How to Become A Magician - It's Never Too Late
Vanishing Inc. is one of the best sites on the internet for learning magic. They carry all the best magic books and downloads for all the latest releases by all the best and newest creators or magic in the world.
Today they are announcing FREE magic! The amazing Paul Wilson is releasing ten free card tricks today.
There are tons of books that people often recommend as starter books for learning magic.
For example, if you will be doing card magic, check out the Card College series. I wrote about that here: Magic Tricks With Cards: Where Do I Start Learning?
For coins, you’ll almost always be told to get yourself a copy of Bobo’s Modern Coin Magic.
I heartily agree that those are excellent starting points. And they will give you the basic foundations you’ll need if you want to really be good.
But what if – while you are on the long learning curve to becoming a top-notch sleight-of-hand artist, you want to perform some magic right away?
I have the answer to that. It’s Paul Zenon’s Street Magic: Great Tricks and Close-up Secrets Revealed. Why that one in particular? Because it helped me out a LOT.
Because of the situation below, I’ve decided that the best way to learn magic is in a sort of “2-track” way. To become a really good magician, you’ll need skills in the basics, which takes awhile. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start performing SOME magic along the way. So here is the system I developed:
I had been dutifully studying Bobo and Card College, along with some other great sources (Eric Jones, David Roth, The Tarbell series, etc.) – this was my “Track 1 Learning” – when I won a door prize at a local magic club meeting (Society of American Magicians). That book was the Paul Zenon book.
Well I was going to a party just a few days later and REALLY wanted to have a couple of tricks I could do well, since I would be telling folks I’d taken up magic. Of course they were going to ask for a trick or two, right? But while the stuff I was studying was really long-term, foundation-building stuff, it didn’t really give me much in the way of stuff I could do RIGHT NOW that would be impressive enough that folks would really have fun.
But as soon as I started reading “Street Magic,” I found 2 or 3 tricks right away that were terrific and required no difficult sleights or anything. One of the card tricks I still do to this day (which is only 3 years later, but still :-)).
Paul Zenon’s book was my first foray into “Track 2 Learning.”
I am still working my way through Card College and The Tarbell course. But I think it’s important for you to get the experience of performing quite soon after you start. this will help keep the motivation up while you learn the truly wonderful life-long skills that take a little more time.
CLICK HERE if you want to grab a copy of Paul Zenon’s “Street Magic” for your own, and get started actually performing some really good magic quickly.
To become a magician, you obviously need to learn magic. But what does that mean, exactly?
I’ll tell you what some very experienced magicians told me when I first decided to take the leap into becoming a magician. And it was a terrific piece of advice – for starting. That advice was “Tarbell.”
In the 1920s, the magician, Harlan Tarbell, started a magic course. He would deliver a kit for each new lesson that contained the various props for that lesson.
Theses days, you wouldn’t be easily able to get ahold of the bits and bobs for the kits. But you can VERY easily get started with the Tarbell course immediately. Just CLICK HERE to grab a pdf of the original 60 lessons from the mail order course.
Ultimately, over the decades from 1930 through 1995, the Tarbell course was printed in hardback volumes. In total, the entire collection now includes 8 volumes.
What is great about the Tarbell Course is that it isn’t just about teaching tricks. That is how too many people go about it. And there is so much more to becoming a magician that just learning tricks.
Tarbell says: “I could teach you 50 tricks and you would be happy to know them — and perhaps you would think you were a Magician when you had learned these tricks. I know, however, that you wouldn’t be a Magician.” He’s right. A magician needs to understand more than mechanics. Just as important (in fact MORE important) are things like:
Understanding WHY magic works. What is going on the a spectator’s mind that makes things seem like magic?
Being able to perform. A magician is an entertainer. So if you are not a performer – at least on some level – then you are not a magician.
Taking the concept of “exposure” seriously. Exposure is the term used to describe revealing the secrets behind a magic trick. Yes, it is super easy these days for people to just go to YouTube and learn some of these secrets. But a magician should not be the person giving these secrets away (unless you are teaching a magician in training or selling magic to people who want to learn).
So the Tarbell course includes everything that goes into becoming a magician, going much deeper than just the teaching of tricks.
The original correspondence course was 60 lessons covering stage illusions to close-up magic and everything in between. that also includes discussions of stagecraft, developing a show, making your audience laugh and marketing yourself. The electronic version HERE (you can choose instant pdf download or CDROM) includes that original 60 lesson course (almost 1300 pages and nearly 2900 illustrations).
