Aaron Fisher “Personal Coaching” and “In Session”
Before I get into the details let me give you the Cliff Note version of this. If you want to be a truly great card magician (mediocrity just isn’t good enough for you) and you don’t have access to a mentor then getting a lesson from Aaron Fisher will pay you dividends in the long run that no DVD, book, or gimmick will provide. I consider his lessons an excellent investment for any intermediate magician whose focus is cards and even for beginners who can afford it. Aaron Fisher is widely considered one of the best creators of sleight of hand magic and one of the best teachers in all of magic. You could spend 20 years struggling to master the craft of card magic and there is no guarantee that you ever will. Aaron Fisher lessons will help speed you through a lot of road bumps you will experience along the way to card mastery and while I cannot guarantee that it still won’t take you 20 years, if at all, I do believe that your chances of getting there are much better with him than without.
This is a review for private skype lessons with magician Aaron Fisher. They are available through his own website directly, titled, “Personal Coaching,” or through Ellusionist, titled, “In Session.” I am reviewing both as they both boil down to a skype session with Aaron Fisher. I am personally taking lessons directly through Aaron so some of the sign up and log in details of the lessons available at Ellusionist are unknown to me but essentially I will assume that what you get in the end is essentially the same thing. The In Session Lessons are a little longer and cost more but if you add it up minute by minute both cost the same rate. You just need to decide if a full hour long lesson is worth the extra money.
Where to buy and how much:
Personal Coaching: 45 mn./ $75.00 Aaron Fisher: Personal Coaching
In Session: 1 hour/$100 http://www.ellusionist.com/aaron-fisher.html
Sign up process(reviewed for Personal Coaching only): 1st you will need Skype and a decent webcam and microphone. I recommend a headset style microphone and an external Webcam. The headset will reduce back ground noise during your session and the external webcam will be easier to adjust to get video of various angles during the session. Double check all your gear before you get to your lesson….it will save you time. Next go to the Personal Coaching link I provided above. There is a banner near the bottom of that page that says “Start Your lessons Now.” Click that and you will be sent to a page that instructs you from there. The very bottom of that page is a link(on the word NOW) that will send you to a page where you can either log in(for returning students) or sign up.
For first timers signing up, don’t just rush through the student profile stuff. There are several questions on there about what your goals are and what your magical influences are. He really does read that stuff and I am sure it will help him speed up the “get to know you” process that a student and teacher go through. That will in turn speed up your first lesson so that even that initial lesson will be as productive as possible.
Once you have created a profile you have access to the calendar which is where you see what times are available and select an available date or time for your lesson. The blue bars indicate reserved lessons and the white bars indicate available lessons. Clicking on an available lesson will send you to the lesson sign up pop-up screen. This screen will include the date and time specifics, a verification of your name, phone number, and skype name, and a field for you to type in specifics about what subject you want to work on. At the bottom of this pop-up is a tab where you can buy credit(via a paypal screen that will pop-up) or create the lesson if you have available credit on your account.
The sign up process is certainly more detailed and complicated than going to an online magic shop and buying the latest new magic DVD or gadget but it isn’t so difficult that most of you won’t be able to navigate it easy enough. If you have any difficulties with the process you can e-mail Aaron and I am sure he will be happy to help you out. Overall it is a good thing that there are quite a few steps you will need to go through in order to create a lesson because it forces you to really think about what you want out of a private lesson. That in turn gives Aaron the information he needs to make your lesson as valuable as possible.
The First Lesson: This is the hardest part to evaluate since each lesson is tailored to the student. My recommendation is that your first lesson is very specific and something pertinent to something you know Aaron could help out with. In my case I picked his effect “Panic,” as a starting point. It is his effect and an effect that I have had great success with but I was looking for ways of using it as a closer. I didn’t really care for WideSpread panic, the version he teaches in his DVD that introduces Panic in the middle or end of a routine. WS Panic is not a bad handling it just didn’t work for me. So within the very first lesson Aaron was able to give me a few quick pointers on the panic “move,” and offer a few different ideas on how to routine it for a closer. We were able to cover all that in about 30 mn wich gave up a good 15mn chat on where I would like to go from there. So my advice is to pick a first lesson similar in tone to what I did. Getting tips on an Aaron Fisher effect or move that you already perform (Gravity ½ pass, Search and Destroy, One handed Pop-out, ect.) Something that you suspect will give you a bit of free time to get to know each other. Certainly the long questionnaire you filled out when you signed up will give you a head start but nothing beats a face to face chat.
