I have just concluded my series on misdirection and I was looking through my earlier postings, namely, “How To Do Magic Tricks #7 – Principles and Techniques Used in Performing Magic”. In that articles I mentioned about the four principles of how to do magic tricks, namely, “The Principle of Force”, “The Art of Misdirection”, “Verbal Manipulation” and “The Art of Sleight of Hands”. I have also submitted an article on that topic to Ezine Articles and upon comparison, I found that the article that was submitted to Ezine Articles was clearer and more concise. I am therefore re-posting my article here for reference.

How to Do Magic Tricks – Four Key Principles

Have you ever wondered how magic tricks work? As an ignorant child, I was told by my brother that magicians have very fast hands. The magician’s hands move so fast that you cannot see it. Otherwise, magic tricks are done by using camera tricks. To say that a magician uses camera tricks to perform his magic would have been one of the greatest insults directed at a magician. This is as good as saying that the magician is unskillful and uses the camera to deceive the audience. You do not need a magician to do that. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can perform magic using camera tricks.

Generally, magicians design and perform their magic tricks by operating according to a few principles. They are the principles of force, misdirection and verbal manipulation. Besides these, magicians spend a great amount of time practicing what is known as the sleight of hands. These are skillful hand movements used to conceal, deceive and confuse what the hands are actually doing. It is not true like what my brother told me that magicians have hands that move so fast to a point that the movement is invisible to the audience. Although certain sleight of hands do require the hand movements to be quick but most other sleights do not necessarily require quick hand movements. Sleights done skillfully can be performed before your very eyes and you will not notice what has been done. Some master magicians who possessed such skills are Tony Slydini and Dai Vernon.

The principle of force as the word implies, forces the audience to make a selection that is predetermined by the magician himself. This can be done in many ways. Where counting and mathematics is involved, the magician is using some mathematical formula that work out to a unique answer. Otherwise, it can be done using a gimmick such as a trick deck. Most of the time, it is pure sleight of hands where playing cards are involved. A force is used particularly in magic tricks where the magician tells you what you have selected such as a card or a word from certain pages of a book.

The principle of misdirection aims at directing the audience attention away from what the magician is actually doing. Simply said, it is misleading you to look away in another direction from where the magician is doing his stuff. The master of misdirection is the late Tony Slydini, possibly the only person who could still fool the late Dai Vernon (master of sleight of hands). One of the way where misdirection operates is to use big hand movement and looking at the movement of the hand intently. This is a body language that will naturally lead the audience to look in the same direction as you (the magician) are looking. At this moment, you (the magician) will be able to do what you need to do quickly with the other hand where the audience is not looking. I have noticed that Tony Slydini often confused his audience by making repeated hand movements. While the audience suspected him to do something with a certain hand movement, he had not done anything absolutely. However, during one of those times when he repeated the same movement, he would have done something sneaky when the audience had dropped their guard after seeing the same movement several times. Tony Slydini is known not to use any gimmicks in performing his magic tricks. He relies purely on misdirection and his sleight of hands.

Finally, magicians use verbal manipulation to talk you into doing what he wants you to do as well as convincing you of what he has done and predicted. It is like saying nothing and yet seems like having said everything at the same time. The use of verbal manipulation is also another way to operate the principle of force. Fortune tellers and spiritual mediums often use such skills to deceive people who seek guidance from them. Witches back in the dark ages who were burned may not necessarily truly know the art of black magic but merely convinces people of their power by using verbal manipulation as well as a combination of the above principles.

In my next posting, I will cover on the “Principle of Force” in how to do magic tricks.

photo credit: sambeckwith

Hello world! It has been quite a while since I last updated my blog. Life is busy especially when you are working full-time. Let me get on with my article immediately.

