How long do you practice?

Sep 27, 2012
10
0
Hey guys,
I think it would be interesting to here how long you practice to learn a new effect?
I personally practice 1-2 hours for a new effect of intermeditate difficulty.
What about you?
 

D@n

Oct 11, 2011
104
1
Most effects don't take me very long to learn, but they take a decent amount of time to perform smoothly with good patter.
 
Aug 17, 2010
411
4
Do you mean learn one that's dependent on learning a new sleight, or not?

Learn it so you could get through it for your magician buddies, or learn it with a newly written script, with the blocking, and pocket or prop management to a level where I would do it at a paid gig?

An hour or two for the former, years for the latter. Clients deserve to see material that has been polished to a shine, not something you picked up last night. We owe it to each other to give clients and audiences the best experience of magic we can, because if you gave them a great show, polished and professional, they're more receptive to seeing me.
 

Josh Burch

Elite Member
Aug 11, 2011
2,966
1,101
Utah
Yeah, for family or close friends I might practice a few days, try it and get feedback and then go back to the drawing board and work away at it. Anything that I do at a gig is something that I've practiced for at least months if not years. Even with my solid material I can always find stuff to work on.

When it comes to sleights I practice constantly. At my job I take phone calls and always have a deck of cards and some coins, so if you add up my daily practice time it's probably around 5 or 6 hours a day.
 

WitchDocIsIn

Elite Member
Sep 13, 2008
5,877
2,945
I don't know an average. I work at it until I feel it's ready. For some things, it only takes maybe an hour. For others, years. I worked on Tony Chang's Be Kind Change for two years before I felt comfortable showing another magician. I still rarely feel confident using it for lay audiences, and it's been about 3 years now.

I work at whatever it is until I can do it. Whether that takes minutes or years, doesn't matter. What matters is mastering it. Everyone has their own speeds, and that's fine. Each trick or move has its own time frame for every individual person. That's fine. I don't have to learn anything as fast or as slow as anyone else, and neither do you. Work at it until it's good.
 
Dec 18, 2007
1,610
14
64
Northampton, MA - USA
It depends on the trick or routine more than anything. When I did the big stage shows we spent weeks (10+ hour days) rehearsing so as to get timing and choreography "perfect" but that's why I and others that do such things, end up with uncannily fast exchanges be it a sub trunk or what's needed with an Asrah. But the various slight-of-hand routines we did involved hundreds of hours of work before I ever attempted to present them within a show in some cases.

Magic is not for the lethargic that's one thing for certain and it doesn't matter which area of magic you work in. People are frequently shocked at how much work goes into a big illusion show because they think it's just a matter of owning an expensive box of some kind . . . the box being the least of one's issue when it comes down to creating the magic around the effect. But we can say the same thing about any other facet of magic because it is learning the nuance behind each effect, the psychology of presentation and timing as well as how we frame & stage an effect; all of this is part of "practice", believe it or not.

Understand, Practice is not the same thing as rehearsal though the two can overlap at times.

I have routines I learned more than 30 years ago that I still practice even though I don't perform them, I simply enjoy them.
 
do you mean a sleight or move? or a whole trick? or an entire routine?

although i guess i practice the same way for each. depending on the difficultly, 1-2 hours of conscious practice (in front of a mirror really working on it) and a day or two of unconscious practice (while im watching tv or something) i then repeat this until i feel it's performance ready. at which point i try to perform it as much as possible for the next few days.
 
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