Learn Easy Magic For Beginners (Issue One)
Do you want to know how to learn magic and become a magician by learning easy card tricks and money magic to amaze your friends and family? Well, you have come to the right place! We have been selling magic to both professionals and absolute beginners for 30 years.
So where do you start?
As a true beginner in magic, you can look like a pro by ensuring you purchase the correct effects and not running before you can walk. When I started in magic, we didn’t have YouTube we learnt from written instruction which meant our pathway to becoming a magician was slow and steady. Now don’t get me wrong YouTube is a great resource, but it usually has you attempting to learn magic that is way beyond your skill level, which can be very disheartening and because of this many people just give up, thinking they will never be able to do magic. This is untrue, you can do magic! You just need to learn the correct effects. Now in this blog series I am focusing on people who have never performed a magic trick before. I am going to tell you the do’s and don’ts and even recommend some great tricks to get you started on your journey.
Magic is a wonderful thing to get involved with. There is no better feeling than mastering a trick, performing it and making people smile, laugh and in fact forget about their day-to-day troubles as they leave reality (even for just a moment).
There are two things you really need to master to perform great magic. One is the trick itself and two is the presentation of the effect. I will cover the importance of both points in this series.
Firstly, let me tell you about a few recommended effects to get you started.
It’s very important to start will a trick that will compliment your magic skill level, something too difficult will not give you any satisfaction. Just because a trick is easy to do does not mean it’s no good. There are many professional magicians who use what we in the trade call self-workers or self-working tricks. They can be equally as strong as the tricks that require years of practice and serious sleight of hand (and sometimes even stronger) Now there are a couple of terms you will come across so I would like to just let you know what they mean.
Gimmick: A gimmick is a piece of apparatus that will aid with making the effect/trick work. This could be a special card, coin pen etc and it is usually referred to as the Gimmick
Gimmicked Deck: This is a deck of cards that has been created to make the effect easier to do. Some magic would just not be possible without a gimmicked deck (or if they are there would be so much sleight of hand involved that the trick would never look as smooth and magical)
Un-gimmicked: Means the props or items used are regular.
There was a statement I heard many years ago and I believe it to be true. The most amazing magic you will ever see (if you are new to magic) is on your first visit to a magic shop. Almost every magic shop around the world will show you the same 3 or 4 tricks on your first visit if you are new to magic, but why these tricks? Well, they are easy to do (so easy that you will do them with only a few minutes of practice), and they are strong. You will look like a pro once you have them mastered!
So, what are these tricks?
- The Svengali Deck - This is a completely gimmicked deck that will allow you to perform some amazing magic. A card is selected and lost in the deck, yet on your command it jumps to the top. This happens multiple times. In fact, even after showing all the cards are different and will a snap of the fingers every single card now changes into the card they just selected!
- Dynamic Coins - This is a firm favourite as it really does look magical. Two small brass caps are shown and from these caps you can keep appearing and vanishing a stack of coins. This really is an eye popper!
- The Stripper Deck - This deck looks like a normal deck and in fact can be handled and shuffled by the spectator, yet you can have a card selected and even let your spectator shuffle it back into the deck. Even though it sounds impossible you can instantly find their card, even behind your back!
- Mental Photography Deck - This is one of my favourite decks of all time. It starts as a totally blank deck which you can magically print at will. This really does look like real magic and it’s surprisingly simple to perform.
The Stripper deck and Svengali decks are what we call utility decks which means each deck may be used to perform multiple effects.
The four effects above get my highest recommendation and in fact were the four I started my journey with. If you are interested in starting your journey in magic grab yourself one of the above effects and look out for my next blog where I will be talking about learning and performing the effects. How to practice and present your magic.
I hope you enjoyed this first instalment, see you next time.
Peter Nardi
Founder Alakazam Magic
