How to Get Started If You're a Beginner
Whether you've been practicing magic for two days, two years, or
twenty, the only effective magic trick is one that actually
"fools" your audience. This ability to create a good illusion
depends in huge part on one thing: rehearsing!
Let's face it-no matter how great a trick is or how useful a
magic prop is, you won't surprise or delight anyone unless it's
performed smoothly and confidently. What if you drop your deck
of cards or accidentally mishandle a coin? The illusion will be
destroyed, and you'll have lost your audience's trust.
When you're just starting out it's understandable that you'll
have to practice in front of an audience several times before
you get it just right. No one expects you to be perfect right
away. But you also can't expect to fool anyone unless you put in
the time to practice your skills and work with your props (if
you are using any).
The tricks in this chapter were chosen because they are simple,
effective, fun to perform, and appealing to just about any
audience. You can delight a crowd of schoolchildren with them,
or you can test them out on adults. But before you do, practice,
practice, practice to get it right!
For now, let's cut straight to the chase and talk more
specifically about these simple yet stunning tricks. Then, at
the end of this chapter I'll give you some highly effective
strategies and techniques I used when I was just starting out!
Sleight of Hand
What exactly is sleight (pronounced "slite") of hand? This term
refers to a broad category of magic tricks that relies on your
skills and techniques as well as the facility of your fingers
and hands. In other words, these are tricks that depend on your
skill and dexterity to fool the audience, much more so than on
props or gimmicks. It's your fingers that do the work, not a
manufacturer's product.
Another way of saying all this is that a sleight of hand is a
trick that is performed so well and so deftly that the audience
can't tell precisely how it was done!
There's a great word for this that every magician should know:
"legerdemain." This word comes to us from the old French phrase
"leger de main," in which "leger" translates as light, and "de
main" means "of hand." So if you perform with a light touch,
that's the ideal form of legerdemain.
This deftness applies to most magic tricks, though, not just
sleight of hand! In fact, most of tricks we're going to discuss
involve sleight of hand, from shuffling cards to palming coins.
Even levitation, which we'll discuss in Chapter 4, involves
sleight of hand-although that's more like "sleight of foot!"
Just keep in mind that accomplishing many of the following
tricks successfully involves not just a working knowledge of the
techniques but also the ability to carry them out easily and
without a lot of obvious effort. Another good reason to get in
as much practice as you can!
This article was extracted from the book 'Discover The Magic
Trick Secrets You're Not Supposed To Know'. To find out more
please visit www.DiscoverMagicTricks
.com
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