Some time after that original course was developed (in the 1920s), the Tarbell course was redone in order to create that 8-volume hardback series I mentioned above. That was called The Tarbell Course In Magic; For The Professional, Amateur and Beginner. Many other lessons were added to the original 60 lessons. So you can’t really directly compare the original course with the hard cover books.
Speaking of the hardback Tarbell Course, you can get yourself a set from eBay (like I did :-)), Amazon (see the link in the pic on the right) or from a number of used book dealers.
So even though there are lots of ways to learn magic, Tarbell is one of the best ways to start. It has been for almost a hundred years.
Coin magic is the kind of magic that I like best. And a coin trick is the first bit of magic that I showed to non-family members and looked like “real” magic.
That coin trick is called Tenkai Pennies. It’s been around since around the middle of the 20th century.
It’s a super clean trick that uses two coins. Ironically, hardly anyone does it with actual pennies, since those are such small coins. Usually people use half-dollars or even dollar-sized coins.
You can learn it in Bobo’s “New Modern Coin Magic” – which is the large hardback Bobo coin magic book, not the smaller paperback “Modern Coin Magic.”
I mentioned that the trick is super clean. What I meant was that Tenkai Pennies uses no gaffs or gimmicks. Nor does it rely on extra coins. What you see is what you get – one coin moves mysteriously from one hand to the other as if by magic.
It’s pure sleight of hand. And that is what makes it so special. You can do this trick with any coins. So that means you can borrow coins from someone and do magic with their own money!
The other special thing about this trick is that it relies on a sleight (“the use of dexterity or cunning, especially so as to deceive”) that is relatively difficult. That means that a lot of magicians will not bother learning it.
I would rather not – in this open post – specifically say what that sleight is*. Magic should retain some mystery, right? But what I will say that it has been SO worth it to learn this little move. And since many magicians don’t bother with it, you’ll be that much more ahead of the other magicians if you put in the time and effort.
Here is a video of me doing this quick but awesome coin trick:
* Click Here to send me a message if you’d like to know what the sleight is :).
If you’d like to learn how to do this trick step-by-step, click here to find out more and download the videos (instant download) for $5
If you ask a dozen magicians how to become a magician, you’ll probably bet 12 different answers. So what I’m going to do is tell you how I did it. That’s the only truth for me. And I know it works. I believe it will work well for anyone who really wants to be a magician.
One benefit of my advice is that I’m STILL becoming a magician :-). As I write this, I’ve only been into magic for 2 years and 9 months. So my experience is extremely fresh and relevant – filled with up-to-date resources and opportunities. My first day in magic was Nov 9th, 2014.
Speaking of first days in magic, you may well be wondering what you should do on your first day – taking the first step on your journey to becoming a magician. Great question:).
On my first day, I joined an on-line forum. That’s a great way to get quick access to real working magicians with tons of experience who are ready and willing to help total newbies.
So which forum should you join? I’m going to recommend The Magician’s Forum. Yes, there are several others out there. But if you want a forum whose underlying philosophy is to be kind to each other and help each other out without being a jerk, then this is the forum for you.
I started on another forum that is also good (The Magic Cafe), but has a lot going on and has so many different folks involved that you do get the odd troll or grump that could easily discourage a timid young magician-to-be.
I was told on my first day by a quite successful magician that if he had me sitting by him on a couch, he would plop a copy of “Tarbell” on my lap and say “start reading.” I immediately took to the web and found a pdf download of the first book in the Tarbell Course In Magic.
That was my first magic “book” mainly because it was immediate gratification:). You can get your immediate gratification here. The Tarbell Course was a mail order course started in the 1920s! But amazingly, many (if not most) magic tricks today can still find roots in Tarbell. Plus, what I found to be the most inspiring in that first volume was not the teaching of any tricks. It was the general information on what it means to be a magician. Tarbell says “there is a big difference between being a magician, and man [someone] who does tricks.” He goes on to say things like: you can give medicine to someone, but that doesn’t make you a doctor. Harlan Tarbell sets you on the right path with the right attitude.
There were two other books I got as soon as I could. I already mentioned in my post Coin Tricks: Your First Book, that for coins, you definitely need to have “Bobo,” by which I mean Modern Coin Magic, by J.B. Bobo. The other book I got was for card magic – Card College 1 by Roberto Giobbi. The link for that book is for a pdf version WITH VIDEOS:). Hooray for immediate gratification again.
Besides diving into the resources to get started, you need to really – and I mean REALLY understand what you are going to have to do in order to really become a magician.
