talkmagic.co.uk

Hey folks,

I wanted to tell you all about some nights I've had recently, but haven't found the time, not a suitable excuese really tho I probaly needn't have an excuse. As the time passed (and I still couldn't find excuse or time), I thought about how such a thing might be actually useful in some sense on this forum. So, here it is.

I'm a newcomer to this whole magic thing, at least in the sense that I got a Paul Daniels magic set for Christmas when I was 5 or something, and never continued. But here I am now having been 'practicing the art' for about 2 months, or pretty much since I joined this forum. I've been buying gimmicks and sh...stuff like nobody's business and anyway that's another thread, maybe. Point is I'm new, and I want to get out there and kick some ass in the magical sense.

To these ends I've read many an inspirational thread on the forum about getting out there and just doing it but hey it's easier said than done yes?

Hence the thread. Ah ha!

Here's a tale from down my local pub...it's happened a few times in similar fashion but I'll stick to one to kick off. And to finish my intro I'll say that the first few times I showed my new tricks and talents to even my girlfriend and family I was shaking like a leaf, nervous as hell about my banter/patter...etc.

The thread:

So, I have taken all opportunities to 'tool up' in the last months and go walk about either round to my friends houses, or down the pub, but everywhere I go I always have one trick at least set up and ready to go in one of my pockets. My nerves didn't leave me when I tried this method, I just got more nervous about waiting for the right moment. Sometimes it never happens and you just gotta leave it, but when it does it's great, and this is a story about that.

I tooled up and went down to the local drinking establishment in a very very very very small village where everyone knows me and I know everyone, but lo there were 2 random folk who it turns out I ought to know but didn't. The guy asks "So, what do you do...?"

I see my moment! I pull a deck of card from my pocket...

He says "Ohh, you're a magician!?" with no prompting...I jump on the chance and say "Well, yes I am!" tho I did admit I was new to the scene and just practicing and would they mind if I did a few tricks. Of course they were delighted and more than keen.

At this point I feel I should mention that being new to the scene I assumed that if you weren't a member of the magic circle, had the most expensive gimmicks, or were no good at sleight of hand you were no good and needed to brush up on at least two of the above. However on the night in question I had been on here enough to be getting the idea that this wasn't actually true.

So to continue, I proceeded to kick off with a lovely one that I just learned where I offer them both a random card each, get them to say stop at any time when I deal out the cards face down, and lo they match their respective opposite cards, thus proving them the perfect match in life (you had to be there and hear the banter!) but you get the idea. It was that easy, they were so impressed they were well up for more and totally in the mood. So I proceeded with a few other very basic self working tricks I could do with a standard deck and I kid you not, by the end of it I got a free drink and the both of them were saying ...(get ready)... "Hey you're just like that dynamo guy off the TV". I kid you not.

The tricks: (as well as I remember the names)

Match.com - also known as a million other things and a very easy self worker afore mentioned.

Your card is the only one reversed in the pack (without an ID)

'What card is in the box?' (Mr. Cat) taken from Mark Watson book, place two cards back to back in a card box, take one out in clear view, slip it in your pocket, ask someone what card...and they are right, do it a second time and it turns out they're wrong...They also asked to see my pocket which worked out well too

---

There have been a few other nights at friends houses where I've gone tooled up, chosen my moment and sprung out some tricks. Believe me I've some mates you would classify as 'tough crowd!" i.e. let me see that, oh they're your cards, can you do that again with my deck of cards and so on. However, everything has gone more amazingly than I could have imagined.

I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying it's not as tough as you think to be not necessarily a 'professional', but still someone that can wow even your family with more ease than you could imagine.

I could prattle on for hours about why and how and my philosophy which would bore you all pant-less, but I won't

I'll just add;

The way I felt before: I'm the dude who knows three tricks instead of one...
Keen-ness to go out and rock it up in a tooled up fashion at any time: 3 to 4 out of 10 - nervous.

The way I feel now: This is brilliant. I only know some pretty basic effects and I've blown people away!
Keen-ness to go out and rock it up in a tooled up fashion at any time: 7.5 out of 10 - keen as! (need more practice to be truly perfect, if that's ever possible, but hey I'm having fun)
The way I'm thinking: Wow, when I start to get some real practice in, this is going to be amazing!

