talkmagic.co.uk

So I've recently learned a bunch of tricks, and I'm finding it harder and harder to remember them all. What tips do some of you have for remembering them? I'd find some sort of system extremely useful especially for tricks I know when someone hand's me a deck at a party or something.

Set pen to paper and make a list of your tricks. Keep that list in your pocket as a guide.

Warning though: you are in danger of not presenting the tricks to their best if you have so many you haven't learnt them properly - even to the degree you can't even remember what they're called or how they start!

stepSeven wrote::idea: Set pen to paper and make a list of your tricks. Keep that list in your pocket as a guide.

Warning though: you are in danger of not presenting the tricks to their best if you have so many you haven't learnt them properly - even to the degree you can't even remember what they're called or how they start!

I agree. But I also have a Word Document called: My Tricks and in I have almost all my tricks and there explanations.

I'd find some sort of system extremely useful especially for tricks I know when someone hand's me a deck at a party or something.

I don think that Word document's going to help at the party unless it's printed out out or loaded on his PDA snicket

kingjeux wrote:So I've recently learned a bunch of tricks, and I'm finding it harder and harder to remember them all. What tips do some of you have for remembering them? I'd find some sort of system extremely useful especially for tricks I know when someone hand's me a deck at a party or something.

Choose your strongest few. Practice them, time and time again. When you know six strong ones, and some sleights so that you can jazz, it's not so troublesome.

I definitely have a list and just look down it every now and then to make sure I can still do them.

Your best option is to routine them, pick your best ones and put together a few routines. I find it much easier to remember tricks if I'm performing them as part of a routine than to scrabble around in my head for a random trick.

Choose your top 6-7 tricks and try and link one to the other. This will help you remember them and you'll also have yourself a nice little routine! Ie I always start my card routine with the spec finding 2 matching cards, then onto Gemini twins - ( always go nice and easy to start ) to find the other 2 matching cards. Then I perform arthur buckleys multiple shift with the same 4 cards, then a card monte effect, and so on..

As you get more confident start adding more in at relevent points of your routine!

yeh, I have routines noted down, so I can just look through if I ever wanted to and pick a routine rather than a bunch of tricks... I name my routines so if Ijust look through the list of routine names, I have a good 5/6 effects that flow together that I know inside out

Lady of Mystery wrote:Your best option is to routine them, pick your best ones and put together a few routines. I find it much easier to remember tricks if I'm performing them as part of a routine than to scrabble around in my head for a random trick.

Though I'm not at this stage, this is where I was heading and it works for me. I'm planning on having 1 routine of 6 tricks, 2 of 3 or 4 and 3 or 4 extra tricks as a strong base to start with. These will be nothing less than my favourites and ones I've practiced a great deal.

stepSeven wrote:

I'd find some sort of system extremely useful especially for tricks I know when someone hand's me a deck at a party or something.

I don think that Word document's going to help at the party unless it's printed out out or loaded on his PDA snicket

True but, When I do prefrom I do print them and I am with tons ppl so one does a trick then I will pull it out and prefrom one of my strongest.

True but, When I do prefrom I do print them and I am with tons ppl so one does a trick then I will pull it out and prefrom one of my strongest.

That seems to makes a lot of sense snicket


One other tip kingjeux is to keep a magic journal (diary) this would be seperate from the short list of 'current' tricks you're performing. Here you can keep as many notes as you like about as many effects and ideas as you like. This can be a great reference when you look back (and you might be able to sell the material in twenty years time. 'The KingJeux Secret Files' )

Try a routine that flows together rather than Trick. Stop. Trick. Stop. etc. Weed out your tricks that don't fit into the flow. When you pratice, practice from the beginning to the end of the routine. That may help.

[quote="stepSeven"]I don think that Word document's going to help at the party unless it's printed out out or loaded on his PDA snicket [/quote]

When you say at a party, if you mean table hopping, you only need to hand pick your best 4 - 6 best ones. Because you do 2 tricks to a table, move on, and if they are watching you at the next, do your other 2, rinse and repeat

This, I've found is quite a common danger - especially for chronic CUPS sufferers (like myself )

The urge is always there to learn your "latest, greatest" acquisition, and then move straight onto the next; before you quite know where you are, you have a cupboard full of effects, each of which you've practised extensively (albeit for a single day or four).

Before too long, you find yourself a month or so down-the-line, re-visiting some of the earlier effects, only to discover that your memory of the working and/or presentation has become dimmed

I'd speculate that very few of us could claim to have an arsenal of 50 effects, which we knew, inside-out, and could perform each flawlessly, having done no 'revision' for several months?

The above advice is very sound; routining of 4-6 of your hardest-hitters, and STICKING with those 4-6 ONLY (in effect, making them your 'core' effects), will do wonders for your memory and performance.

Nothing to stop you working on your most recently-purchased treasure, until you see if you want to add *that* to the mix also, but working on three or four new effects every month or so? Depends (from my experience) whether you want to be an average performer, or a really good performer

Rob