talkmagic.co.uk

The Easy Option

When you look at an effect or trick on a website or in a catalogue, what kind of characteristics do you look for? Do you look at how easy it is to perform? Or whether or not it is examinable? Or how quickly it resets? If the answer to those questions is yes, I think that you need to start re-evaluating your performance.

As a hobbyist it’s fine to be doing little tricks to people, it’s even ok if those tricks are self-working and easy to perform because they’re just a bit of fun; they have no real consequence besides the amusement of you and your friends. It’s not as if your performing a whole routine to paying customers is it? But even as a hobbyist there must be some desire to better yourself and you can never do that by just performing easy tricks. Yes you may create a little repertoire of tricklets that impress people and create you some sort of reputation but you will go no further than the limits of those tricks.

As an amateur magician, i.e. somebody who is known as a magician-on-the-side type of character, these types to trick might feature in your routines and that’s fine. But if your routine depends on those tricks you’re in trouble. As an amateur magician you’ll probably using your magic to create a little revenue on the side and therefore you should be taking your magic very seriously. It’s no longer a hobby and it has progressed past that to a serious venture. In that case you should be concerned about how your performance comes across. You should be looking into the dramatic aspects of your performance and the non-magical side of your magic. To do this you need to look at the type of trick your performing. You start to look into the definitions of close-up, or mentalism, or stage and from there you define yourself. How can you define yourself if you’re performing a load of inconsequential tricks that have no real relevance to each other or you audience?

As for professional magicians who make a living out of their magic I think it is safe to say, from my limited knowledge of this area, that their routines do not depend on such tricks and they have rounded their performance off so that it creates an optimal effect which, as a very basic consequence, creates more jobs.

Now, let me just stop for a moment and clarify myself. There is nothing wrong with individual packet tricks that are easy to perform, are examinable and have no reset. In many instances these effects are a Godsend. However, I believe that any magician who depends on these tricks will find himself or herself stuck in a rut as far as moving onwards and upwards as a performer is concerned.

I’m not going to suggest a solution to this problem. Many of you will disagree with my ideas and that’s fine. If any of this has made any sense to YOU I suggest you begin to re-evaluate your stance in magic.

When you look at an effect or trick on a website or in a catalogue, what kind of characteristics do you look for? Do you look at how easy it is to perform? Or whether or not it is examinable? Or how quickly it resets? If the answer to those questions is yes, I think that you need to start re-evaluating your performance.

OOO I'm SO INSULTED YES I AM.

not realy, 90% of my tricks in kids shows are classified as self workers and of them 100% are constantly replaced with the exact same trick and performed in exactly the same way more or less.
why well i'll tell you, thease tricks are my bread and butter they earn me the money to exspand my bussiness and invest ion new tricks thats the other 10%, as a performer that is paid to do magic you cant just do new tricks on a regular basis as you can loose several bookings if you make a pigs ear of it.

adding new tricks to the mix is fine and adding close up stuff with slights is all ok but you need a set show to fall back on so I'm far from stagnateing I'm constantly inovateing on the fly regards the routines combineing the tricks without haveing to concentrate on the trick itself.

so i buy self working tricks like die boxes and change bags and quick reset tricks like stripper / wizard decks and use them every show.

most stage acts by the way invole half a dosen tricks that are performed the same way to a set routine just like a play so maximum stagnation there acording to you, funny though i dont think david copperfield would agree with you.

it easy for amatures to say that you should be constantly evolving you magic and not relying on the same stuff, your not forking out several hundred pounds a month on repairs and replacements for worn out props

when you are doing more than 30 paid gigs a year please revisit this thread and answer your own questions .

sorry, i didn't mean to insult you and i think its ok for you to disaggree because you do have the experience.

I havn't got time now but I want to reply to your post in full.

Watch this space.

no probs i wasn't insulted and i'll await your views with a glad heart and a big mallet .

it easy for amatures to say that you should be constantly evolving you magic and not relying on the same stuff, your not forking out several hundred pounds a month on repairs and replacements for worn out props

This was another regular annoyance about my days as a jobbing professional musician. I was sat in the pub following a juggling club session, explaining how I'd just spent the past couple of days trying to get my PA amp fixed in time for a gig, finding someone to do it, getting messed about over the job and having to pay through the nose for the priviledge. One of the jugglers listened carefully to my woes, and when I had finished he held up a silicone juggling ball.

"Tell me what can go wrong with that", he said.

Beg to differ please!

I found in my time working at studio9 that the Amateurs were usually the ones most likely to want to progress and learn more. The proffesionals on the other hand were far more likely to just want an easy to do effect.

Like pretty much every other statement under the sun, this is a huge generalisation and many of the proffesionals were the very best of the best, but I met far more pros who wanted easy, examinable fast recetting tricks than I did 'seasoned amateurs'.

Looking at it from their point of view you can see the reasoning behind it. Some have gradually moved into the magic scene from other performance arts and seem to want to bypass the annoying practice phase. Others love the art but find that they have little aptitude for sleight etc and others are just plain lazy! Fast resetting effects also have a far more important position in the working table hopper's arsenal than they do in that of a hobbyist who will only perform for one group in a night, as they will usually avoid repeating a trick.

