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Once your approach to magic is aligned and secure, you simply have fun doing great magic - and you just keep getting better at it.
KEY ELEMENTS OF MAGIC
There are many essential elements of magic - sleights, misdirection and presentation are three that almost everyone has heard of. Each of the elements must come together in some combination to create a trick that creates the experience of magic. These elements are known to most of us in some way. But most often, we study each independantly. Most people only keep invisibility in mind. They study misdirection once they know for certain invisible alone isn't going mystify the crowd. Like most people realize, the next element of the puzzle is needed, through the classic painful trial and error method.
This kind of thinking leads to so much waisted time and frustration!
Even a simple sleight can 't be mastered - or even practiced effectively, unless you're shown, from the very beginning, just how the move will be integrated with misdirection, powerful trick structure and the other key elements of magic. This knowledge will affect how you approach any new move or trick - and yield you the strongest possible results in record time. You should understand what a sleight can accomplish for you in any situation - and just when it's time to shift your focus to the other elements you'll need to make a miracle.
Tip #1
GET THE BEST INSTRUCTIONS & FOLLOW THEM.
Seems pretty simple - but it's a bit harder than it sounds.
Did you know it typically takes years for an authentic sleight-of-hand inventor to develop a single sleight to completion?
Every conceivable finger position must be tested in every possible combination. That means that with serious creators, it can take years of experimentation and practice before the final method can be released.
Many of the techniques - like one's approach to Controls, Passes, Half Passes and Palms - are recognized worldwide and need to be mastered.
Tip #2
BREAK UP EVERY SLEIGHT INTO SMALL, EASY ACTIONS
To make even the simplest sleight totally deceptive, you'll need to break the concept down into a series of separate, simple actions. Then, during performance, separate those actions from one another using the other key laws of misdirection.
At first, breaking down each sleight this way may feel like you're just adding extra moves. But really, your simply breaking apart a large chunk of 'sleight' into much smaller, more digestable, secret actions - easy to learn, fun to perform and with far more potential to amaze audiences. This makes the difference between you merely 'getting away with something' and getting far more magic 'payout' for your efforts.
You'll need to learn how to easily, methodically, develop the separate skills it takes to create the finished illusion. There's ways to perfect and master each small move on it's own.
You need to experience what it's like to have your moves prepared in advance to have a lot of success in your performance.
Tip #3
START FROM EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE
There are simplified methods, designed to help you progress and move on with the show.
Mastering Classic Magic Tricks
Make a coin disappear.
This classic trick is the entryway to advanced magic for many magicians, and it's the foundation of other tricks that involve making objects disappear. Once you get the basic version down, try it with other small objects. Here's how to do it:
Display a coin to your audience. A silver dollar can add a touch of flash to the trick, but a quarter works just as well. Hold it in view of your audience between your thumb and forefinger.
Use your other hand to cover the coin. Bring your hand over the front of the coin and obscure it from view with your fingers, making as if to take it between your fingers and your thumb. While your second hand is covering the coin, let it slip down the fingers of your first hand until it rests on your pinky and is held in place with your middle and ring fingers.
Move the second hand away from the first. Your first hand should now look empty, though the coin is secretly obscured on the inside of your fingers. Make a show of clenching your second hand as though you're grasping the coin, then unclench it and show the empty palm to your audience.
While the audience's attention is on your second hand, let the coin slip to the palm of your first hand, and hold it there comfortably, making sure it is still obscured from view.
If you did the trick successfully, it will look as though the coin has simply disappeared.
Do the "four robbers" card trick.
This card trick is easy to do, and when it's done correctly it completely baffles the audience, as do most good card tricks.
It requires that you distract your audience slightly by telling a story.
Before you perform the trick, place the four jacks at the top of the card deck. Place three more random cards on top of the jacks.
Begin the trick by fanning out the jacks in front of your audience to make it look as though they are on the top of the deck. The three extra cards should be obscured behind them. Tell the audience that the jacks decided to rob a house together, and the deck of cards represents the house. After the audience has seen the jacks, fold them back into the deck.
