talkmagic.co.uk

Hi all,

This is just a little question my small mind managed to cough up; though it's only relevant to card magic sleights in particular.


So, is being a sleight of hand expert essential to performing good card effects?

Personally, I find all of these sleights with weird, impractical names rather flustering and generally don't bother with a lot of them (even some apparently crucial ones). However (I'm not showing off here) I've done some tricks and stuff at school for pupils and teachers etc. and they were all pretty impressed by some odd mind-reading effect I did or something or other, using just a rather simple card force.

So, is advanced sleight of hand really a necessary thing to know?

Discuss away

Because I'm c*** (not the best) at sleight of hand, I like this quote from an Ali Bongo DVD:

"I'm not very good at sleight of hand, so I tend to do what I'm going to do now- that is cheat."
Ali Bongo.

Card sleights don't determine whether you perform good card effects. Only your performance can do that.

Sleights WILL give you more methods and will enable you to perform a larger range of effects. It also means that different methods can be used for the same outcome. There are threads aplenty here about " I know how you did that," so different sleights can then be used to disprove their theory.

To perform top of the range effective card magic i would say sleights are crucial.I know by the way your askin the question that ur too lazy to learn them but put it this way

sure you can amaze ppl with simple card stacked systems and simple forces...but if you want people running away from ya absolutly bewildered and astonished then you want to know a very good bag of sleights.

its really up to yourself as to how far ya want to go with magic.if you dont take it that seriously and do it for fun then sure go ahead with the self working tricks.Some of the finest card tricks are self working like the ID..i work my *rse off trying to learn push off doubles methods of controlling,one hand top palm and yet the single most baffling trick everyone talks about (that i do) is the ID......blows them away

so at the end of the day the choice is yours.The more sleights the better your magic and thus you get talked about etc etc...But if you like the self workers thats cool,again it depends on how seriously you take it.

But for god sake,do us all a favour.DONT do the boring dealing tricks that confuse spectators where they have to deal all the cards into seperate piles etc just so at the end ya can say''is that your card''

Anyways i've rambled on far too long

Good luck with whatever you decide to do:)

I know by the way your askin the question that ur too lazy to learn them

What are you? Psychic?

I'm not too lazy to learn sleights, on the contrary, I know a large batch of them; I just don't see them as practical or generally necessary all the time, so I stick with the simpler ones which have the same basic effect (DL vs. Velvet Turnover, for example).

Thanks for the reply, but I was just coming up with some viable debate; not announcing my 'laziness'

Flood wrote:To perform top of the range effective card magic i would say sleights are crucial.I know by the way your askin the question that ur too lazy to learn them but put it this way


The more sleights the better your magic and thus you get talked about

Flood, just to let you know this isn't a dig, as you raised some good points.
Just the above I feel need discussing.

Both paragraphs talk about sleights making your magic better, but it wont make your performance better. Also, when you say you can tell he is too lazy to learn, at least he isn't too lazy to spell "people" in full.

The last line I disagree with completely. See my comment about Ali Bongo, think about Tommy Cooper, Houdini, David Copperfield etc.
How many of those are known for doing amazing sleights at card magic.
They are talked about, but how often are you talked about regarding your card magic?

Callum asks: " . . .is being a sleight of hand expert essential to performing good card effects?d"

Not at all! In fact, there are many books, and hundreds of routines of self-working and non-sleight card tricks (an regular magic tricks, too). In fact, my latest lecture is titled No-Gaff Cards and the notes encompass about a dozen different routined tricks in 22 pages.

The important thing is the presentation, not the sleights (if any-- and again, they aren't needed!)

I am pretty skilled at sleight of hand but I am also quite ruthless over methods. I will use any method that will gain me an effect. It doesn't matter whether the method is a tricked up card or a gimmick. Neither does it matter a whit if the method is a mathematical principle or a clever subtlety. The only criteria is that it should deceive. You use the best method that is available.

However there are some cases where the best method IS to use sleight of hand. I always remember Murray the escapologist telling me "You are not a magician unless you can do something with your hands"

In other words a moderate amount of skill at sleight of hand will be quite an asset for you. It gives your work an authority that can be felt by the spectators on a subconsious level. I know this sounds terribly metaphysical but I do believe it.

However sleight of hand ability gives you a wider repertoire and another advantage is that it can be a terribly useful thing if you run into trouble and a trick goes wrong.

Is it essential? Probably not in many cases. A stage magician or a children's entertainer probably won't need much of it. A mentalist is skilful in many ways but manual dexterity is not a priority. However for close up magic it is virtually a necessity except in the case of card tricks where strangely enough you can get along quite well without a single sleight although your repertoire would be somewhat limited.

Overall I would recommend mastering a moderate amount of sleight of hand. Make sure it is practical material though. A lot of the finger flinging that goes on nowadays has very little practical use and seems to be more for the amusement of the conjurer than his audiences.

Darrel wrote:

Flood wrote:To perform top of the range effective card magic i would say sleights are crucial.I know by the way your askin the question that ur too lazy to learn them but put it this way


The more sleights the better your magic and thus you get talked about

Flood, just to let you know this isn't a dig, as you raised some good points.
Just the above I feel need discussing.

