talkmagic.co.uk

hi all. i currently do the following tricks:

Rising card
Svengali deck tricks
stripper deck tricks
superman (coin bending)
Raven (still practising)
colour change discs
spiret key
Sealed and Healed can
and the hummer card (floating card)

The last is probably the best i do but am wanting to impress people on the street what tricks should i get? to really impress close up strangers?

please help

My honest answer would be to grab a book or dvd on basic card handling/magic. Trick decks are fun, but very limiting. For street work, you more or less want to go with things that aren't TOO out of the ordinary. A deck of cards is the perfect choice for street performances.

Check out Born to Perform - which gives a good rundown of the basics and some really strong effects for any kind of audience.

Richard Kaufman's Basic Card Technique DVD is great for learning the basic moves of card magic.

Card College Series is a great start for card work, as is the Royal Road to Card Magic.

Other things to consider:

Coin/Money magic - There are TONS of options on this front. For basic work, check out:

Books:

Bobo's Modern Coin Magic - you can get this book almost anywhere. If you want to do coin magic, buy this and you'll be busy for YEARS.

DVD:

David Roth's Expert Coin Magic Made Easy series - covers the basics and goes into more advanced coin work from one of the best in the world.

There are other things that pack small and have great effects:

Linking Key Rings
Pen through dollar effects
Bill transposition/change effects

There's so much here, I could go on and on. Hopefully this is a good start. If anything catches your eye, or you have questions about other stuff, hit me up and I'd be glad to help out.

Yeah agree with reply with Demitri. Trick decks etc. are fun and have a place in magic, they are a great way to start performing stuff and gain confidence in what you do whilst also giving you the opportunity to develop the all important "Patter"

A real downside to gaffed decks etc when performing street magic is where do you put all the blinking stuff?

All of the above recommendations are all good. When I progressed into doing more involved card stuff I got into the "Michael Ammar Easy to Master Card Miracle" DVD's. They are not cheap to buy I think RRP is about £25 a pop, but on each one you get approx 8 solid effects with performances, explanations and practice hints. When you work out that you can easily pay £15 for a packet trick, the cost suddenly seems very good.

You will also have the benefit of being able to perform a wide range of material with one examinable pack.

Get a TT and some IT (an ITR (reel) or some bands) along with some inexpensive pamphlets and experiment.

As we don't know which part of the world you're in, this may not be fully appropriate but there are plenty of really low priced books on sale in the UK which can give you a whole career's worth of ideas. Check out the budget bookshops etc.

Dat and MagicAl have GREAT ideas.

As Al said - the Ammar series is definitely worth the investment.

A TT is essential. Dat hit the nail on the head with this one. As for IT, this raises a question of my own, and I'm hoping Dat can help me.

Do you have a favorite IT manufacturer? Also, do you use a rig of some kind?

No fave manufacturer.

I've had great results from the basic ITR's that cost a few pounds from magictricks.co.uk. You just need to play around.

I've recently moved onto loops which I buy from my local magic dealer. I don't know the brand as the packets are not marked. These took some getting used to but are OK now.

I think that it's one of those things that you have to experiment with but see no reason why you have to spend loads of money. I've also seen the Spider Pen but haven't even been tempted to buy one.

I'll 3rd the motion on Michael Ammar' set. Also, remember you don't need to accumulate a lot of tricks, far more important is to master them and create amazing presentations to make them unique and your own. I like Eugene Burger's materials for discussions and examples on that.

Since you asked which tricks to get and I get fed up with people ignoring that and arguing against it. I'm not saying the advice given has no merit, just it isn't what was asked for. In that light I'll suggest:

Disappearing card and case.
Pen Through anything
Sponge balls with a teaching DVd
Melt
TT again with a teaching DVd

All the above effects presented correctly get very strong reactions and both sponge bals and a TT will begin to get you used to sleights and misdirection

Happy Toad wrote:Since you asked which tricks to get and I get fed up with people ignoring that and arguing against it. I'm not saying the advice given has no merit, just it isn't what was asked for.

You have a point that the posts above don't really answer the question, however, there is always the possibilty that whoever poses the question has never had that advice given and assumes that the best way to improve as a magician is to buy lots of tricks. Since it is the common consensus here that this is not the case it is only fair to give that advice.

We should probably answer the question as well though, in this case asking for tricks is well answered by the advice to buy instructional material since tricks will be learned.

personally id also strongly suggest the TT but instead of just obtaining a teaching DVD get yourself a copy of Darwins encyclopedia of TT magic...also i have had great experiences with the D'lite and would also strongly suggest that

D'Lite is nice but I'd recommend mastering the TT first.

The Darwin DVD is also very good, although I haven;t quite finished watching my copy yet but I'd still recommend a cheap pamphlet first, just to get you started.

thanks everyone.
i know i need to master the "standard pack" i cant call myself a magician yet as my best tricks are all gimmicks so i guess ill just keep trying. how long did you all take before you all became good enough to show people lots of tricks without them guessing anything?

spectators always guess things, just hardly ever close to the simple truth, always magnets or up the sleeves. You shouild practice in the mirror, then to your family, then to your friends then REAL spectators, although you dont want ANYONE to know how it is done. A camcorder is also a good route to go down, so you can see frpm a spectators point of view.

You have a point that the posts above don't really answer the question, however, there is always the possibilty that whoever poses the question has never had that advice given and assumes that the best way to improve as a magician is to buy lots of tricks. Since it is the common consensus here that this is not the case it is only fair to give that advice.

Though it may be true that many have a low opinion of starting with gimmicked tricks it's also a fact that most people start with these and only later do they develop this attitude. However I wouldn't mind if the question had been answered and then the thoughts on books and Dvds was added.

i cant call myself a magician yet as my best tricks are all gimmicks

Some magicians esp stage magicians only or mostly use gimmicked tricks. A magician is one that entertains with magic, the method is irrelavant and not even known by the spectator.
There is a very strong argument that gimmicked tricks are the best place to start as it allows you to concentrate on the presentation, which is the most important part of a trick. At the same time your confidence builds and then you can move on to technically more difficult tricks.