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I am a beginner of magic (only few months say) and i have learnt some basic card sleights, coin sleights and few other impromtu magic..... My real issue and I haven't been able to overcome it is...

How do I know when an effect/trick I am learning is good enough to be presentable to perform to human beings? I feel an ambiguity in how much i need to know each trick and how well I need to perform them considering I want to perform at a professional and clean standard

Thanks!

This is a problem for the beginner. As you move further down the line you will start to see effects you like on video and can judge for yourself if you are blown away or not.

Perfect the moves and then perform to colleagues, family, friends or people down the pub. You will soon get the answers you require.

I think that routining is just as important to how big a part a certain sleight or move makes within a whole presentation. Try to create a little story for the magic as apposed to just performing single tricks. (by story I mean journey)

Alec

Good advice from Alec about routining your effects, as well as giving them a slightly more entertaining edge, it'll also help you to remember the effects.

The best thing to do is to just try them out, pick friends and family and just see how well they go down. If you go wrong then it's not the end of the world and you know what to work on for next time.

Try to link two or three effects together to form one routine. The mistake often made is thinking that you need far more material than you actually do! Things like a good ring flight (i used the Dave Bonsall one), a quick chop cup routine (i used the Sanderson routine) and a good card effect like Kick Back Kings will always do well. Remember that you can, if you wish, go out and just perform with cards. In that case routines from people such as Paul Gordon and Lee Smith are always professional pieces of magic.

I can only speak for myself (but my suspicion is that I'm not alone) but when I started I tried every single trick and style of magic I came across and subsequently learnt and immediately forget hundreds of things which I practiced maybe once or twice. After a few months I realised that I didn't actually know any tricks at all or at least not to any standard were I could competently perform them. Instead or actually working on things I just went from one thing to the next, often wasting money on buying the new shiny toy that was doing the rounds and I wasted a massive amount of time.

It's taken me years to stop doing this (I think I've actually managed to cure my C.U.P.S! ) and I'm now at a point where I'm really focussing on just one thing at a time. I've spent about the last nine months developing one single effect and it's really one of the most basic mentalism things you can do but I'm getting really happy with it.

One of the best bits of advice I've received from this board and from others in the large community is to take things slowly and really work on them and don't try to be able to do one thousand effects. If you want to go out and perform to your best, work on maybe three at most but make them the best three that you can do.

A J Irving wrote:
It's taken me years to stop doing this (I think I've actually managed to cure my C.U.P.S! ) .

Ahem, nobody cures CUPS it's just in remission!!

Much love

Aza

Excellent advice guys cheers!