Magic Training Sites

[CWhite]

So what are your thoughts on this? I know of quite a few that charge to become a member and gain "exclusive" access to videos teaching sleights and effects.
I know a lot of you speak very highly of books. With the new generation of technology, books have sadly become almost obsolete.
Have any of you joined these sites? Thoughts?

 

[kennethcmerrill]

"With the new generation of technology, books have sadly become almost obsolete."
You're hilarious.

 

[CWhite]

I'm not actually. Most if not all of the younger generation state emphatically they "learn better from video". It IS a fact. Sad as that is, but it's true.
Thanks for your 'useful' thoughts...Cheers.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

Books are nowhere near obsolete. Easily 2/3 of my library will never be put into video form.

In my experience what happens is people start out saying they learn better from videos, and then as they progress they realize that the videos out there are not going to take them above a certain level. All the videos out there, with few exceptions, are just teaching the same material with slight differences. I mean, half of the card magic out there is based off things in Erdnase. To really reach the tops of magic knowledge, you have to learn from books.

I think the idea of a magic video membership has its place, but I have no interest in it.

 

[Lyle Borders]

I'm not actually. Most if not all of the younger generation state emphatically they "learn better from video". It IS a fact. Sad as that is, but it's true.
Thanks for your 'useful' thoughts...Cheers.

"Learn better from video" does not mean obsolete by any means. It just means that many people aren't willing to invest the time, cost, and effort into a good magic book.

Books and videos each have an important place.

// L

 

[Nurul]

So what are your thoughts on this? I know of quite a few that charge to become a member and gain "exclusive" access to videos teaching sleights and effects.
I know a lot of you speak very highly of books. With the new generation of technology, books have sadly become almost obsolete.
Have any of you joined these sites? Thoughts?

I, somewhat, agree. I wouldn't say they're becoming obsolete, though, as many great magicians still write and produce books. CARC have an online library full of reading material and are constantly selling books via their website.

I do agree that this generation is all about tech and there are far more visual learners than there are linguistic learners.
There's a fair few books that have been transformed into video format, which I think is amazing.

Also, there's so many people out there who are illiterate, so video medium is perfect for them. IMO, I don't think it's our place to tell an individual how they should learn, just need to be grateful that there's material out there for a variety of people to enjoy this beautiful art.

To answer your initial post, I was once a member of a the blue crown summer club, which offered "exclusives". Let's just say, wasn't the best experience. The content (whenever they could be bothered to update) was good, the lack of service was horrific.
I am also subscribed to CARC (which I mentioned earlier) and they have an Ask Alexander section, where there's so much content, it blows my mind.

 

[CWhite]

Omg. ..this was NOT a thread about the usefulness of books...I personally love books. I was asking everyone's thoughts on magic training sites.
The first reply got it twisted. ..

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

With the new generation of technology, books have sadly become almost obsolete.

We are commenting on this, which is your statement.

Thus far we seem to be fairly on consensus that books are not obsolete and that subscriptions don't seem to be a hot item at this time.

I do agree that this generation is all about tech and there are far more visual learners than there are linguistic learners.

"Visual learner" is a frequently misused term. It means someone sorts information in mental graphs and such, and tends to think in visual terms. Visual learners are often very good at learning from books because they can create mental pictures of what they are reading.

As Lloyd said, both books and videos have their place.

To go back to the original question, though -

As I said previously, I am not interested in a subscription service like this. To expand on that, I think it just contributes to the "trick of the month" idea that many starting magicians get into, where they have to learn more and more tricks. The problem is that they generally do not focus on one routine enough to really develop it. So they have a huge library of tricks they can half perform.

Beginning magicians often fall into that trap because they have a limited audience. An audience that gets bored seeing the same tricks a dozen times. So they (the magician) feels the need to learn more and more to keep it fresh with that same audience. When one develops further, they end up performing the same routines for more and more strangers which makes a subscription kind of pointless - it just builds up tricks you'll never end up doing.