Tell the audience that the first jack entered the house through a basement window. Take the top card from the deck; the audience thinks it's a jack, but it's really one of the random cards you stacked there. Don't let the audience see its face.
Place the card low in the deck and push it in.
Tell the audience that the second jack entered the house through the back door. Take the top card from the deck; the audience thinks it's a jack, but it's really the second of the random cards. Place it in the middle of the deck and push it in.
Tell the audience that the third jack entered the house by climbing a tree to the second floor window and breaking in. Take the top card from the deck, which is the last random card, and push it in high in the deck.
Tell the audience that the fourth jack stayed on the roof as a lookout. Take the top card from the deck, which is the first jack, and show it to the audience before placing it back on the top of the deck.
Tell the audience that the police came and found the four jacks huddled on the roof together. Now deal the four jacks one by one so that the audience can see them. They won't be able to understand how the jacks ended up in the same place.
Do a mind reading trick.
In this trick, you ask three people to write a name on a slip of paper. Two of the people are to write the names of living people, and the third person should write the name of someone who has died. Announce that you have the power to pull the dead person's name out of the hat. If this content is too morbid for your audience, have people write the names of two cats and a dog, or the names of two movie stars and a politician. Here's how to do it:
Tear a sheet of note paper into three pieces. The top and bottom pieces will have a smooth edge and a rough edge, and the middle piece will have two rough edges.
Give the top and bottom pieces to two audience members and ask them to write the name of a person who is alive. Give the middle piece, the one with two rough edges, to a third person in the audience, and ask him or her to write the name of someone who has died.
Ask the participants to place the names in a hat, then leave the room.
Come back into the room once the names are in the hat. Lift it high above your head and make a show of not seeing the paper or the names. To build extra suspense, you could have someone blindfold you before you touch the hat.
Place your hand in the hat and feel for the paper with two rough edges. Pull it slowly from the hat. Place it on your forehead between your eyes, to give the appearance that your mind is absorbing its contents or somehow connecting with the dead person whose name is written on the paper.
Finally, pull off the blindfold and read the name. People will gasp to hear the dead person's name, and wonder how you performed this easy trick.
Do a basic string joining trick.
You'll need a piece of brown twine and some beeswax, sometimes sold as magician's wax, to complete this trick. Get the string ready by working a liberal amount of wax into either end of the string. Ask an audience member to come forward as a volunteer, then perform the trick as follows:
Present the audience member with a scissors and ask him or her to cut the string in half. Hold both ends of the string so that the participant doesn't see that it's waxed.
Hold your hands far apart with one piece of string dangling from each hand so that the audience can see it has indeed been cut in half.
Bring your hands together so that the waxed ends meet. Using your fingers to hide what you're doing, rub and squeeze the ends together with your thumbs. The waxed ends will stick together.
Announce to the audience that the string has been restored, then hold it by the ends and let the newly joined center drop into view.
Method 2 of 3: Honing Your Craft
Practice every day. Most magic tricks are very simply. It isn't complicated trickery that excites audiences, but the illusion that the magician has somehow defied physics, even though the audience knows it's impossible. All it takes to shatter the magic is a dropped coin or a misplaced card. That's why magicians really do have to practice until their tricks are perfect.
Practice in front of a mirror. Pay attention to your hands, and make sure you're effectively hiding the coin when it needs to be hidden, obscuring the string when you're sealing the wax, and so on. Practice until you're practically fooling yourself with your own tricks.
Practice in different settings. You should get comfortable enough with the tricks that you're able to do them in different rooms, outdoors, and in a variety of situations.
Add more tricks to your repertoire. Once you've mastered the classics, branch out and incorporate a few more. Challenge yourself to perform tricks that are more complicated or that require greater skill. The more tricks you have up your sleeve, the better, since the magic wears off quickly when you start repeating tricks for the same audience.
Buy books on magic tricks and view online tutorials to learn more tricks.
Learn variations on the classics. For example, if you enjoy making a coin disappear, try a variation that involves making the coin disappear and replacing it with a feather. (To do this, start the trick with the feather already concealed in the palm of your hand.)
