Hi, I have a lot of materials, mostly based on card magic. In the past, there is one thing I have always lack of; organizing a routine. Most of the times, I usually do a random card magic to the audience and I was quite disorganized. Now, this summer, I managed to set up a lot of different routines consisting different tricks starting as a opener, middle and the end. I have school in less than six weeks and I was wondering how many tricks should you include in a routine if you were asked to do a 20 minute show. I am greatly appreciated of all your opinions.
How Many Tricks In A Routine?
- Thread starter SKSleighofHand
- Start date
Okay, here are some of the steps that I take when preparing a routine:
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*First, know the mood that your trick is going to set, in other words, your PATTER, you have to know if you are going to use a general theme for all your routines ( for example, I did my whole routines all under the patter and mood of Astral Projection) or if you wanna use different patter for each trick.
*Take a routine that you have, lets take something that everyone knows, for example the ACR, before you routine your whole thing, you have to know the end, to work your routine so that way it all flows right to end, (obviously taking your patter into consideration thats why is that the first step) you have to prepare a closer depending on the patter that you used for that routine, and now that you know how you wanna end that routine, start with a opener that gets their attention (of course it would be a good idea to gain their attention and rapport even before the trick starts,but that is for another post) and then, build it from there, also, judgin from other performances, take wich effects are stronger than others, because you dont want to put a great effect before a less dramatic and impactful closer, think of that.
*now that you have your patter down and your routine down (hopefully) you need to start to practice it in a mirror, if you can get a video camera and you can record yourself, that is even better, what you watching for in here is to see that all your actions, words and effects flow naturally, a part of the trick has to flow perfectly with the next effect and so on, if you see something akward, or something that breaks the little flow that you have, you should consider to either change it for another thing or to actually remove it.
Now that you have all that, in my personal opinion, you areready to take your routine to live
.A couple of notes before I finish my post:
*Each sleight has its place, I have seen a lot of people that love the clipshift, and for that reason, they use almost everytime, ( I know, I also commited that mistake) think about what would the spectators would like, and their neccesities, your routines should be adapted according to their tastes, not yours.
*Also, adjust your patter depending the situation, it would be a good idea to have to kinds of patter for one routine, the patter that you have will not be of the liking of everyone
.*Using the videocamera is also good because you see how much time each routine takes you, also if you can, you could make a little script for your routines and use it, there will be less "uhms" in your performance.
*Learn to adapt, sometimes we need to learn to listen to our audiences and there will be times that you are going to need to adjust your routine and sleights depending on the audience, so also take note there.
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I think that is all I can come up right now, im sure there are some other things to add, but If remember them I will edit my post
.I hope this helps you man.
I have 3 to 4 tricks, building in strength. A routine that I commonly use because it flows quite nicely is:
Biddle Trick
Ambitous Card
Trick from FireStarters with a signature, ends with 2 sigs on one card.
That's 15 minutes for me. It depends the speed, presentation, how much is audience participation and etc. etc.
My one thing that I want in a routine is that it flows nicely. I don't want to have to go "for my next trick" or anything like that. Card face up in deck, signed, jumps to the top, someone signs another card, sisnatures end up on one card as a souvenir. Works beautifully
Biddle Trick
Ambitous Card
Trick from FireStarters with a signature, ends with 2 sigs on one card.
That's 15 minutes for me. It depends the speed, presentation, how much is audience participation and etc. etc.
My one thing that I want in a routine is that it flows nicely. I don't want to have to go "for my next trick" or anything like that. Card face up in deck, signed, jumps to the top, someone signs another card, sisnatures end up on one card as a souvenir. Works beautifully
RDChopper and Guardian452, thanks for your input. Now, I think I am going to change my routines a little bit since I have about 7 tricks in a routines, but you're right. It really depends on the speed, time and the presentations as well as the audience participation.
