Ive been doing magic and cardistry for about 1 year now. I practise about 4 hours a day but i always have cards in my hands. Recently ive been wandering what the correct way to practise things are. For example, should i spend a whole day on one thing or should i practise several moves on a day.
Practising efficiently?
- Thread starter l.davies26
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I don't think there's a right or wrong way to practice. What I typically do is I watch the tutorial a couple times, try to follow along, then practice that flourish or sleight until either I can do it somewhat well or I get really ticked off at it. Everybody's different though.
There is no good answer im afraid. You will eventually find something that suits you. I practice different stuff, but some days I focus on just one. And Steerpike, some days you actually need to spend practicing.
I believe he means that one shouldn't have enough free time to spend on one single thing all day. I know I never have that much time. I'm lucky if I can devote a couple hours to anything other than my day job, developing acts, taking care of the household stuff, etc.
There are correct ways to practice, but it's going to come down to how one learns. It's dangerous to practice all day as that can easily be detrimental to the learning process. We can only process so much information in a given period of time, so continuing to practice the same thing beyond that period just muddies the waters. You lose any progress you make because your brain simply hasn't had the time to properly process it and form the neural pathways and mental connections.
The way I practice is basically this -
First, I start with general card handling. Simply messing with the deck. Cuts, fans, spreads, lifts, multiple lifts, deals, etc. Just 'doing stuff' with the deck. I do this for a few minutes and that basically serves to get my hands warmed up and ready to work. Then I focus on one sleight for a few minutes. If I'm still learning that sleight, I continue until I've made some form of noticeable progress which I can replicate, or until I plateau for too long. Then I switch to a different sleight. I usually do 5-10 sleights this way, and that takes maybe half an hour. Then I start going through full tricks and routines. I'll usually do each one 5-10 times, making sure I'm fine-tuning with each iteration. Then I move to the next one.
In this way I make noticeable progress on at least 5-10 sleights and another 5-10 tricks, or I fine tune them, and my brain is properly able to catalog the progress.
I do this with all props and routines I work with. Generally I don't need to practice more than 1 or 2 hours a day (this is not referring to rehearsal, by the way, that's different) to learn something thoroughly within a short amount of time.
There are correct ways to practice, but it's going to come down to how one learns. It's dangerous to practice all day as that can easily be detrimental to the learning process. We can only process so much information in a given period of time, so continuing to practice the same thing beyond that period just muddies the waters. You lose any progress you make because your brain simply hasn't had the time to properly process it and form the neural pathways and mental connections.
The way I practice is basically this -
First, I start with general card handling. Simply messing with the deck. Cuts, fans, spreads, lifts, multiple lifts, deals, etc. Just 'doing stuff' with the deck. I do this for a few minutes and that basically serves to get my hands warmed up and ready to work. Then I focus on one sleight for a few minutes. If I'm still learning that sleight, I continue until I've made some form of noticeable progress which I can replicate, or until I plateau for too long. Then I switch to a different sleight. I usually do 5-10 sleights this way, and that takes maybe half an hour. Then I start going through full tricks and routines. I'll usually do each one 5-10 times, making sure I'm fine-tuning with each iteration. Then I move to the next one.
In this way I make noticeable progress on at least 5-10 sleights and another 5-10 tricks, or I fine tune them, and my brain is properly able to catalog the progress.
I do this with all props and routines I work with. Generally I don't need to practice more than 1 or 2 hours a day (this is not referring to rehearsal, by the way, that's different) to learn something thoroughly within a short amount of time.
I stand by my point. The necessity of practice has absolutely nothing to do with my statement. If you seriously have so little going on in your life, you perform so little, than you can practice from dawn to dusk, there's something seriously wrong. Vito Brata of White Lion before his injury spent most of his day practicing guitar, but at least he had the excuse that he was a professional recording artist going on world tours. What excuse do you guys have?