Both paragraphs talk about sleights making your magic better, but it wont make your performance better. Also, when you say you can tell he is too lazy to learn, at least he isn't too lazy to spell "people" in full.

The last line I disagree with completely. See my comment about Ali Bongo, think about Tommy Cooper, Houdini, David Copperfield etc.
How many of those are known for doing amazing sleights at card magic.
They are talked about, but how often are you talked about regarding your card magic?

Actually yes i am too lazy and by the way you answered that,if i wasn't too lazy i would challenge you to a 'YO MAMA FIGHT''

I agree with some statements made here. But over all. You do not have to know one 'sleight' to perform good card effects. That whole thing about 'top range effects' is just a garbage statement. The sleights don't make the magic, the performance does. Sleight of hand is one of many tools that a magician has in his arsenal. Obviously the more you know the deeper you can dip into the pool of effects out there, or create your own. That is just common sense. To say something to the effect of that you must learn sleights because the more sleights you know the better your magic is just a very simple way of thinking. All that more sleights will allow you is a wider range of effects. Please do not confuse quantity with quality. And don't confuse quality with the sleight used in the effect.

My advice choose 'tricks' that you like the effect. Find the best possible method to achieve the best possible execution of the effect and in most cases you will find that to be the easiest method as the easiest method allowes you to concentrate on presentation. In the end it is the presentation the audience remembers. If you suck dog water that is what they are going to remember. If you are brilliant they will remember that. Chances are unless you are performing stricktly for magicians your spectators are not going to walk away thinking. Wow that was a great Gary Kurtz's fingertip longitudinal palm! Even though you spent 15 years trying to perfect the move.

I will even feul the fire by saying that anybody who honestly believes that is the sleights that drive the magic is the same anybody who does not regularly perform for the lay audience. Or they do and usually don't do as wonderful a job as they think.

Great responses

Personally I just learn the particular sleights for any certain trick. I find it much easier and less stressful, and after a few months I managed to build up a collection of nifty sleights that I very rarely use (except in one or two tricks) >.>

dont use sleights at all

just do tricks like the ones ur friends dad can do and deal the entire deck onto the table 3 times over b4 finding the chosen card....im sure with this sort of trick and the right presentation you might just be able to keep them from being bored...MIGHT....not too sure but might

Never mind the astonishing effect a Palm or DL can have on someone.HA sure why would ya want to do that.Ya dont want to entertain them,thats not your goal.

''the trick has to have a plot thats interesting,and it has to have an astonishing climax'' thats quoted from one of my jean hugard books along with ''the trick itself is only 50% of the performance and the presentation is the other half''

to be honest i think a lot of you are over-rating presentation.Fair enough have a good patter without any ehs or uhs or hesitations but at the end of the day that audience want to walk away 'Bam-bazzle-Boozild'.....My point is that ya cant do the ''pick a card'' trick where ya use a key card and just simply go over the deck and find it and say 'thats ur card' with grat effect no matter what your presentation is because the trick itself is just as important.

when i first started to learn card-work about seven, maybe even eight years now...i didnt want to learn everything, just ones that suited me, and felt comfortable to my hands and fingers...

i did jump in at the deepend though, after the usual books, the first three card magic dvds i bought were:

devils picture book (well, ok, not just for the card work)
lennart green's work
sankey's revolutionary card magic

so i got both excited, and dissapointed at the same time, i couldnt always get my fingers to work correctly no matter how much i practiced...

but after a while, moves i couldnt do "properly" i just relaxed and tried what felt comfy, and ended up with my ways of doing them, very possibly not as good - but they worked for me...

i reckon thats it...

just learn what feels comfortable and natural to you...

i've stumbled upon a few variants i've become very fond of over the years, still learning, and even though i pretty much only perform mentalism, i still love good card magic, and can watch or read a lennart green or lewis jones piece of work over and over with a silly smile on my face...

even if i still can't do 'em!

and by the way, for those of you who don't already, please read online-visions' site...Peter Marucci's effects each month are always provide good food for thought with the whole sleight vs. presentation scenario...

emotional hooks are the thing..interesting patter and presentation...that's the true magic...

Flood,

not sure why you found a problem with my previous post, but I wasn't having a dig at you.

On your last post, you seem to think that there are only a few, long winded, boring card effects where sleights are not required.

For a start, this isn't the case.

Second, if someone can do 5 or 6 card routines well that don't require sleights, work on them and perform them well, where is the problem?

If you can do 50 card routines with sleights, how many would you perform with?

How many would you use in each performance?

If the answer is any more than 5 or 6 at a time, I would suggest this would be much more boring.

Note, yet again, not aimed at you personally, just using "you" as you asked the question, though hope others also answer.

Do As I Do is one of the strongest routines in card magic and it uses no sleights at all. I use it all the time.

Out of this World takes a bit of beating too. And again no skill.
However this applies to card magic more than any other facet of close up magic. Once you get into coin tricks etc; there isn't that much self working stuff available.