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I just now thought about this in another post. I'm curious how many of you are also musicians. I have found that playing instruments helps you develop pretty accurate movements with your hands. The piano, guitar, and most brass instruments (excluding the trombone) would be great to play to keep your hands strengthened! Although I am worst at guitar, I have found its the best to keep my fingers trained into moving into difficult positions. If you play piano, play songs where your treble cleff is going to stretch more than an octave. Billy Joel piano music has a lot of this and I play him alot. It will help you overcome small hands. I am female and my hands are definetely smaller than the average male but I can use the muscles in my fingers and stretch them just about anywhere they want to go!

Not sure if this will help anyone, but its a thought. I swear on my life this will help you stretch your fingers, in fact there are finger stretching techniques on the piano that are desined to help you play better on the piano but would work with magic as well

-Roxy

yeah. i been playing piano since i was 4 and my fingers are very flexiable, for instance i was practicing Oz's way of doing hot shot cut and my friend couldnt spread his fingers far enough to shove the deck between his fingers. i did it with ease.

speaking of piano...i should get back to practicing again, i took a 2month break. too much work and tests...

I play guitar and found that playing a instrument improves your hand eye coordination which is useful for doing close up magic like with cards or coins

I started playing guitar like 1 mouth ago.. but my figers were flexible even before....
I can touch with my index finger the back of my hand... if you get what i mean.. and i can do that with almsot all my fingers..
if i will have a camera i ll make a small clip of it

I play the musical saw (albeit badly) and it will definately strengthen your fingers.

Sequentially I had keyboard/piano lessons for two years, drum lessons for 1.5 years and topped it off with 1.5 years of guitar lessons which I consider my main instrumentand have been playing for over 5 years now. I haven;t been playing much recently due to occupational and educational constraints (or I've been busy with Uni work and co-running a restaurant for the last 12 months).

I love performing and writing music and I can't wait to get back into a band when I have more free time available/

Any of you here every spun pens? It's a form of contact juggling that I used to do and that literally is a gateway to other manipulations such as XCM and zippo manip. Hopefully I can put up some clips of me doing my gangster pen stuff.

...guitar for 19 years, fretless bass (not the fish) for about ten...

..sadly, due to a severe hendrix fixation as a youngster - i can play the things behind my head too...

...i draw the line at setting fire to them like he did in Monterey though...

...i still struggle with bert jansch though...those tunings...

Roxy_shalom wrote:The piano, guitar, and most brass instruments (excluding the trombone) would be great to play to keep your hands strengthened!

Trombone might help your right wrist though!

Drums for 9 years, guitar for 7 years, a bit of piano when I was younger, as any Korean mom would have ya do. It's interesting though, how our drive to entertain and perform crosses from music to magic. Who knows what's next?

*signs up for circus school*

I am not only a musician but am currently studying audio engineering. I have actually been doing music and magic for the same amount of time (12 years). I also do compositions and junk. So yeah actually, if anyone needs any music produced for a magic video... I could do it.

1011

I picked up a Bass guitar for the first time last week. I bought one today. Gotta get practasing.

I play guitar and keyboard (well a bit rusty on keyboard) but I also do loads of vocal work in different places.

And yes, I would say that being a musician gives me the edge on picking up tricks. However as a guitarist I get tough bits on the tips of my left hand fingers which is a real nuisance for DL sensitivity! (anyone else get that?)

a tip which may help people is a new gadget I just picked up, though a bit pricey. I get bad wrists due to weight training for the last 20 years, and playing guitar was aggrivating the problem. I got hold of something called a powerball http://www.powerballs.com/?aid=byron0512 which has really helped. I have also noticed that my palm strength and agility has increased very quickly using the gadget a couple of times a day.

guitar playing has helped magic, magic has helped guitar playing, and the powerball has helped all of it!

If you are reading this and are not a guitarist/keyboard player here are a couple of tips for you to increase your strength and agility.

1) Bend your right arm across your body from the elbow, palm towards you. Put your left thumb on the inside of your right forearm, and (making your left hand into an arch) place your left ingers on the outer side of your right arm. It looks a bit like you are playing a guitar and feels a bit like making a spider. Now keeping all other fingers and your left thumb imobile, raise your 1st and ring finger on your left hand away from your right forearm (keep gripping with the other fingers), Put them down and raise your middle and little finger. Alternate as quickly as you can between these two positions. Repeat on the other arm.

You can then progress to try different orders of fingers being raised one at a time. If you count the fingers one to 4 then try 1,2,3,4; then 1,3,2,4; 1,4,2,3 etc.

2) Get a ball the size of a tennis ball. You can try this on different softnesses of ball until you find something you like. Hold the ball with the tips of fingers and thumb (it mustn't touch the palm). Now without letting go of the ball and keeping the arch in your fingers squeeze the ball as hard as you can, hold for a count of 4 and release. do this a number of times. Then try the alternate fingering from 1 (again, don't drop it). You should find that the pressures change and your agility will imrove as well as palm strength. Not quite as effective as a powerball but a lot cheaper!

I play guitar and I am sure that it has help my sleights. Your hands become more accurate, stronger and dexterity comes easy.

I've played guitar for 10 years and think it has definately improved how I handle cards, dexterity, flexibility and accuracy (basically what mccabe24 said)

Theres a series of books called creative guitar by a guy called Guthrie Govan and at the start of the first one theres a whole chapter on finger independence exercises that might help you improve with handling your magic as well.