Examine the work of great magicians. If you start getting serious about doing magic, study the tricks that great magicians perform. Many magicians use pyrotechnics, special equipment, and skilled assistants to help them perform amazing tricks. However, all tricks have the same fundamental purpose: to create pleasure by deceiving the eye.
Attend as many magic shows as you can. Watch carefully to see if you can figure out how the magicians perform their tricks. What can you learn from them?
Try to strike up a relationship with a professional magician. Many magicians won't reveal their tricks, but you may be able to get an apprenticeship if you show you're serious.
Method 3 of 3: Performing Like a Professional
Choose a persona. Magicians, like other performers, tend to stick to a consistent persona that entertains their audiences. The magic tricks are enhanced by the magician's personality and delivery. Figure out what type of performer you are, and start using your strongest personality traits to your advantage.
If you're naturally funny, add some clownish comic relief to your magic show. You might want to concentrate on tricks that involve physical comedy, like disappearing acts, pulling great lengths of scarves out of your sleeve, pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and so on.
If you're smart and slick, consider taking on a grifter's persona. Learn how to pickpocket a wallet and present it to the shocked audience member. Perform casino-style card tricks with a knowing smirk.
Some magicians have an air of mystery that completely enraptures the audience. If this is you, perform your tricks quietly and adeptly. Incorporate tricks that make you appear to have psychic abilities.
Perfect your "patter." When magicians perform, they tie their tricks together with what they call "patter," the stories and chatter that distract the audience from their hands and make the transition from trick to trick more entertaining. Without patter, a magic show would be a quiet, rather boring series of tricks without context.
Consider writing out a script and memorizing it. Rather than just winging it during your show, you might want to practice with scripted patter first. Just make sure it sounds natural by the time you perform.
Speak clearly and make eye contact. Follow the same rules that apply to other types of performance and public speaking. Exuding confidence and charisma will make your show that much more entertaining.
Craft your program carefully. Start with a trick that instantly captures your audience's attention and showcases your skill. Don't do similar tricks within the same show; the audience will get bored. End with your best, most flashy and exciting trick, then bow and leave the stage.
Perform in public. You can practice all you want in front of the mirror at home, but to craft a great show, you've got to test it out in public. During your first few gigs, pay attention to the audience's reaction to your tricks. Which ones elicit oohs and aahs? Which ones seem to fall flat? Tweak your program as needed and keep trying until you're happy with your program and performance.
More Tricks
1) Linking Rings, Richard Ross (1983)
Kicking us off at number ten, girly-haired Dutch magician Richard Ross wowed audiences in the ‘80s with his take on an ancient Chinese trick: linking rings. In this stunt, a series of apparently solid metal rings appear to ‘melt’ together, forming a chain. The beauty of Ross’ delivery is how he links the rings very slowly, allowing the audience ample time to scrutinise the process, making for a baffling, seemingly supernatural display.
How is it done?
As I said, this trick is almost as old as magical performance itself and the basic elements haven’t changed much over the centuries. Essentially, some of the rings (called ‘locking rings’) have breaks that can be popped open by applying pressure – these rings are mixed up by sleight of hand and false counting to make them harder to distinguish from the solid rings.
Beyond that, it’s a simple matter of pulling the linking off with enough skill and flair that the audience doesn’t see the deception; it also helps if you have a bedazzling blonde mane to distract the punters.
2) Chop Cup, Paul Daniels (1985)
It allegedly took comedy-magician Paul Daniels nearly 300 performances to perfect this spin on another classic trick: the ball in the cup. Yorkshire-born Daniels delighted television audiences with his rapid-fire magical malarkey and ‘Chop Cup’ became his signature trick. Daniels would start by placing a ball on top of a metal cup, which with some swift manipulation would appear to vanish, reappear and teleport to Daniels’ pocket in a manner of seconds.
Aye, now, that’s proper right clever that is.
How is it done?
There are a few different ways of carrying off this trick, it’s most likely that Daniels utilized multiple balls, with the ‘first’ (i.e. the one that begins on top of the cup) containing a magnet. This would allow him to make the ball appear to ‘vanish,’ when in fact it was simply stuck to the inside of the cup, ‘re-appearing’ when Daniels’ slammed the cup back on the table. The ball (or balls) in his pocket likely vanished into a sleeve following some deft sleight of hand, while Daniels’ machine-gun gags served to distract the audience from noticing the seams.
