talkmagic.co.uk

magicdiscoman wrote:

After studying magic in a serious way for about 20 years, there's not much new in books and DVDs to learn!

i belive he meens that most "new" magic is reworkings of old stuff repackaged.

Its lucky I wasn't being ironic. Oops there I go again.

I thought the use of the term devastating might give it away. That and the smilie, at the end of the comment. Ho Hum.

Steverino wrote:Hehe, I thought it was only Mark Lewis who knew everything

Mark not only KNOWS everything, but he is omnipresent and IS everything!

All I was saying, as Mr Jamez quite kindly pointed out, is that practically all magic out today can be traced backward to a point in the past, and there's a kind of 'once you've seen one, you've seen them all'.

I wasn't meaning to sound know-it-all-ish, because I am far from it actually, I still learn stuff everyday. But all I can say is that since I've been dealing magic, I've got to have a look at lots of goodies.

And all I see is same old stuff, different packaging.

But like I say, some of it is fantastic to watch, and very entertaining. Watching even the most boring and mundane stuff done well can be a real pleasure—and there IS something to learn from that too. Not just the MAGIC is important. It's your PERFORMANCE which is important.

I'm glad you said that seige... I've been involved in this stuff since the early 60s and I still learn (ironically enough, from books) about new ways of going about things. Besides, reverse engineering don't always work.

seige wrote:Mark not only KNOWS everything, but he is omnipresent and IS everything!

I wasn't meaning to sound know-it-all-ish, because I am far from it actually, I still learn stuff everyday. But all I can say is that since I've been dealing magic, I've got to have a look at lots of goodies.

And all I see is same old stuff, different packaging.

Yeah, I understood what you meant, I was kidding with you

As Arthur Buckley wrote

Arthur Buckley wrote:To begin with, there are only twelve effects possible that I know of which are useful in accomplishing a magical result, and these areas follows: [1] production, [2] disappearance, [3] suspension, [4] levitation, [5] change without disappearance, [6] secret communication, [7] escape, [8] restoration, [9] penetration, [10] transference, [11] elongation, [12] contraction.
...
The effects that may be produced, while numerous, are limited much more so than may be at first suspected.

This makes sense I think - and as you mentioned, there's a limited number of ways to achieve a given effect.

There is a limit, and that's why people try to create their own routines. Although similar, it provides something different at least. If it's very well done, the audience will only noticed half way or at the end that they've seen it before and it'll should still provide a good punch.

That's why I like to watch others. I'm just unimaginative and can't think of my own routines. So I do what others do. Get ideas and hopefully I can make my own some day.

Like how I learnt Goldfish's routine. Nice used of the Elmsley and rcarlsen's with a nice poem to it.

I'd be lucky to catch sleights and learn a new sleight like that. Dam pros. But yeh, I did learn a couple of sleights through watching.