I've had this same dillema (spellcheck?). I am trying to make a party routine or two that incorporate many different genres of close up (bills, coins, cards, mentalism, shock, fire ect. But I'm trying to keep the number down (only about 2 or 3 strong effects from each genre you want to do.) For me, I might do a little more cards than other things, a few bill tricks, a few coin tricks, maybe 1 or 2 mentalism, and something shocking like Control, or Thread or the likes to close it. Unless I'm requested to do more later then I might do a gambling routine utilizing a table, mainly cards and a few money tricks. This way it isn't cluttered card magic, I've made this mistake before and I realized that some great tricks were lost and wont be as memorable. Sorry if I rambled I was organizing my thoughts haha.
No problem, after all, the members are here to help us out. However, it is always a good idea to bring props or a certain tricks on your head if the audience wants an encore.
I just want to put this out there as an alternative, since it's probably slightly unusual in and of itself compared to many other members here.
I have two effects in particular that I perform, that each last for 30 minutes. That is to say, in the right situation, if I am asked to perform for 30 minutes, I will perform just that, and my routine becomes one single effect. A highly developed one, yes, but one effect nonetheless.
As some people above have correctly highlighted - it depends on a large number of factors. Obviously, if I were performing close up walkaround, I wouldn't perform that. But it's possible depending on certain other factors too.
Also, in contrast to abstract, since I perform as a mentalist, I will, obviously, lean towards performing an entire routine of mentalism. This is especially true of a stage/parlour show, if I am given an area to perform in. If I really want to perform something else, I will walkaround before the show and perform something with cards, etc.
Again, this will be different for walkaround. If I have to reach a lot of different people, I'll insert more things that aren't mentalism.
P.S. Abstract - "dilemma"
I have two effects in particular that I perform, that each last for 30 minutes. That is to say, in the right situation, if I am asked to perform for 30 minutes, I will perform just that, and my routine becomes one single effect. A highly developed one, yes, but one effect nonetheless.
As some people above have correctly highlighted - it depends on a large number of factors. Obviously, if I were performing close up walkaround, I wouldn't perform that. But it's possible depending on certain other factors too.
Also, in contrast to abstract, since I perform as a mentalist, I will, obviously, lean towards performing an entire routine of mentalism. This is especially true of a stage/parlour show, if I am given an area to perform in. If I really want to perform something else, I will walkaround before the show and perform something with cards, etc.
Again, this will be different for walkaround. If I have to reach a lot of different people, I'll insert more things that aren't mentalism.
P.S. Abstract - "dilemma"
I just want to say that too many different elements can take away from the whole experience. This isn't just directed to you either, anyone who adds 6 and 7 elements to one show can take this and mull over it when creating routines.
If you do a bill trick (say Greed, which ends you with a 50cent piece in your hands) you can go right into coin magic. If you then go from a quick coin set into maybe a coin matrix using cards, well hey...you now have cards out. You can end the matrix with coins vanishing and are setup for a 4-card packet style trick. End with a gambling demonstration, or whatever else you do with cards.
Mentalism is a different beast. It often doesn't work well with other forms of magic. In fact combining sleight of hand and mentalism, true mentalism, will cheapen what you do in the latter effects. It gives some reasoning why you could do such things, other than whichever approach you take towards presenting mentalism (psychic, ancient myth, hypnosis(which is arguably it's own branch of magic/mentalism), etc...)
With that said. Many magicians make their living with only one form of magic. Coins, for instance. Hour long routines can be created with little more than a few coins. If you're presentation is engaging and entertaining, people won't realize it was an hour long.
As long as what you do makes sense from one trick to another it can be created in to a routine. Not all routines are good. Watch some videos of professional magicians and mentalists and look for patterns. What makes it flow so well? How long did each effect take, how are they connected? if they don't connect well, how did he make it flow from one to the next? (it's possible...not something many people can do...I know I can't...)
Anyway, I hope my rambling helps someone.
-Rik
