How to practice

[inn3rs3lf]

So in line with being a newbie...

I have RRTCM and volume 1 and 2 of card college and have been going through RRTCM first. I am thinking about changing over to CC purely due to the language used in the books. But this is all besides the point of this thread.

Do you know of any practice routines out there for beginners and or intermediates or the like?

So say, do the overhand shuffle with an outjoged card 20 times, then control a card to the top and bottom 20 times etc?

I would like to find a structured practice routine out there to follow, just to guide me in the beginning.

 

[Gabriel Z.]

So in line with being a newbie...

I have RRTCM and volume 1 and 2 of card college and have been going through RRTCM first. I am thinking about changing over to CC purely due to the language used in the books. But this is all besides the point of this thread.

Do you know of any practice routines out there for beginners and or intermediates or the like?

So say, do the overhand shuffle with an outjoged card 20 times, then control a card to the top and bottom 20 times etc?

I would like to find a structured practice routine out there to follow, just to guide me in the beginning.

The Royal Road to Card Magic has a good practice routine for the Overhand Shuffle I, it uses retaining top card, bottom card, injog control, milk build shuffle etc. At the end of the day it boils down to muscle memory. Just keep practicing.... practice, practice , practice. Also when doing the overhand shuffle practice without looking at your hands. Another idea is to run cards singly throughout the entire deck and time yourself this helps alot along with video recording your progress. Hope this helps.

 

[DavidL11229]

I also enjoy practice routines. Sometimes it is the working part of an effect, other times it is just repetitions of a series of moves. That one Gabriel mentions from RRtCM looks good, I'll have to pull out my copy. Glad to see you got Card College. It's a great reference.

A deck of slicker cards can be nice for practicing these moves too. I like Aristocrat Bank Notes as available here at Theory 11. But whatever is available to you, it can be worth trying a different brand to see what works best.

 

[RealityOne]

Use Card College. Go page by page as if you were taking a class. Practice effects rather than moves. Walk through the move, step by step. Slowly at first and then until you get up to the hang of it. Then go back at look at the explanation again. You actually will be amazed how frequently the explanation changes when you read it a second time. Then read the tips at the end of the explanations - they will make more sense after you have been playing with the move. Fine tune your handling by practicing the move. Then, put it into the context of an effect (routine, trick... whatever you want to call it). Practice the moves in the effect until you get it almost down and then practice the moves with the presentation (what I call rehearsal).

The benefit for this is that you learn the move in the context of an effect. Learning a move out of context causes an unnecessary second long pause in performance contexts (as your brain recalls the move and then instructs your hands to perform it). That pause telegraphs you are doing a move. Learning in context, causes the move to be performed instantaneously based on muscle memory.

If you do a series of moves as "practice" (e.g. overhand shuffle, pass, double lift, diagonal insertion) you are building up muscle memory to do the moves in that order. Similarly, if you do a move over and over and over, you are building up muscle memory to do that move repeatedly not a single time (how many effects require 10 passes to be performed in sequence?)

 

[Al e Cat Dabra]

Moves and sleights are tools. A hammer, a saw and a screwdriver mean nothing in and of themselves, but rather they are for building something. IMHO moves and sleights should be practiced within the context of a trick or routine, then you have something valuable and entertaining to show for it. You wouldn't go up to a layman and say, "Hey, watch this overhand shuffle, and this pass...."

 

[Gabriel Z.]

Moves and sleights are tools. A hammer, a saw and a screwdriver mean nothing in and of themselves, but rather they are for building something. IMHO moves and sleights should be practiced within the context of a trick or routine, then you have something valuable and entertaining to show for it. You wouldn't go up to a layman and say, "Hey, watch this overhand shuffle, and this pass...."

Essentially what @RealityOne said. I think they go hand in hand.... You really can't have one without the other. If you don't have the tools you can't do the job, and without the job there wouldn't be a necessity for the tools. It's good to build up the presentation, routine in the mind and practice it for a couple of months then go and get the tools necessary to perform that effect. He said he is a newbie, so the best advice one can get is to learn the tricks of the trade. Miracles take a little longer.

 

[RealityOne]

Newbie: Do you want to see my pass?

RealityOne: No. Isn't that the point?

 

[inn3rs3lf]

Thank you all. This has proven to be the most helpful forum for my beginner questions and comments. I recently discovered another magician Steve Faulkner on YouTube, and have signed up for his course. He covers the practice methodology that has been outstanding. This doesn't cover what, but how and why. I posted a thread on this board about my simple review.

This forum, coupled with his work has been invaluable. So thank you.