Magic Club? Ideas...

sycoboy21 · Sep 16, 2009

hey guys,

this is my first post in a long long time, and i think its a pretty good one. I am a freshmen at my high school, and i have been performing my magic tricks to different students, earning me a pretty good reputation. I found today that it is possible for a freshmen to make a club ( and it looks great to colleges). I was thinking of making a magic club, for people who are interested in the art. I am thinking of heading this club, and i was wondering if anyone has any input of what kind of things i should teach early on and teach later. Im thinking of introducing them to useful sleights first then by 2nd semester start doing tricks with a few sprinkled in between.

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements or any comments? Any would be greatly appreciated!

thanks,
max

Ineski · Sep 16, 2009

Honestly, if you have to ask what to do, you are not ready to teach. No offence, this is just how I see it.

gambit13 · Sep 16, 2009

Well thats not completely true. He just wants to teach the right things and not expose something that shouldn't be exposed. Im in the same situation man. I am just going to work on simple things first such as the double lift, classic pass, and classic force. Once i see that people are putting the time and practice into learning this things i will teach them some of my own personaly created tricks and i will hold i guess you could say a little competition and whoever wins i will reward with a special trick that i have held close.

Althor · Sep 16, 2009

Make everyone buy Card College and work through the books together in a group.. you'll all learn the right way and be able to help each other out.

Then maybe later on (or just take the more advanced people) go to a local Children's Hospital and brighten up their day. (That will look good to colleges too, if you need a selfish reason to convince some people)

gambit13 · Sep 16, 2009

Hey thats also a good idea.

Althor · Sep 16, 2009

I've had the hospital idea for a little while now.. I think it would be cool as hell to get magicians everywhere to pick one day and hit up all the Children's Hospitals we can as global as we can. It would bump some depressing stories off the news and people would really appreciate the gesture and the art

gambit13 · Sep 16, 2009

Hey well if you're down to spread the word to pick a day then let's do it. I can get many people out where i live to go and we'll film it and make some kind of video (non profit of course)

speedypetey64 · Sep 16, 2009

we have a magic club in our school.

Im in charge of most of the curriculum so what we do, is we teach basic stuff to people who are interested for the first half of the year

basic as in self working stuff, tricks that have concepts that cannot be used to heckle other tricks
we teach them this stuff in order to weed out who is really interested in advancing and who is just there to be like
"magic is fake and this is what they do"

once we get a group of kids that are interested, if they come consistantly and contribute, we teach the double lift. the reason we dont teach the double lift early is because then kids will be like
"thats a double lift" every time you pick up a card. then they heckle you even more in class

the second half of the year we roam the halls afterschool and perform for people

and btw, the classic pass is not something you want to teach these people, they wont have the dedication

luckily, our four main guys in our club are interested in different things. well no offense to one guy, but he just is not very good at all, but he's been sticking w/ us so we had to give him an officer position.

I specialize in card tricks. one guy does a lot of darren brown related mentalism stuff, the other guy does a variety of magic ranging from sponge balls to basic coin magic, but card magic is his best.
so we have variety in our club so its not hard to spark their interest

another thing, the spring is a huge attention attracter so use that to your advantage and get people to join.

just my 7 1/2 cents

gambit13 · Sep 16, 2009

I didn't mean throw all that at them right away. I was goin to do what you did. Just do some real easy stuff the first half to see who really wants to learn instead of expose. As far as the classic pass you really can't say what they will be like because i have already "inspired" 2 guys and 1 girl in my school to take up magic and they all didn't seem serious at all and now they practice non stop and are really dedicated to magic/illusion.

William Draven · Sep 16, 2009

sycoboy21 said:
hey guys,

this is my first post in a long long time, and i think its a pretty good one. I am a freshmen at my high school, and i have been performing my magic tricks to different students, earning me a pretty good reputation. I found today that it is possible for a freshmen to make a club ( and it looks great to colleges). I was thinking of making a magic club, for people who are interested in the art. I am thinking of heading this club, and i was wondering if anyone has any input of what kind of things i should teach early on and teach later. Im thinking of introducing them to useful sleights first then by 2nd semester start doing tricks with a few sprinkled in between.

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements or any comments? Any would be greatly appreciated!

thanks,
max

Don't limit yourself to JUST magic. Otherwise you've got a pretty nich market.
Extend your club to include most all other performing arts from comedians, to jugglers.

praetoritevong · Sep 17, 2009

Ineski said:
Honestly, if you have to ask what to do, you are not ready to teach. No offence, this is just how I see it.

Agreed.

If he doesn't know the right things to teach, then he doesn't know the things well enough to teach them.

cedwards90 · Sep 17, 2009

praetoritevong said:
Agreed.

If he doesn't know the right things to teach, then he doesn't know the things well enough to teach them.

Listen to these guys, you are in no position to teach people properly.

sycoboy21 · Sep 17, 2009

well i know what to teach, im just looking for suggestions, basically what you would do if you were in my shoes, so i can improve upon my ideas

Toby · Sep 17, 2009

First things first. They need to learn basics with cards.

-Holding the deck (Dealers, Biddle, Straddle grip)
-Overhand shuffle (yes, just the shuffle, not control)
-Riffle Shuffle
-Some in hand cuts and table cuts (Swing, Swivel...)

Then go into the Overhand shuffle control. Then introduce them to key card principle, and MAYBE a glide. When they learn and practice all that, and you see who will want to continue learning, than go into the breaks and DL's, and all that.