out of my pocket and remove pack from case, I draw attention to case by saying it's my new card case cos my packs keep getting damaged. I show it and this way they know just what it looks like ( helpful for a bit later ) I put the case down turned upside down in the correct position to pick up in a minute and slide straight on.

I open the card pack and tell them I want them to remember a card, I take the top one and show them the card making it clear I can see it to, this is important as if they think your not supposed to see it, they may be concerned you took a card from the top that you had previously looked at. I tell them the important thing is that they remember the card and at this point they think it's going to be something about them remembering the card. As I slide the card back onto the top, I ask them again are they sure they will remember the card because I intend to make it disappear.

I then casually pick up the case and very slowly slide it on. I now keep it in very clear view the whole time and tell them that after all my effort to make a card disappear some people then go and forget what their card was, in order to overcome this difficulty I had to take the magic a lot further, as I say this I turn the case over show it from a few angles and watch their face. I casually pop it into my pocket while their jaw is still dropped.

Try it and let me know how you get on

i think it would be good to force the card that is in the shell deck. put this in the deck you forced swap with and the packs in your pocket as you reach for the black case. put the shell deck in the case reversed so it still looks like a whole deck say you will magically appear their card to the top of the deck. remove the deck and show that the top card is indeed theirs. then say that is a good enough trick on its own but you can make the card dissapear aswell. turn the case round with your other hand and slide it on. click your fingers and tell them their card will have dissapeared. turn it over and it has infact dissapeared but so has the rest of the deck!
what do you think?

i think it would be good to force the card that is in the shell deck. put this in the deck you forced swap with and the packs in your pocket as you reach for the black case. put the shell deck in the case reversed so it still looks like a whole deck say you will magically appear their card to the top of the deck. remove the deck and show that the top card is indeed theirs. then say that is a good enough trick on its own but you can make the card dissapear aswell. turn the case round with your other hand and slide it on. click your fingers and tell them their card will have dissapeared. turn it over and it has infact dissapeared but so has the rest of the deck!
what do you think?

You know what? This is a great little piece of self working wizardry that works. Theres no real need (IMHO) to try and make it EVEN stronger as in many ways this will just serve to confuse and take away from the effect.

As John Derris said in his lecture last year (Not sure who the original quote can be attributed to). It's good to remember K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple Stupid.