Subsiquent Lessons: Once you get past the first lesson this is where the real learning begins. I personally chose to work on my ACR. I, like many, always felt ACRs were to common so I had stayed away from them for a while, relegating them to routines I only did to practice new moves in sequence. Aaron really pointed out, and I agree with him now, that developing a good performance ACR is critical to the development of a good card magician. So my next several lessons were the redesign of one of my practice ACRs into something that would play nicely for an audience. We first started with the structure of the routine and would then work on specific moves as needed. In the course of the 5 lessons we covered many many specific moves that were required for the final ACR. When all was said and done I have an ACR that is well structured, direct, and plays very well to the lay audience. I am also much more proficient in several all of the moves required for the ACR. The best part of that is that my new proficiency in those moves really translates into all of my card magic because, as many of us know, the move you put into your ACR tend to be the workhorse moves you use in all of your card magic.
Aaron Fisher as a teacher: I think it goes without saying that Aaron Fisher has built a reputation as one of the best teachers in the industry. His DVDs are always well spoken and direct, his books and notes are clearly written, and he has been teaching the intermediate card classes at the Sorcerers Safari summer camps for the last several years. I’m happy to state that one on one, without a script to work off of, Aaron is just as good. One thing that may be of concern to some of us “older” students is that Aaron’s DVDs and videos are generally geared towards teaching the teen aged magician. That shouldn’t be a surprise as most DVDs and Videos these days are. What I can tell you is that Aaron will appeal to all ages of magicians. Aaron and I are approximately the same age and I never once felt he was talking down to me. Franky, if you are an adult expect him to treat you as an adult, if you are a kid, expect him to treat you accordingly. One way or the other he will not patronize you. He will probably be a great teacher for magicians much older than him as well. If you see Aaron Fisher’s stuff and can honestly say, “This guy is better than me,” which, considering the fact that he is one of the top card men in the world right now, most of you will, then have no worries about taking a lesson from him.
Before I get into the details let me give you the Cliff Note version of this. If you want to be a truly great card magician (mediocrity just isn’t good enough for you) and you don’t have access to a mentor then getting a lesson from Aaron Fisher will pay you dividends in the long run that no DVD, book, or gimmick will provide. I consider his lessons an excellent investment for any intermediate magician whose focus is cards and even for beginners who can afford it. Aaron Fisher is widely considered one of the best creators of sleight of hand magic and one of the best teachers in all of magic. You could spend 20 years struggling to master the craft of card magic and there is no guarantee that you ever will. Aaron Fisher lessons will help speed you through a lot of road bumps you will experience along the way to card mastery and while I cannot guarantee that it still won’t take you 20 years, if at all, I do believe that your chances of getting there are much better with him than without.
This is a review for private skype lessons with magician Aaron Fisher. They are available through his own website directly, titled, “Personal Coaching,” or through Ellusionist, titled, “In Session.” I am reviewing both as they both boil down to a skype session with Aaron Fisher. I am personally taking lessons directly through Aaron so some of the sign up and log in details of the lessons available at Ellusionist are unknown to me but essentially I will assume that what you get in the end is essentially the same thing. The In Session Lessons are a little longer and cost more but if you add it up minute by minute both cost the same rate. You just need to decide if a full hour long lesson is worth the extra money.
Where to buy and how much:
Personal Coaching: 45 mn./ $75.00 Aaron Fisher: Personal Coaching
In Session: 1 hour/$100 http://www.ellusionist.com/aaron-fisher.html
Sign up process(reviewed for Personal Coaching only): 1st you will need Skype and a decent webcam and microphone. I recommend a headset style microphone and an external Webcam. The headset will reduce back ground noise during your session and the external webcam will be easier to adjust to get video of various angles during the session. Double check all your gear before you get to your lesson….it will save you time. Next go to the Personal Coaching link I provided above. There is a banner near the bottom of that page that says “Start Your lessons Now.” Click that and you will be sent to a page that instructs you from there. The very bottom of that page is a link(on the word NOW) that will send you to a page where you can either log in(for returning students) or sign up.
