"Practice, Practice, Practice" -- Something I hear a lot in the magic community.
Quick note: This is my first essay, props to MitchellStafiej and Jack The Magician.
One of the most asked questions in magic is how to practice. Most of the time, people say “practice makes perfect,” but in my opinion that’s not true. Practice does not make perfect. Now you must be thinking if practice doesn’t make perfect, then what makes perfect? Perfect Practice makes perfect.
First Tip: A bad place to learn magic is YouTube. If I can get a penny for each bad performance and tutorial I see on YouTube, I right now would have around $100,000,000. My first tip is stay away from YouTube -- for one obvious reason because if you learn from someone who doesn’t know how to do the moves correctly, you are going to learn to do the moves incorrectly, and when you don’t know how to do your moves correctly, the chances are that you’re going to do the trick wrong or mess it up. If you are going to learn from a video, make sure the author of this video is a professional because a professional knows what he’s doing -- it is just that simple.
Second Tip: The first time you see a video, such as a card trick, put your deck of cards away and watch the video first. Why? Because if you start with a deck of cards in your hands, there chances you are going to miss the small details of the move in the video. The second time you see the video, take your deck of cards and start doing the moves, one at the time – there’s no need to do the moves fast
Third Tip: Only buy tricks or videos that you know you are going to use. My point is if you don’t do coin magic, then don’t buy a coin magic DVD. Even if you do perform coin magic, if you are not going to use the trick, then don’t buy it. A useless trick in your memory is just a waste of space. For example: have you ever had somebody come up to you and ask you to do a trick, but the only tricks you can remember are just let’s say a few bad tricks. That’s one of the reason of why you don’t want useless tricks in your memory
Fifth Tip: This is not much of a tip, but it really helped me when I heard this from Michael Ammar long time ago.
After each performance asks yourself these questions:
Conclusion:
The things learned in this essay were:
Quick note: This is my first essay, props to MitchellStafiej and Jack The Magician.
One of the most asked questions in magic is how to practice. Most of the time, people say “practice makes perfect,” but in my opinion that’s not true. Practice does not make perfect. Now you must be thinking if practice doesn’t make perfect, then what makes perfect? Perfect Practice makes perfect.
First Tip: A bad place to learn magic is YouTube. If I can get a penny for each bad performance and tutorial I see on YouTube, I right now would have around $100,000,000. My first tip is stay away from YouTube -- for one obvious reason because if you learn from someone who doesn’t know how to do the moves correctly, you are going to learn to do the moves incorrectly, and when you don’t know how to do your moves correctly, the chances are that you’re going to do the trick wrong or mess it up. If you are going to learn from a video, make sure the author of this video is a professional because a professional knows what he’s doing -- it is just that simple.
Second Tip: The first time you see a video, such as a card trick, put your deck of cards away and watch the video first. Why? Because if you start with a deck of cards in your hands, there chances you are going to miss the small details of the move in the video. The second time you see the video, take your deck of cards and start doing the moves, one at the time – there’s no need to do the moves fast
Third Tip: Only buy tricks or videos that you know you are going to use. My point is if you don’t do coin magic, then don’t buy a coin magic DVD. Even if you do perform coin magic, if you are not going to use the trick, then don’t buy it. A useless trick in your memory is just a waste of space. For example: have you ever had somebody come up to you and ask you to do a trick, but the only tricks you can remember are just let’s say a few bad tricks. That’s one of the reason of why you don’t want useless tricks in your memory
Fifth Tip: This is not much of a tip, but it really helped me when I heard this from Michael Ammar long time ago.
After each performance asks yourself these questions:
- Did the people had fun?
- Did you have fun?
- Do you think you had made the best of that performance?
- What when wrong?
- What when right?
- What jokes work on the people?
- What were the reactions?
- Give a grade to your performance.
Conclusion:
The things learned in this essay were:
- What kind of DVD you should see.
- How you should watch the DVD.
- What kind of video to choose.
- Keep a notebook. (Record your performances.)
Last edited by a moderator:
