talkmagic.co.uk

Publisher's Blurb

A spectator is invited to listen to as many songs as they'd like from your favorite playlist (a folder that contains a compilation of 60-70 songs) on your iPod or MP3 player. They are all different. The spectator is asked to scroll through and randomly stop at any song in the playlist, while the iPod is out of sight -- behind their back or under the table. They are now encouraged to remove the headphones and sing the tune in their mind. You can be in another room as this happens. Now for the mind-blowing climax: You bring your ear close to theirs. You explain that you are listening for the beat and melody of the tune that is still reverberating off their eardrums, and vibrating in their head. To the absolute disbelief of the spectator, bit by bit you start to hum the tune they are thinking of, and then suddenly you name the selected song!

Easy to do.
Always ready to go.
Instantly repeatable.
Nothing is added or taken away during the performance -- it's completely self-contained within the iPod itself!
Your iPod is not gimmicked, and can function as a regular playing unit at all times.
Full instructional DVD guides you through every step of the preparation, including full presentation and bonus ideas.
Use your own music & playlists.
Works with iPods and most other MP3 players that have display screens.


Cost

I bought mine from Magicshop (Merchant of Magic) for £12.99.


Difficulty

1 to 1.5. Only one secret move, which shouldn't be a problem.


Review

The trick really is exactly as described. The spectator spins through your iPod (or other music player) at random, listens to a song, and you can then name what they heard. It's not absolutely necessary for the spectator to recognise the song, since you can hum or sing it for them to confirm that's what they heard. The trick can be repeated with the same or different spectators.

This is essentially a one-to-one trick. Jason Palter does offer some suggestions for adapting it to stage use, but it's not likely to go over very well with a large audience. You can plug speakers in at the beginning to demonstrate the breadth of your music library, but when it comes to the crunch, it's got to be one person with earphones (or at most two sharing the earphones) because otherwise you could hear what was being played. This innate limitation is the only real drawback, making iKnow more suitable as a party or pub trick among friends.

There is quite a lot of preparatory work, and it will probably take at least 30 minutes to an hour to get the thing set up. The good news is that this is a one-time effort, and once you've done it you can work the trick any time, anywhere. The DVD is extremely clear and detailed about how to do the preparation, with step-by-step instructions. If you have enough technical savvy to operate an iPod in the first place, and to read this on the internet, then you shouldn't have any problems with the setup.

For £12.99 the disk doesn't come with music or a player, of course, so you'll have to provide your own. It doesn't have to be an iPod -- you can use any MP3 player that has the ability to group songs into playlists and display the whole list of names on a screen so they can be scrolled through. Let's face it, only real cheapos (like me) don't have a player that's up to this basic minimum standard... so it looks like I'm now in the market for an upgrade.

Even after being set up, the player is not harmed in any way, and remains completely useable as a personal source of musical entertainment. In other words, you don't have to run out and buy a new player to keep aside just for this trick.

The DVD has decent audio and video (except for one small section where the sound goes dim). While it's far from a Hollywood director's dream, it's nice and clear and gets everything across well, and that's what counts.


Overall

I'm not usually very keen on single-effect DVDs, but I'm glad I plumped for this one! Well worth the price, especially if you're looking for a way to baffle friends from time to time.

Ive got this effect and i agree with the review. its a very nice trick relatively easy to do

You know what I dislike? Wanting to buy a lot of things. So please tell me something like "Does not work with new iPod Classics."

Because then it would be a waste of money for me, and I wouldn't want it.

It will work with any ipod that has a screen, playlist and shuffle functions. In fact you can do the trick on any mp3 players that has the same function. The ipod that you CAN'T use is e.g. ipod shuffle.

But i don't like this trick as it is too easy for spec to figure out. I bassically only rate this about 4.5 out of 10. To me it is not value for money. There are plenty of materials out there that can teach you more.

I intended to add a bit about repetitions, but got interrupted yesterday.

The trick is repeatable, and in theory is repeatable indefinitely. However, each repetition needs another full setup. In other words, if you want to be able to do it three times on the trot, you'll have to set aside about two hours beforehand to do three complete setups. You'll certainly want to make a fresh setup before coming back to do the trick in front of the same group of people.

The preparation work is not difficult, but it is time-consuming.

feifei wrote:It will work with any ipod that has a screen, playlist and shuffle functions. In fact you can do the trick on any mp3 players that has the same function. The ipod that you can use is ipod shuffle.

This should read: The only iPod you CANNOT use is the iPod Shuffle. Just to make that clear.

feifei wrote:But i don't like this trick as it is too easy for spec to figure out. I bassically only rate this about 4.5 out of 10. To me it is not value for money. There are plenty of materials out there that can teach you more.

How guessable the trick is depends a lot on the techno-knowledge of the spectators. I'd certainly advise not doing it in front of computer geeks. Palter's suggested patter actually makes the trick more guessable by raising doubts in exactly the wrong place, in the same way as saying "here I have a perfectly ordinary hanky".