3) Doves, Lance Burton (1982)
Magicians have been using doves in conjuring illusions for centuries, but it’s Lance Burton’s version that makes the list. This magical maestro now has a nightly gig in Las Vegas, where he and his feathered friends continue to wow audiences with this trick.
Cutting a suave figure in top hat and tails, Burton has been seen to produce live doves from his sleeves, the tip of his cane and from under his hat…
How is it done?
Being an acclaimed Vegas magician, Burton can afford a little technical support to pull this one off. The first two doves are produced from the magician’s sleeves, which contain spring-loaders that ‘launch’ the birds into the air. Birds discharged, the magician discretely discards the launchers, quickly lifting the third dove from inside his suit. He then uses a handful of confetti as misdirection before recovering the bird and stuffing it back into his tailcoat.
4) Levitation, David Blaine (1997)
Remember the days when David Blaine was a sharp, urbane shot in the arm for the stuffy world of magic? Y’know, before he lost the plot and started hanging out in Perspex boxes suspended over the Thames? In Blaine’s early days he was content to stun passers-by on the streets of Brooklyn with such impossible feats as levitating a couple of inches off the asphalt. That’s street magic, bro.
How is it done?
There are many methods for pulling off the levitation stunt, but the one Blaine employs here is named ‘Balducci levitation’ for its inventor, Ed Balducci. The benefit of this method is that it requires no preparation, no equipment and can be conducted anywhere at any time.
When performing this trick, the magician stands a short distance away from onlookers and positions himself so that the audience can only see the back on one foot, focusing their attention on the foot closest to them. Blaine then stands on the front of the part-concealed foot, blocking the audiences’ view with the other. Thus, the audience only actually sees all of one foot and the heel of the other, which both appear to lift, unsupported, off the ground.
Yep, that’s right. It’s basically just an elaborate way of standing on tippy-toe. Street magic, bro.
5) Straightjacket escapes, Harry Houdini (1891-1926)
The master himself. The most famous magician and escapologist in history, Houdini’s unique brand of outlandish theatrics helped shaped modern magic as we know it. All of Houdini’s stunts were works of magical majesty, but he remains best known for his straightjacket escapes. Watch below and be amazed as Houdini wriggles free of a straightjacket while hanging upside down.
How is it done?
As well as being a world-famous escape and endurance artist, Houdini was also a vocal critic of charlatanism and fraud, dedicating much of his life to exposing individuals who claimed to possess supernatural abilities. Putting his money where his mouth was, Houdini chose to explain the secrets behind all of his stunts.
Let’s leave it to the man himself to take us through this one:
“The first step necessary to free yourself is to place the elbow, which has the continuous hand under the opposite elbow, on some solid foundation and by sheer strength exert sufficient force at this elbow so as to force it gradually up towards the head, and by further persistent straining you can eventually force the head under the lower arm, which results in bringing both of the encased arms in front of the body. “Once having freed your arms to such an extent as to get them in front of your body, you can now undo the buckles of the straps of the cuffs with your teeth, after which you open the buckles at the back with your hands, which are still encased in the canvas sleeves, and then you remove the straitjacket from your body.”
Tips
If you mess up the beginning of a trick, act like it was on purpose. Continue on with the trick. For example, if a coin under a cup was supposed to disappear but when you lift the cup it is still there, you might say "Oh dear. I think I need someone to say the magic words" or something similar. If you mess up the ending, then just move on to another trick. Don't linger on the fact that you made an error.
There are many types of magic. You may want to research them and choose one to "specialize" in. Common types are stage illusions, close up/micro magic, children's magic, and street magic.
Never tell anyone how to do a trick except for any assistants if your trick requires them being completely clued in. Have the assistants swear not to tell the tricks or just tell them what they are supposed to do.
Audience participation gives the audience confidence in your tricks. If your tricks can't involve the audience, then they will suspect something is up.