I was going to say something in rebuttal, but no. If I tell people that you need to actually get out there and perform instead of just sitting in your room practicing card tricks all day, that in order to be interesting you have to have a life and the response I get is that I'm being a downer or that I'm crazy...
Whatever, I tried. My conscience is clear.
Whatever, I tried. My conscience is clear.
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I get your point now. By practicing a day I (for me) merely ment practicing two to four hours. Then again, I'm practicing sleights both for the love of sleight of hand, and to get them performance ready.
I think what's really important, and concomitantly complex, is efficient rehearsal, by which I mean the repeated execution of a routine or full show as if to an audience. By comparison, practice of purely mechanical actions, such as sleights or flourishes, is relatively straight-forward. There are factory workers all over the world who achieve almost super-human mastery of manual tasks simply by virtue of repetition, even without a particular desire to improve. So, on that basis, and with some additional reading in expertise studies, my advice for efficient practice (assuming mastery is your goal) would simply be this three point plan:
1. Ensure you learn the technique from a reputable source so that you completely understand what you're aiming for.
2. When you're sure you understand what your hands need to do, execute that technique 10,000 times.
3. Congratulations, you have mastered that technique.
It's pretty much as simple as that, although there are a few supplementary notes:
1. A repetition of the technique can be as slow as you like, speed will come naturally with time. The important thing is to execute the move with what I'd call a "tolerable level of success", otherwise it doesn't count towards your 10,000 or you're basically just practising doing it wrong.
2. This "tolerable level of success" will vary from move to move, and is therefore down to your own discretion, but I'd recommend being relatively harsh with yourself. For example, I'd count dropping cards as a fail for any move, but maybe you'd be lenient enough to allow shuffles to be slightly imperfect weaves.
3. Break techniques down into as many variations as you can think of and count each one of those as a separate move requiring 10,000 repetitions to achieve mastery. Taking a classic pass as an example, you might want to count "Classic Pass when Selection is Returned to Lower Half of the Deck", "Classic Pass in Context of Card Table Procedure", and "Classic Pass after Holding Pinky Break" as different moves, needing to be practised separately. Of course, the practice of each of these will inform the other, but you won't end up with the problem of how you get into and out of moves because you'll have mastered them for all required contexts.
4. Don't just take my word for it. Read The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance and then try and keep reasonably up-to-date with expertise studies. It's a fairly new field of study, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are new developments that would give a more precise framework for practicing magic.
Hope that's helpful.
1. Ensure you learn the technique from a reputable source so that you completely understand what you're aiming for.
2. When you're sure you understand what your hands need to do, execute that technique 10,000 times.
3. Congratulations, you have mastered that technique.
It's pretty much as simple as that, although there are a few supplementary notes:
1. A repetition of the technique can be as slow as you like, speed will come naturally with time. The important thing is to execute the move with what I'd call a "tolerable level of success", otherwise it doesn't count towards your 10,000 or you're basically just practising doing it wrong.
2. This "tolerable level of success" will vary from move to move, and is therefore down to your own discretion, but I'd recommend being relatively harsh with yourself. For example, I'd count dropping cards as a fail for any move, but maybe you'd be lenient enough to allow shuffles to be slightly imperfect weaves.
3. Break techniques down into as many variations as you can think of and count each one of those as a separate move requiring 10,000 repetitions to achieve mastery. Taking a classic pass as an example, you might want to count "Classic Pass when Selection is Returned to Lower Half of the Deck", "Classic Pass in Context of Card Table Procedure", and "Classic Pass after Holding Pinky Break" as different moves, needing to be practised separately. Of course, the practice of each of these will inform the other, but you won't end up with the problem of how you get into and out of moves because you'll have mastered them for all required contexts.
4. Don't just take my word for it. Read The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance and then try and keep reasonably up-to-date with expertise studies. It's a fairly new field of study, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are new developments that would give a more precise framework for practicing magic.
Hope that's helpful.