I wanted to write and ask for anyone new to share similar stories. Have you just been at it a few months or less or more, have you been out, nervous as hell and pulled it out the bag in true magic glory? Or even just had a good night if you wanna play it down a bit? Tell us where you went, what tricks you used and how folk reacted. I'd love to hear from you. Help everyone else be cooler.

I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it's hard, but I will say; ... Talk, make it your own, and you shall prevail
Maybe I just got lucky, lots of times, but I think not. I think you can (and likely do) have stories like these the moment you step out the door and do your most basic tricks the moment you feel you've nailed them and have made them your own. It doesn't matter where you learned them, how basic you may think they are, just go do it and then tell me/us how it went.

Appologies for any other-lengthy repetitions and rabbitations. It's habbit forming. And they breed like hell. This may have been done before too but hey, here's a new version you've not seen before

Cheers

A most excellent post which is now....ta-da... a Sticky!!

Well that post explained everything..

Thanks folks, well I hope it's phrased ok, I've read a few similar is stories on here but thought it would be nice to hear about what tricks people used to get their confidence up and get those reactions we all love too so I hope some people will share.

Cheers

great stuff keep us informed, I always go tooled up with a stripper + marked decks and a haunted key on my keying from my days of old with a Paul danials set, now accompanied with an okito box and clone coin combo.
even if currently half my audience is unavailable too me at present there security blankets and there is nothing wrong with self workers many a professional has made a career out of them.

Great post MrCat I will be following your progress with great interest

Carl

Thanks carl! I feel like I hijacked your thread there but there's always room for more stories of lovely magicness, and I was kind of hoping this thread would be more for the all of us so maybe you want to tell us of your tales here ... it being sticky and all.

That was kind of my hope but it appears I'm in the limelight now so you could always feel free to step in and take some pressure off

I'm off out tonight to (in lew of practicing as I haven't been) just try out 'two card monte', and the classic with my new ID. I tried two card monte thismorning on a mate who called by unsociably early and I hadn't had enout coffee, blew it totally in a way I shan't even say as it's too embaressing. I was going to totally tool up and go out on a mission it being saturday night but I now have that 'haven't practiced for ages and what can I remember (properly as opposed to think I do)?' feeling going on. Don't wanna mess it up so I'll try the afore mentioned on my mate and see how they go down before doing a runner and hopefully getting a proper practice run through of All my tricks.

Magicdiscoman, I just got a stripper deck, I'm still practicing with it but I can't help but think whenever one does a hindu shuffe it always looks totally suss' as nobody shuffles that way. That said I'm still in that gap between layman and magician haha, I never think it sus when watching a magician, but allways feel suss doing it! I think I may need to play with it a lot more but I saw a great vid the other day I'll have to show you.

firstly don't do a Hindu shuffle do a regular like a spec will do shuffle along the long edge, second have a force card set in the deck, shuffle and then give them the option to cut to there card or cut and have them look at the face down card.
hope that makes sense, it seems very fair and by changing your hand position on there choice from an overhand shuffle it look impossible that you could be controlling a card and lets you have a card in a card holder held by another spec in plain view all the time, I get so much mileage from this alone, plus the fact you can set the card right in front of them by showing them that all the cards are regular, great for muscle reading tricks.

Another great night.

I went to someones birthday party the night before last. It had been vaguely mentioned I would/could do 'some magic' so I felt a bit un der pressure as well as keen. I had a bit much dutch courage before launching in but it seemed to go ok once I got over my nerves. It was full of people I half knew, not total strangers, but not great mates either which somehow made me feel extra nervous! I still get quite anxious about messing up, but I guess that's normal until you've done stuff that many times.

I kicked off with my new '2 card monte' which went a treat follow the 2 aces, which one is on top...oh you've 2 jokers
I also did the easy match up trick as mentioned before, Matthew Dowden's match.com, and also his 'listen ear' which I really like from the strike 6 dvd.

I actually managed to spin these out over most of the couple of hours I was messing about.

My favourite and the one that always gets people tho, and the one I like to finish the night with as you can spin it out for ages and people love the banter...'up the ante' - I think I reviewed it on here and can't recomend it highly enough.