So far in my articles, you may have noticed that I have presented the process of learning magic and the principles and techniques used in magic tricks progressively in a systematic manner. If you follow my articles carefully, you will have a clear and good understanding of the essentials of the secrets behind any magic trick. Subsequently, it will be easy for you to begin learning magic systematically, selecting the field of magic you like to specialize in instead of groping in the dark, learning random tricks which may be either too difficult or too easy but meaningless. That will save you lots of time and money.

Moreover, different magic tricks have different effects on the audience. So it is important for you to know what you are trying to achieve with your magic tricks. Are you trying to build rapport with someone? Or is it you want to break the ice with a stranger? Perhaps you are trying to focus the attention of a group of familiar or unfamiliar people on yourself or you are simply trying to entertain your family and friends. Using the wrong magic tricks and performing the right magic tricks with the wrong presentation will not bring you the desired effects. Thus picking up magic tricks randomly here and there, especially free magic tricks on the internet will not help you achieve your objectives.

Nevertheless, I will only touch on the general principles but not into the details as I do not wish to expose the secrets behind magic openly. These articles are meant to help those who are truly interested in investing into learning the art of magic and making the journey easier for them. This is to prevent exposing the secrets behind the art of magic to nosey curiosity seekers who do not respect the art of magic.

Magic is essentially an art of deception. The line is extremely thin between a con artist and a magician. A magician uses the art to entertain whereas a con artist uses the art to rip off his targets in order to benefit himself unethically. Unfortunately, there are many half baked magicians who are also part-time conmen. In the process of learning magic, I was unfortunate enough to come across a few of these. If you want to learn magic, you must be clear about your objectives and make a clear stand on how you are going to use what you learn from the art of magic.

The essential principles of performing magic tricks are

1. the force,
2. misdirection,
3. cunning phrasing of words and
4. sleights 

Understanding how these four principles work will enable you to know how more than 70 percent of all magic tricks work.

The principle of force as the name implies, forces the audience to make a choice that is predetermined by the magician. For example a magician let the audience pick a card at random. The card that the audience eventually pick is the card that the magician ‘forces’ the audience to pick. Of course the audience will not realize that if the magician is skilful in the execution of the force. The force can be executed by using props, sleights, mathematical principles or a sequence of instructions dictated by the magician to the audience. A magic trick that uses the principle of force is usually one where the magician predicts an outcome such as predicting the card chosen by the audience. The field of magic known as Mentalism (mind reading) uses the principle of force very often.

Misdirection simply means distracting the audience. Stage magic is composed heavily of stage props and misdirection. A very simple thing to do is to direct your audience to look at somewhere else away from what you are sneakily trying to do elsewhere. Directing the audience to look elsewhere is a visual misdirection. Besides that you can misdirect the audience by keeping them busy with something to do or engaging them in a conversation. I would like to call that mental misdirection. Another form of mental misdirection is to make the audience think that you have done something, say with your hands, when you have actually done something else. The master of misdirection is late Tony Slydini. To understand and appreciate how does misdirection works in magic tricks, it will benefit you greatly to watch Tony Slydini perform his magic tricks.

The third principle listed here involves a manipulation of words. I would like to call this double-talking. Whenever a magician engages the audience in a conversation, his instructions and predictions may seem to mean something but it could also mean another thing. Besides double-talking, he would possibly instruct the audience to do something subconsciously by a play of words.

Sleights are skilful manipulation of hands. Mastering sleights is the most time consuming task magicians have to spend their time on. Although it may not necessarily be true that the magician who is the most skilful at his sleights is the best magician but a magician must be skilful at his sleights in order to be a good magician. Thus I have always advocated beginner magicians or aspiring magicians to learn magic tricks that do not involve the use of sleights in the beginning but to perform simpler form of magic tricks while giving themselves time to practice their sleights.

In my next article, I will talk more about Misdirection in magic.

photo credit: trialsanderrors

Start with some gimmicks. You can get a variety of magical gimmicks either from your local magic shops or purchase them from online magic shops. From gimmicks, you may want to progress on to self-working magic tricks using playing cards. Self-working tricks as the name implies are magic tricks where their effects happen naturally when you follow the procedures of the performance routines accordingly. Self-working magic tricks require little or no sleight of hands at all and are therefore relatively manageable.