One thing someone on a forum told me BEFORE I decided to take the magic plunge really stuck with me. He said that it takes 5 years to master the basics. I don’t know where he got that, other than his own experience. But other magicians seemed to agree. This doesn’t mean you can’t learn specific tricks almost immediately. But there is a set of skills – both physical and mental – that you’ll need to acquire before you achieve what that magician called “mastery.”
In Malcom Gladwell’s book, “Outliers,” he contends that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become world-class in something. It’s more of an observation than a rule. But if you think of magic in this way, you’ll be in the ballpark. It’s in line with the comment that it will take 5 years to master the learning in magic. As someone who is half way through that 5 year period, I can tell you that there are many physical skills that simply take so much practice to do well that most “normal” people probably would give up before getting anywhere close.
This is especially true for sleight-of-hand magic. The handling of cards and coins can take you down any of several rabbit holes. Certain moves that magicians make look easy, can be maddeningly difficult to learn to do properly. I am referring to things like how to conceal coins and cards (and other props) and creating illusions with them.
I understood that I was going to be in for thousands of hours of practice. I’m a musician who plays guitar. In order to learn to play a musical instrument, you have to put in the time. If you look at it like that, you’ll be fine. One REALLY great thing about practicing for magic though (with a few exceptions) is that you can do a lot of this practice any time. For example, I practice for hours every night in front of the TV. Coin moves don’t require any special place. You can do a LOT of practice walking around at the store, etc. Heck, you can (and should) palm a coin or card during much of your day pretty much every day until that becomes natural to you. I should warn you not to do this while driving a car though. Do as I say, not as I do:-P.
A magician named David Stone compared learning card magic to learning the basics of the English language. He says it’s easy (from a Frenchman’s point of view – he’s French :)) to get the basics of English. But then it gets much harder as you explore the subtleties. There are “self-working” card tricks that anyone can do. You can learn them in minutes. But the more you get into card magic, the more complicated it gets. Coin magic, he says, is more like learning German. The basics of that language are difficult to learn. But once you learn those basics, the rest of the language seems easy to learn.
In addition to learning the necessary moves fundamental to magic, there are things sometimes called “flourishes” – like card fans, fancy cuts and shuffles, etc. Those things don’t always help with the magic. They often are there just to look cool.
Many famous magic teachers such as Tarbell go so far as to say flourishes fall into the category not of magic, but of jugglery. You can be a magician without juggling. In fact in certain card situations, the more you show off with fancy cuts and fans and springs and spins and shuffles (things the kids call “cardistry”), the less effective your magic might be. You’re giving away the fact that you can really manipulate cards, so any illusions inherent in the actual magic will be less stunning that it might be if you just handled the cards like any normal person would. Then when the illusion happens, it hits with a harder impact.
But it’s not just the physical stuff you’ll have to learn. There is a lot of other stuff to. First, you have to be able to – or learn to – perform to some degree. It also helps to make people laugh. Those skills can take time to master. And then you need to understand the psychological aspects of magic. Why does it work? What is going through the mind of your spectators at various points throughout a trick? For an absolutely FANTASTIC book on this topic, I highly recommend “Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions.”
So that’s a lot to think about for what I initially described as your first step. To summarize:
Commit yourself to this. Understand that it will take you 5 years to really master the learning phase. That doesn’t mean you can’t start performing magic in the first weeks and months after you start. But to really become a well-rounded magician, allow that certain things will take years of dedicated practice. If you start out with this understanding, you won’t get discouraged when you can’t do a 2-handed card fan classic palm a coin even after working on it for a really long time. Just be confident that every magician who can do these things today, was at some point where you are now.
And it doesn’t matter what age you start. I was 50 on the first day of my magic journey 2 years and 9 months ago.
What are you waiting for?
I recently – finally – got my hands on Jay Sankey’s video, “Revolutionary Coin Magic.” Woot!
I learned a routine called Mr. Clean Coins Across from this video last year. Now I have access to all the routines! Buwahahahahaa!
Someone over at The Magicians forum requested that I do a quick video of me doing something I learned form this DVD, so I did a quick and dirty iPhone video of myself doing The Messiah Vanish. Here is the result of that.
As I mentioned, this trick can be found on Jay Sankey’s Revolutionary Coin Magic DVD, which is one of the best learning resources for coin magic ever, as far as I’m concerned. Granted, I’ve only been doing magic for a little over two and a half years at this point, but coin magic has been my main focus and I do have many of the recommended coin magic books and DVDs.
This DVD is harder to find than some of the newer ones, coming out as it did in the early 2000s – ca 2004 I think. But you can get it from Jay Sankey’s site here. Or try eBay, which is where I got my copy. Here is a link to it on eBay for one on sale right now.