For first timers signing up, don’t just rush through the student profile stuff. There are several questions on there about what your goals are and what your magical influences are. He really does read that stuff and I am sure it will help him speed up the “get to know you” process that a student and teacher go through. That will in turn speed up your first lesson so that even that initial lesson will be as productive as possible.
Once you have created a profile you have access to the calendar which is where you see what times are available and select an available date or time for your lesson. The blue bars indicate reserved lessons and the white bars indicate available lessons. Clicking on an available lesson will send you to the lesson sign up pop-up screen. This screen will include the date and time specifics, a verification of your name, phone number, and skype name, and a field for you to type in specifics about what subject you want to work on. At the bottom of this pop-up is a tab where you can buy credit(via a paypal screen that will pop-up) or create the lesson if you have available credit on your account.
The sign up process is certainly more detailed and complicated than going to an online magic shop and buying the latest new magic DVD or gadget but it isn’t so difficult that most of you won’t be able to navigate it easy enough. If you have any difficulties with the process you can e-mail Aaron and I am sure he will be happy to help you out. Overall it is a good thing that there are quite a few steps you will need to go through in order to create a lesson because it forces you to really think about what you want out of a private lesson. That in turn gives Aaron the information he needs to make your lesson as valuable as possible.
The First Lesson: This is the hardest part to evaluate since each lesson is tailored to the student. My recommendation is that your first lesson is very specific and something pertinent to something you know Aaron could help out with. In my case I picked his effect “Panic,” as a starting point. It is his effect and an effect that I have had great success with but I was looking for ways of using it as a closer. I didn’t really care for WideSpread panic, the version he teaches in his DVD that introduces Panic in the middle or end of a routine. WS Panic is not a bad handling it just didn’t work for me. So within the very first lesson Aaron was able to give me a few quick pointers on the panic “move,” and offer a few different ideas on how to routine it for a closer. We were able to cover all that in about 30 mn wich gave up a good 15mn chat on where I would like to go from there. So my advice is to pick a first lesson similar in tone to what I did. Getting tips on an Aaron Fisher effect or move that you already perform (Gravity ½ pass, Search and Destroy, One handed Pop-out, ect.) Something that you suspect will give you a bit of free time to get to know each other. Certainly the long questionnaire you filled out when you signed up will give you a head start but nothing beats a face to face chat.
Subsiquent Lessons: Once you get past the first lesson this is where the real learning begins. I personally chose to work on my ACR. I, like many, always felt ACRs were to common so I had stayed away from them for a while, relegating them to routines I only did to practice new moves in sequence. Aaron really pointed out, and I agree with him now, that developing a good performance ACR is critical to the development of a good card magician. So my next several lessons were the redesign of one of my practice ACRs into something that would play nicely for an audience. We first started with the structure of the routine and would then work on specific moves as needed. In the course of the 5 lessons we covered many many specific moves that were required for the final ACR. When all was said and done I have an ACR that is well structured, direct, and plays very well to the lay audience. I am also much more proficient in several all of the moves required for the ACR. The best part of that is that my new proficiency in those moves really translates into all of my card magic because, as many of us know, the move you put into your ACR tend to be the workhorse moves you use in all of your card magic.
Aaron Fisher as a teacher: I think it goes without saying that Aaron Fisher has built a reputation as one of the best teachers in the industry. His DVDs are always well spoken and direct, his books and notes are clearly written, and he has been teaching the intermediate card classes at the Sorcerers Safari summer camps for the last several years. I’m happy to state that one on one, without a script to work off of, Aaron is just as good. One thing that may be of concern to some of us “older” students is that Aaron’s DVDs and videos are generally geared towards teaching the teen aged magician. That shouldn’t be a surprise as most DVDs and Videos these days are. What I can tell you is that Aaron will appeal to all ages of magicians. Aaron and I are approximately the same age and I never once felt he was talking down to me. Franky, if you are an adult expect him to treat you as an adult, if you are a kid, expect him to treat you accordingly. One way or the other he will not patronize you. He will probably be a great teacher for magicians much older than him as well. If you see Aaron Fisher’s stuff and can honestly say, “This guy is better than me,” which, considering the fact that he is one of the top card men in the world right now, most of you will, then have no worries about taking a lesson from him.