Generally, professional magic tricks using playing cards or coins require many sleights that take a lifetime to master. Mentalism magic (mind reading) generally require relatively less sleights (or in fact none at all) as compared to card magic and coin magic. So you may want to begin with mentalism first instead of other types of magic such as card magic or coin magic.

For your personal education in magic, I would recommend that you watch the World’s Greatest Magic DVD series. Each World’s Greatest Magic DVD series features a particular magic trick performed by different magicians with their individual style of presentation. From watching these different presentations, they would enrich your experience with magic. That is the basis of how we learn and become an expert in any subject in any field – with continued exposure to the same thing, experiencing them again in a variety of ways.

photo credit: cesarastudillo

1. a natural passion for magic especially developed since childhood;
2. to become a professional magician in order to learn a living;
3. to entertain family and friends;
4. to impress ladies.

The last three reasons are extrinsically motivated while the first is one is intrinsically motivated. Humans generally want to possess power beyond their physical abilities. Being able to perform magic not only gives the audience the impression but also satisfies the performer’s imagination that he/she possesses some supernatural powers beyond his/her natural self.

So one obvious way where you can learn magic is from the internet. If you have found your way to this website, you would have already been surfing the internet in search of magic. Nevertheless, is that the only way you want to learn magic? It is not true to say that nothing comes free. However, things that come free and easy are usually not of much value, at least the people who receive them do not esteem them highly. Moreover, do you really want to perform magic tricks where the secrets are already made known to many other people who have learned about them from the internet? Instead of amazing others you will probably get the response, “I know that too! What is so amazing about that?”

The other common and easy way to learn magic tricks is to learn from a ‘magician’. This can be done by visiting your local magic shops and buy a magic trick from the shop if they provide that kind of service. Besides that, you may be fortunate or perhaps unfortunate enough to meet a ‘so-called magician’ who is willing to teach you magic tricks personally for a fee. I do believe in the benefit of having someone who is experienced in the craft of magic to guide you personally step by step. However not just anyone who claims to be a magician is truly a proficient magician. Even if they are, they may not necessarily be good teachers who know how to guide you. My biggest objection to learning from such ‘magicians’ is that the fees that they charge for teaching you are too unreasonable. In my early days of learning magic, I have personally paid as much as $100 for a magic trick which I find too unpractical to execute after learning its secret and have also paid several hundreds of dollars for just one or two hours of personal tuition for learning magic. The length of time is too short for you to master any difficult moves (called sleight of hands). You may want to learn these basic sleights and practice them on your own for a reasonable length of time and return to that person and ask for more guidance to perfect your moves. However that is not the deal you are getting. You certainly do not want to pay several hundreds of dollars and sit there for two hours practicing a particular move. In case you are thinking that you just want to learn a few simple tricks in that one or two hours instead of learning some difficult moves, then you might as well spend ten to twenty dollars buying a book and learn more than a dozen magic tricks in them. If you want something more visual, buy a DVD and watch it. And that brings me to my next point.

Having addressed the issue of free magic tricks on the internet, the most common avenues to learn magic nowadays is from books and videos in the form of DVDs. Although some magic books may be expensive, but there are also many magic books that are very cheap, costing less than $10.00. In fact you can find books that teach you as many as 50 magic tricks or more for an affordable price of less than $10.00. If you are serious about learning magic, you should consider investing some money into books. If you do not have much cash to spare, just get a book which you can afford. You will find that you need a considerable length of time just to master every single trick taught in the book.

In this modern era where videos are available in abundance, DVDs have become the media of choice particularly it stimulates both your visual and auditory senses. As a result, secrets to magic tricks are released in the form of DVDs more than they are released in the form of books. DVDs certainly have the edge over books. You can learn magic tricks from DVDs visually as well as replay them over and over again.