You really have to make your own decision as to what suits you. Personally I do go along with Fish as I prefer to us ordinary cards or audience control to avoid the problems of examinability and I have never ever worried about ease of use as I prefer to have to work hard to perfect the technical side of an effect. I do like quick resets to my packet card tricks though.

quicksand as i am magic disco services i suffer from both worlds and have had the same problem as you, now i have two amps one as backup and a good friend who does pat testing for me.

and just to clarify, a table hopping session or house / dinner party magic then disco session is 90% slights with coins and cards and 10% gimick coins and cards as aposed to kids shows that are the reverse.
i use a stripper / wizard deck as a regular deck ever since being given a marvins one at ten and no one in ten years+ has even suspected.

i also have a parkinson's tremmor which means i need self workers so i dont need to worry about controling the tremor as i do a pass or palm change and anyway i can do a bobo switch and a false transfer but its much safer to use a copper / silver or china change and i use both.

prince naseem hamed the boxer is a good example of a professional, he uses new combinations and unusual punches to highlight his off beat style but at the end of the day he still relys on the classic jab and uppercut, second nature magic is essential to a working pro just as the jab is to a boxer, that dosn't meen that we cant showboat or catch people with a blow of angle and we do but we have to make sure we keep to the basics or we will loose the fight in the long term.

Sorry, only just got in and I'm shattered. Ill write you a reply in the morning and have the overly sized pillow strapped to my head!!

nighty nighty plesent magical dreams dont let the bed bugs keep you up all night.

Hehe the innocence of youth The tricks are not the limits, easy or difficult, the imagination and presentation are the limits. You can go a whole lifetime never being able to do more than a DL and achieve greatness, likewise you can do sleights so complex that Martin Nash would be scared to play cards with you, and yet never rise above obscurity. To quote the age old axiom, it's not what you do it is the way that you do it.

Bruce Lee put it well when he said

Before you learn the art a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick.
When you learn the art a punch is no longer just a punch a kick no longer just a kick
Once you understand the art a punch is just a punch, a kick is just a kick

The same is very much true of magic, to a layman a coin vanish is just a coin vanish, when you are learning it is no longer just a coin vanish (it's a retention pass or a french drop or a himber drop or a deep back clip steal etc) once you understand the art a coin vanish is just a coin vanish. The "clever stuff" amuses magicians, it makes zero difference to the spectators, they don't know an expanded shell from a han ping chein or a himber drop from a french drop.

I've learned a lot of different versions of the coins accross over the years including some great versions from Roth and others which I may do for other magicians, but when it comes to working for laymen I do a fingertip holdback followed by 3 han ping cheins, and the reaction from laymen is no different than when I do the ultra clean coins accross for them, both times 4 coins magically jumped from 1 hand to the other, no more no less. However the HPC method is vastly simpler and allows me to concentrate all my energy on the presentation.

It all depends what you want out of your magic, for some it is the personal satisfaction of mastering the sleights, for others it is simply the joy of entertaining the spectators, and for others it is whatever brings in the paycheck, for many it is all of the above. For me, well it keeps me off the streets Ultimately though, magic is about the effect and not about the method, you should never lose sight of that.

Progression isn't always about learning more difficult tricks and sleights. I was a magical snob when I was your age and if it didn't take sleight of hand it wasn't real magic and if you couldn't do sleights you weren't a real magician. For me progress was learning to allow myself "the easy option" and the realisation that sleights were simply a means to an end, and understanding that it was reaching that end that made you a magician not the means by which you got there. Polish, character and sparkle are more important moves onward and upwards as a performer and are available to even those who rely soley on simple packet tricks.

Mark

Mark i couldn't have put it better myself, no realy i meen it you have exsplained my whole position in a clear and consise way and i thank you.

it is simply the joy of entertaining the spectators, and for others it is whatever brings in the paycheck

ahmen to that bro.

character and sparkle are more important moves onward and upwards as a performer and are available to even those who rely soley on simple packet tricks.

character gets booking not skill.

personal satisfaction of mastering the sleights

not half as much fun as watching a kids face light up as my haunted key moves under there comand.

Mark Chandaue wrote:for some it is the personal satisfaction of mastering the sleights, for others it is simply the joy of entertaining the spectators, and for others it is whatever brings in the paycheck

Hehe I can't believe I forgot

And some just want to pull women

Mark

GF wrote:

a little repertoire of tricklets

- Great phrase!

Mark wrote:

And some just want to pull women

I have a book at home entitled 'How To Pull Using Magic' (I kid you not!!) - will have to do a review very soon!

Ok, Mark, thank you, I stand corrected. My little speil was how I saw itfrom an amatuer's point of view but your post justified alot of stuff to me so I'm gonna go off and pactise my little repetoire of tricklets ( )

I have a book at home entitled 'How To Pull Using Magic' (I kid you not!!) - will have to do a review very soon!

Arnold Rimmer in Red Dwarf had this to say about the hypnotism book in the same series; "There's nothing wrong with that book, full of handy hints!".

Anyway, isn't "How to Pull Using Magic" actually a treatise on the effects possible using IT?