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I created this course (formerly known as The Interactive Magic Course or IMC), to give people the basic information needed to start on magic. THE OBJECTIVE OF THIS COURSE IS NOT REVEAL TRICKS - (sorry Herbert B.), but to help you learn the art of magic. Magic is great as a hobbie, as well as professionally. The information you will find on this pages, are the building blocks of magic. You'll learn basic techniques that you can use to create your own tricks, and variations to existing ones, after all, that's the whole point of magic, to be creative.
Basic Rules
Practice Makes Perfect: This is the most important rule in MAGIC. You must never release a trick until you have practiced it enough and are comfortable with each movement.
Practice the easy and the complex: Some tricks you will notice that are pretty easy to do. You can be doing it in five minutes. But still, you need to practice, until all your movements are smooth and look natural. Sometimes, a trick is easy to perform, but needs some "tricky" movement to get it right. This kind of tricks deserve a greater amount of practice.
Don't ever reveal how a trick is done: You may be tempted, or even tortured, but you MUST NOT reveal the secret of your trick. Why? Because your audience will lost faith in magic, and faith in YOU and other magicians. That's why. You will no longer be seen as a magician, and will have no chance for making them believe that you can really make wonderful
and incredible things.
Practice in front of a mirror: So you can't reveal your secret. Therefore, you must practice alone. The best
way of doing this is to practice in front of the perfect audience, your reflection. Practice many times your movements, until they look convincing, even for you. There will be times that even you will be deceived by yourself. It's true. There are
movements, say vanishing something, that even though you know where the object really is, you ask yourself "Where is it?". But, of course, the only way of doing this is by practicing in front of a mirror.
Practice with "gimmicks": Many tricks are done by using gimmicks. Gimmicks are devices to aid you performing a trick. When using such devices, you must practice the double, because it involves concealing something extra. For example, you may use a piece of transparent tape for doing a card trick. The piece of tape is your gimmick. You can imagine how difficult will it be to do a card trick with a piece of tape. That's why you must practice so your audience can not see the tape.
Misdirection: Misdirection is also very important in magic. Misdirection is to direct audience eyes and minds to one place or trail. For example, when vanishing an object, you take the object in one hand and place it in the other. There the process of misdirection starts. You have to make people believe that the object is in your hand and that you're doing magic movements, and throwing magic powders and blowing. While you do this (the misdirection) you are doing your dirty work with the other hand. Get it? Here are some things to keep in mind when doing misdirection:
• The audience will look where you look - This is always true. If you're not looking at your pocket, they will not be inclined to look at it, unless you look at it.
• The longer you carry peoples mind along a false trail, the more efective the climax of the trick - Again, misdirection gives you the ability to take people along a false trail. This trail is anything you can imagine. For example, ask a spectator for a small object, "place" the object in your hand, place it under handkerchief, burn the kandkerchief, take the object in your hand, put it in your mouth , swallow it, drink water, take a sealed envelope, give it to expectator, the expectator opens it and there's his object.
• Repetition - This is another way of doing misdirection. By repeating over and over movements that look suspicious, and demonstrating the audience that they're not suspicious at all, will make them trust the movement, giving you time to do
your thing.
Card Magic
The following lines, will show you the basic sleights used to perform card magic. Most of this techniques, are more that enough to keep you busy perfoming card magic for a while.
Shuffles:
Riffle Shuffle:
1. Hold the pack in either hand (your right if your right handed).
2. Bend the pack and riffle it with your thumb, allowing half of the pack to fall onto your other hand.
3. Take the half that fell in your other hand and place it facing the other.
4. Now, start riffling both halves, mixing the pack together.
5. When all the cards have been riffled, push the two packets together completely.
Hindu Shuffle:
1. Take the pack facing down with your right hand, with your thumb on one side, and the first finger on the other.
2. Move the pack toward your left hand and grip the bottom portion of the deck. Start pulling the bottom portion of the pack...
3. ...placing it on top of the rest of the deck. Reposition your hands and repeat until no cards are left on the right hand.
Overhand Shuffle:
1. Hold the deck on your right hand, with your thumb on the upper side of the deck and you other fingers at the other
side.
2. Bring both hands together and with your left thumb, pull off a few cards from the top of the pack on your right hand.
3. Place that portion on your left hand, and repeat until no more cards are left on your right hand.
Card Forcings:
To force a card is to ask the spectator to choose any card and make him pick the card you want him to pick. This way, you can create your own tricks. Just before performing, select a card to force. Then, force that card, and let the spectator
shuffle the deck. Ask him to cut it in half and keep on doing things that will make your audience think that is imposible for you to tell which card was chosen. After a while, reveal the card and take a bow.
In the following pictures, I have used a blank card. That blank card will represent the card to be forced.
The Elimination Force:
1. To do this force, select the card to force and place it on top of the face down deck. Tell your audience that you will extract six cards at random. Extract the top card and five more cards. You must always remember which one is your peeked card.
2. Now, display the six cards in two rows of three cards each. For this example, the selected card will be the third one of the top row.
3. Ask the spectator to select a row. If the spectator selects the top row, say -"ok, we'll keep this one...". If the spectator selects the bottom one, say -"ok, we'll take this one out". The idea is to keep the row with our peeked card.
4. Now, ask the spectator to select any two cards. There are three posibilities. If the spectator selects the first tow, say - "let me remove this two cards and you take the remaining one". If the spectator selects the last two, remove the first one, leaving the second and the third, and repeat the process. If he selects the first and the last, remove the second one and repeat the process.
The Stop Force:
1. This force, looks even better, because you actually ask the spectator to tell you to stop any place on the deck and HE selects the card at the stop point. Start by cutting the deck and placing the card to be forced at the top of the bottom portion of the deck.
2. Now, you'll be doing a very useful move named the little finger break. This move consists in leaving your little finger over the peeked card, so you can easily cut to it.
3. Now, riffle the deck and ask your spectator to tell you to stop in any place.
4. When the spectator calls stop, you'll stop at the break. (requires practice)
5. Give the spectator the card he selected. ;-)
Now that you know this two forcings, the possibilities are endless, because the spectator thinks that it was a free selection, but you already know which card he has selected. Ask him to replace the card in the deck and shuffle it as many times as he wants. Then, take the deck back, locate the card and reveal it.
Coin Magic
The following lines, will show you the basic sleights used to perform coin magic.
Vanishings:
The French Drop:
1. Hold the pack coin to vanish between your thumb and index finger.
2. Come with your other hand from the top as if you where going to pick the coin.
3. As you close your hand, drop the coin on your other hand. Keep the top hand closed and remove the other hand. The spectators will think that you actually took the coin. You may want review the basics here.
The Classic Palm Vanish:
1. Start with a coin in the center of you palm up hand.
2. Pretend to throw the coin in the other hand, but retain it in the palm (this is called palming, BTW).
3. Close the hand that now "holds" the coin and get rid of the other coin somehow (with misdirection).
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