Everyone said my standard had gone up a large notch since they last saw me with my CU (my first ever gimmic)

So all in all it was good. I think it was my patter that saved my bacon from having just a few tricks and being nervous. Once again I say it makes half the trick at least

I got asked at the end of the night tho by someone who was looking very sceptical before I did up the ante, 'would you teach my son some tricks'...this was a tough one tho and I had to tell her that he should do some research and see what he could find if he was that keen. I felt a bit mean but wondered what you all do in the circumstances. Her son wasn't there at the time so it wasn't like I could have just showed him simething simple and I think she was expecting me to show how up the ante was done. I do have a few simpler numbers that I do, picked up from youtube, which I figure are far game to teach anyone who's real keen and won't let you alone

What do you folks do? I was saying to my girlfriend later it's a bit tough as you don't realy even want to say you can go and buy stuff like that so I don't really know what to say apart from if you're that keen just go on thenet or something...

Sounds like things are going really well, well done to you!

I've been asked to 'show someone something' lots of times, it's quite a common ask. I usually just teach a couple of self working card effects or perhaps a coin vanish.

Thanks Lady of Mystery,

Yea I did teach a little handy self worker to one of my mates when he asked and I have a few similar as you say that I could give away.

I forgot to mention as my internet's been so slow but now fixed, I got my second ever gig from the birthday party too, but that was before I'd even done anything My friend Ali who's missis was at the Halloween party at the pub (and is now my number one fan) had been talking apparently so he's asked me to do his daughters wedding next summer! How cool. I laughed and said he didn't even know how good I was yet, but he said he'd heard rumors and was impressed with what I did

Worthy of note tho, apart from the fact I started late and didn't have so much time, I got asked if it was only cards or did I do stuff with other things too. I found tho that despite I didn't use two of my packs as there wasn't enough time really, I had four packs of cards on me, my magic diary for one of the tricks and I was having a bit of trouble stashing everything about my person! I did take a bag with some bits in it but I always seem to load up with cards primarily as they're most versatile and multi-trick so far. As far as not having a table surface or something goes. I did have Link-o polo linking and groovy logo modifying ready but never thought about it until I got home and emptied my pockets, and it didn't really seem appropriate at the time. I had 'metal sheep' lined up too but by then it was time to go home...

Somebody famous said something similar to: "All great tricks involve one or more of the following: everyday objects, money, fire, and/or water..." ...and you can't go wrong

Hi MrCat

glad to see all is going so well for you, I plan to start my thread today, been a bot hectic for the last week or so, as I said before I am very new to all this so any advice, mainly technique wise at the moment will be very much appreciated

Carl

Thanks Carl, I'm totally fresh too but seem to have got somebody elses enthusiasm as well as mine, somebody's missing out somewhere

When you say "technique", you mean like card handling and sleights and stuff?

Hi MrCat yes i am currently working through the royal road book and keen to see how people learn and any hints at all really, and as for getting someone elses enthusiasm, just ride the wave, who ever it is they probably havent even realised, keep up the good work

Carl

Hey Carl, that's a really cool point. I'd like to use an analogy that may or may not work, for my style of learning my magic thus far.

Some may call me lazy but when I started to learn some new coding for websites beyond html I couldn't bare to read the manual, that's just not my style and full of stuff I didn't really need to know, so I just did various tuorials and consulted the reference books when I needed something practical and just learned on a need to know basis.

So it's kind of different in magic but that's been my approach so far. At first I went mad with gimmicks and the delights of new found magic shops online, and their emails every day with the latest 'must have' effect. Most however turned out pretty impractical or somehow inappropriate for one who just goes round mates houses and parties and does a few tricks. So my best ever purchases have been instant download pdf's and some dvd's I could list. I confess that mainly all my tricks are 'self workers' but as far as I can tell so far, now's wrong with that As I've achieved the reactions and impressed a lot of folk. Tho half to do with the banter and style of presentation too.

I have got a little routine tho that always impresses people more than anything else and it's the four coins through table one at a time which I do with no gimmicks, just four different very cunning sleights that I spent the afternoon practicing, but it only took about 3 or 4 hours at a table on my own to become pretty confident, and a few go's in front of people to nail it.

So I guess I'm saying I just learn stuff so far on a 'need to know' basis for a certain trick I see and want to do. I'm slowly learning some card handling and stuff in between just specific tricks but mainly I've just been figuring out what sort of tricks go together, and interestingly the reactions and favorites that other people have, they often surprise me as to which of a few tricks my spectators like best. So I then think about what that trick has that impresses people and that gives me a kind of insight into what sort of effects people want to see the most whether they know it yet or not If you catch my drift.

So I reckon it's a matter of personal taste and everyone learns differently, but I've always found this sort of method best for me, but then I was always useless at 'studying'