Hey guys I just wanted to give a few tips that i have thought of as I've been practicing. I hope that these will be useful.
Over the last few months I've been wondering what it is that i need to do to in a sense "go pro". Well ive been doing magic for only a year but i practice for about 4 hours a day and i like to think of myself as a decent magician. Well this is what ive come up with and i hope that you guys can put this to good use.
first things first: obviously practice! you have to be willing to put in hours of practice if you want to be a "magician" if you just want to be a "guy that knows tricks" then by all means skip the practice but im sure plenty of you want to be known as magicians and in order to achieve this you have to practice!
Second: Keep practicing! think of the one trick that you can do better than any other one. ok now go back to the tutorial of that trick and the performance of it and look see if you can do it as well of better that that guy. im talking speed smoothness patter all aspects. If yours is not as good or better in all of these aspects then the trick is not ready. I think that you'll find that you have a lot that you could improve on with all of your tricks.
Third: Limit the amount of crap you buy! I did this and I think we all do as beginners... you buy everything that looks cool thinking this will be the trick that will separate you from the rest. Then after you got the DVD you only used maybe 2 tricks from it. take my advice, STOP BUYING CRAP! if you look back at the DVDs you already own you may see that this professional magician uses these tricks in their everyday routine. If that is the case that means that if you MASTER (that is in the sense i mentioned in my second point) each of these you know have a routine as good as a working pro. And after all that routine is what makes him a pro.
Fourth: Limit the tricks you do! When you perform you will only do depending on your venue a few tricks. Maybe one maybe five of six. You most certainly will not be doing all of the tricks you know. Laymen don't care if you know 100 tircks more than the ones you show them, they only care about the ones you show them. So you you limit the tricks you practice and learn you can the master them to the point i mention in point 2. I have met magicians that are working pros that only do at the very most 10 tricks a lot of them only 5 but you know what separates them from you or I? the fact that they can do them better than anyone else. That is why they are pros.
A great example of this is any trick by Dan and Dave Buck. If you learn any of their tricks off of the trilogy you will see that they really arent very difficult to perform. BUT if you want to perform them the way Dan and Dave do it is EXTREMELY hard. If you want to do things as smooth and with all the flashy subtleties that they have it will take you hours upon hours. Now laymen wont remember these things and might not even know what it was that they saw but they will remember how good it was. It just adds that much to the performance. And even though they dont know what they saw they will be amazed at your skill and will know that you really put in serious time into your tricks.
I hope that this helps some people out. Sorry it is so long but i think that there is some important information in here that everyone could use.
I look forward to your feed back and comments.
Victor Cruz
Over the last few months I've been wondering what it is that i need to do to in a sense "go pro". Well ive been doing magic for only a year but i practice for about 4 hours a day and i like to think of myself as a decent magician. Well this is what ive come up with and i hope that you guys can put this to good use.
first things first: obviously practice! you have to be willing to put in hours of practice if you want to be a "magician" if you just want to be a "guy that knows tricks" then by all means skip the practice but im sure plenty of you want to be known as magicians and in order to achieve this you have to practice!
Second: Keep practicing! think of the one trick that you can do better than any other one. ok now go back to the tutorial of that trick and the performance of it and look see if you can do it as well of better that that guy. im talking speed smoothness patter all aspects. If yours is not as good or better in all of these aspects then the trick is not ready. I think that you'll find that you have a lot that you could improve on with all of your tricks.
Third: Limit the amount of crap you buy! I did this and I think we all do as beginners... you buy everything that looks cool thinking this will be the trick that will separate you from the rest. Then after you got the DVD you only used maybe 2 tricks from it. take my advice, STOP BUYING CRAP! if you look back at the DVDs you already own you may see that this professional magician uses these tricks in their everyday routine. If that is the case that means that if you MASTER (that is in the sense i mentioned in my second point) each of these you know have a routine as good as a working pro. And after all that routine is what makes him a pro.
Fourth: Limit the tricks you do! When you perform you will only do depending on your venue a few tricks. Maybe one maybe five of six. You most certainly will not be doing all of the tricks you know. Laymen don't care if you know 100 tircks more than the ones you show them, they only care about the ones you show them. So you you limit the tricks you practice and learn you can the master them to the point i mention in point 2. I have met magicians that are working pros that only do at the very most 10 tricks a lot of them only 5 but you know what separates them from you or I? the fact that they can do them better than anyone else. That is why they are pros.
A great example of this is any trick by Dan and Dave Buck. If you learn any of their tricks off of the trilogy you will see that they really arent very difficult to perform. BUT if you want to perform them the way Dan and Dave do it is EXTREMELY hard. If you want to do things as smooth and with all the flashy subtleties that they have it will take you hours upon hours. Now laymen wont remember these things and might not even know what it was that they saw but they will remember how good it was. It just adds that much to the performance. And even though they dont know what they saw they will be amazed at your skill and will know that you really put in serious time into your tricks.
I hope that this helps some people out. Sorry it is so long but i think that there is some important information in here that everyone could use.
I look forward to your feed back and comments.
Victor Cruz