Nevertheless, there are several drawbacks if you compare DVDs with books. DVDs are commercial media produced for commercial purposes and so they are relatively more expensive than books in terms of value. If you buy a book on magic with the same price of a DVD, you would have access to many more magic tricks than you would from a DVD. Since DVD is the media of choice, whatever magic tricks you learn from the DVD are also known to many other people who have bought the same DVD as you have. It is easy to watch every magic tricks presented in a DVD but it is not easy to read and learn every magic tricks in a book. So the secrets to the magic tricks found on DVD are not as exclusive as those magic tricks found in books on magic. In fact, there were premium magic tricks that were usually released in the form of books first before they were released on DVDs. Magic tricks that are taught in DVDs are usually taken from books that were published long ago. Professional magician Michael Close says in his DVD that he is an old school magician in that he believes in learning magic from books on magic instead of from DVDs. He explained that magic books explain more clearly on many subtleties of a magic trick needed for learning whereas DVDs do not. Another local magician I met told me that the really good magic tricks are found in books and not in DVDs because magicians write books to leave behind a legacy. It is understandable that it requires time and effort to read and understand from books on magic but the real gems are buried deep within the book. So if you want to find real gems for magic, you will have to dig for it from the books.

 

 In this blog, I intend to share what I have learned about magic. The types of magic, where to learn magic, the process of learning magic and how to perform magic.

If you intend to learn magic, you will first have to choose what kind of magic do you want to learn and perform. Weird as it may sound, there are people who only intend to learn but not perform them. These are merely curiosity seekers who are merely interested in the know-hows, or perhaps worse, people who seek to expose tricks where professional magicians spend their time and money to learn, and perform to earn their living. On the other hand, it could be hobbyists who love magic but are too busy to put in the necessary time to master the tricks well enough in order to perform them.

Enough said! As an introduction to those who are new to magic, magics are categorised into the following:

(1) Stage magic are magics performed on a stage to a big audience easily from a number of 50 to hundreds. We are largely familiar with such magic when we first watched magic shows broadcasted on television. Such acts rely heavily on props and more often than not, require a stage assistant. Some common props are the magic wand, hats, doves and rings. Hypnotism followed by levitation and sawing of a lady assistant are common stage magic we have witnessed since childhood.

(2) Close-up magic are performed to a very small number of audience most suitably on a one-to-one basis. Unlike stage magic where the magician is kept at a distance high up on a stage, far away from the audience, there is a lot of interaction between the magician and the audience in a close-up magic. A close-up magician is usually engaged by organisers of dinner-and-dance or a cocktail party to entertain the guests. The magician would have to walk around and mingle with the guests, strike up conversation with them and entertain them with magic. This is the kind of magic that non-professional or hobbyists are interested in learning. Being a hobbyist myself, we are not seeking to perform magic for a living except to entertain ourselves and our friends. However I would not deny that at a certain point in time, a hobbyist may have refined his/her skills well enough to perform them in public.

(3) Parlour magic is quite similar to close-up magic except that it is meant for a slightly bigger crowd of 10 to 20 audience. The magic tricks employed could be those used for close-up magic as well. The difference depends very much on how the magician manage his/her audience.

(4) Street magic as it is called are magic tricks performed to strangers on the street. In performing street magic, you may approach just one stranger one-to-one or perhaps a group of people. In the process, you may even attract a big crowd. The magic tricks employed are usually that of close-up magic. In the event that you manage to attract a big crowd, make sure that you are not performing tricks where the execution of your sleight of hands are proficient enough where it cannot be seen from all angles.

(5) Illusions are magic tricks usually involving some disappearing act followed by some reappearance somewhere else. As the name implied, an illusion act is merely an … illusion. Famous acts such as “The Disappearance of the Statue of Liberty” and “Crossing of the Great Wall of China” by David Copperfield are examples of illusions. However, the employment of camera tricks in an illusion is frowned upon by professional magicians.