I'm first and foremost mainly into cardistry, but I've had a keen interest in magic so I've learned a lot through curiosity but never really felt compelled to perform it, I've never liked the feeling of being under heat, people trying to catch you out, I much preferred the show of skill of cardistry than performing magic.
However, as most practicers of cardistry will probably have come across, if you have a deck of cards, and can shuffle them a few million ways, people assume you can do magic, so you get the "omg show me a trick" people, and you have to watch their faces in dissapointment when you tell them you can't do any, and then they get sad.
So I was out the other day at a friends birthday, was a night time barbeque kinda thing. Anyway, I was bored, and the friend of mines birthday always really enjoyed my flourishing so I had a deck of cards with me, and I got suckered into doing a magic trick. I was quite surprised how easy it is to pull off great reactions with the most simplest of tricks.
It was my first time, so I always used a force, either riffle, or hindu, which nobody picked up on even closely. Then I used a mixture of false cuts, and retaining stock shuffles etc to control the card, then just played the revelation differently each time. One time my hands were being burned really bad, and the guy is like "You're controlling the card" so I did some completely fair cuts, lost the card compeltely and put the deck away. He's like "What?", I just casually went "Who needs a deck, your card is the 8 of Hearts" hes just like "what the hell...".
I think the most heat I had was doing a pass once, because I let him pick a card normally rather than a force, but because I do fancy cuts and everything it actually gives me far more leeway with the deck, and people don't susspect things I've found. Also knowing your audiance is great, for example on a friend of mine doing Commerce, I did a probability type patter which worked well and such.
So to anyone out there who is like me and was a little wary of performing, try just the very basic stuff, I didn't even do a double lift or anything, and then since you can relax just play up the presentation and find something that suits your style, most of the time I had no idea how the trick would end until I did it and it felt good, no scripts or anything, just making it up as I saw fit, like when I got caught, just change the direction of the trick seemlessly and play it off.
I was worried I'd run out of tricks because I kept getting asked to show someone somthing, and you know the addage "dont show the same trick twice", so I'd just use the opposite force to before or something, then change the presentation on the fly to make it seem like the same trick was actually a completely different trick. I know this is nothing to a seasoned professional, or anyone been in magic for a while, but I was quite surprised at how easy it was, and how easily things came to me without needing to be super prepared, I went there expecting to do nothing.
This little taste has sparked a hunger to learn more, still basic, but some things to let me do basic things easier, such as a better card control from top to bottom than the overhand shuffle, I've even dabbled with a short card to let them shuffle the deck (I'm still wary of palming, just seems like way too much heat) most of all just playing around with things.
When starting out it's easy to think you need to perform miracles the first day, and it's easy to be bogged down by everyone chanting that you must practice 1000 hours a day before you can perform for your cat. I found that starting small and performing actually inspired me to continue, hopefully one day I'll be super awesome
However, as most practicers of cardistry will probably have come across, if you have a deck of cards, and can shuffle them a few million ways, people assume you can do magic, so you get the "omg show me a trick" people, and you have to watch their faces in dissapointment when you tell them you can't do any, and then they get sad.
So I was out the other day at a friends birthday, was a night time barbeque kinda thing. Anyway, I was bored, and the friend of mines birthday always really enjoyed my flourishing so I had a deck of cards with me, and I got suckered into doing a magic trick. I was quite surprised how easy it is to pull off great reactions with the most simplest of tricks.
It was my first time, so I always used a force, either riffle, or hindu, which nobody picked up on even closely. Then I used a mixture of false cuts, and retaining stock shuffles etc to control the card, then just played the revelation differently each time. One time my hands were being burned really bad, and the guy is like "You're controlling the card" so I did some completely fair cuts, lost the card compeltely and put the deck away. He's like "What?", I just casually went "Who needs a deck, your card is the 8 of Hearts" hes just like "what the hell...".
I think the most heat I had was doing a pass once, because I let him pick a card normally rather than a force, but because I do fancy cuts and everything it actually gives me far more leeway with the deck, and people don't susspect things I've found. Also knowing your audiance is great, for example on a friend of mine doing Commerce, I did a probability type patter which worked well and such.
So to anyone out there who is like me and was a little wary of performing, try just the very basic stuff, I didn't even do a double lift or anything, and then since you can relax just play up the presentation and find something that suits your style, most of the time I had no idea how the trick would end until I did it and it felt good, no scripts or anything, just making it up as I saw fit, like when I got caught, just change the direction of the trick seemlessly and play it off.
I was worried I'd run out of tricks because I kept getting asked to show someone somthing, and you know the addage "dont show the same trick twice", so I'd just use the opposite force to before or something, then change the presentation on the fly to make it seem like the same trick was actually a completely different trick. I know this is nothing to a seasoned professional, or anyone been in magic for a while, but I was quite surprised at how easy it was, and how easily things came to me without needing to be super prepared, I went there expecting to do nothing.
This little taste has sparked a hunger to learn more, still basic, but some things to let me do basic things easier, such as a better card control from top to bottom than the overhand shuffle, I've even dabbled with a short card to let them shuffle the deck (I'm still wary of palming, just seems like way too much heat) most of all just playing around with things.
When starting out it's easy to think you need to perform miracles the first day, and it's easy to be bogged down by everyone chanting that you must practice 1000 hours a day before you can perform for your cat. I found that starting small and performing actually inspired me to continue, hopefully one day I'll be super awesome