talkmagic.co.uk

Hi there!

I'm new to the whole magic thing, but i really want to learn some sleight of hand magic tricks to impress my mates in the pub

Could anyone reccommend a good book for beginners? The Magic Book by Harry Lorayne has been suggested to me, but are there any better ones?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Matt

Hi and welcome! The usual starting point is The Royal Road to Card Magic which is available from just about every on-line dealer and also from bricks and mortar magic shops, as well as book shops such as Waterstones, Borders and so on. It's an old book with very old fashioned ways of explaining and illustrating things but is worth working through. Loads of suggested routines to use the sleights and I'm reliably assured that you could probably carve out a very successful magic career using just that book alone! Try the Search function on the first TM page and you'll see a lot of postings/comments etc. on this item.

Royal Road to Card Magic (for cards ) and Bobo's Modern Coin Magic (for coins ) are both inexpensive, reliably good starting points for sleight of hand. However, like Mandrake says, the wording can often be a little hard to follow. If you don't mind spending a little bit more cash there are some other fantastic resources out there. Roberto Giobbi's Card College series of books are very good for almost anything to do with cards. So is Daryl's Encyclopedia of Card Sleights is very good and comes in both video and DVD formats. With both of these series' you can buy each volume as you progress through the series, continually adding to your knowledge. Also, I'd suggest you only buy one at a time otherwise you'll be tempted to skip through important lessons. There are some other great resources out there but if you want to get stuck into Sleight of Hand you'll do very well with any of the above. I hope that helps .

Thanks for the swift responses!

I think i'll take your advice and get the royal road book.

how long do you think it takes to learn the basic techniques and master a trick or two? This is my summer project, so i'd like to be quite good in a few months if thats realistic?

Im really new to the scene as well and am focusing more towards cards. I bought the rrtcm and I must say I find it very hard work. Some of the explenations are difficult to understand and the diagrams aren't the greatest. However this could be a couple of things, I could just be a little bit thick when understanding the terminology or my learning style probably suits either somebody showing me or seeing it demonstrated on a dvd.

Hence im now looking to purchase a good card sleight dvd!

Good luck with your practising.

Najis

If you're after a card DVD for beginner to intermediate level then I'd recommend Oz Pealrman's Born to Perform card magic.

Review in the respective section

dat8962 wrote:If you're after a card DVD for beginner to intermediate level then I'd recommend Oz Pealrman's Born to Perform card magic.

Review in the respective section

Damn...you beat me to recommending this .

Kati

As someone who is new to the game, I agree the Royal Road is a bland publication but is an excellent starting point. My next step was Daryl’s Ambitious card and Ian Kendall’s basic coin magic dvd.

I found the DVD format enables you to understand the finer detail that makes all the difference. I would certainly recommend these.

I have lots of trouble reading older language, the style is too different. It usually takes me a few (hundred...) times of reading to be able to get it all in. I would definatley recommend the DVD mentioned above and a few of the more modern card magic books fomr places like waterstones.

Daryls card series is a good starting point as he goes through stuff very thorough. (I'm sure i've just spelled that rong).
But theres also AMMARs, and if you want to get a little more advanced then get ACKERMANS series though i found his teaching style a little boring. This is not to say that ACKERMANS are bad because they are full of great stuff, they are just a bit heavy if you know what i mean.

i personally dont like drudging through books, as the effects all blend together in my mind, a few days ago i read an excelent TT trick, which involved a very funny routine with sugar packets, set during an actual dinner, so it would be easily feasible at a pub or restraunt. it was written on another fourm somewhere, ill look for a link.