How to do magic trick #7: Principles and techniques used in performing magic tricks

Hello world! It has been quite a while since I last updated my blog. Life is busy especially when you are working full-time. Let me get on with my article immediately.

So far in my articles, you may have noticed that I have presented the process of learning magic and the principles and techniques used in magic tricks progressively in a systematic manner. If you follow my articles carefully, you will have a clear and good understanding of the essentials of the secrets behind any magic trick. Subsequently, it will be easy for you to begin learning magic systematically, selecting the field of magic you like to specialize in instead of groping in the dark, learning random tricks which may be either too difficult or too easy but meaningless. That will save you lots of time and money.

Moreover, different magic tricks have different effects on the audience. So it is important for you to know what you are trying to achieve with your magic tricks. Are you trying to build rapport with someone? Or is it you want to break the ice with a stranger? Perhaps you are trying to focus the attention of a group of familiar or unfamiliar people on yourself or you are simply trying to entertain your family and friends. Using the wrong magic tricks and performing the right magic tricks with the wrong presentation will not bring you the desired effects. Thus picking up magic tricks randomly here and there, especially free magic tricks on the internet will not help you achieve your objectives.

Nevertheless, I will only touch on the general principles but not into the details as I do not wish to expose the secrets behind magic openly. These articles are meant to help those who are truly interested in investing into learning the art of magic and making the journey easier for them. This is to prevent exposing the secrets behind the art of magic to nosey curiosity seekers who do not respect the art of magic.

Magic is essentially an art of deception. The line is extremely thin between a con artist and a magician. A magician uses the art to entertain whereas a con artist uses the art to rip off his targets in order to benefit himself unethically. Unfortunately, there are many half baked magicians who are also part-time conmen. In the process of learning magic, I was unfortunate enough to come across a few of these. If you want to learn magic, you must be clear about your objectives and make a clear stand on how you are going to use what you learn from the art of magic.

The essential principles of performing magic tricks are

1. the force,
2. misdirection,
3. cunning phrasing of words and
4. sleights

Understanding how these four principles work will enable you to know how more than 70 percent of all magic tricks work.

The principle of force as the name implies, forces the audience to make a choice that is predetermined by the magician. For example a magician let the audience pick a card at random. The card that the audience eventually pick is the card that the magician ‘forces’ the audience to pick. Of course the audience will not realize that if the magician is skilful in the execution of the force. The force can be executed by using props, sleights, mathematical principles or a sequence of instructions dictated by the magician to the audience. A magic trick that uses the principle of force is usually one where the magician predicts an outcome such as predicting the card chosen by the audience. The field of magic known as Mentalism (mind reading) uses the principle of force very often.

Misdirection simply means distracting the audience. Stage magic is composed heavily of stage props and misdirection. A very simple thing to do is to direct your audience to look at somewhere else away from what you are sneakily trying to do elsewhere. Directing the audience to look elsewhere is a visual misdirection. Besides that you can misdirect the audience by keeping them busy with something to do or engaging them in a conversation. I would like to call that mental misdirection. Another form of mental misdirection is to make the audience think that you have done something, say with your hands, when you have actually done something else. The master of misdirection is late Tony Slydini. To understand and appreciate how does misdirection works in magic tricks, it will benefit you greatly to watch Tony Slydini perform his magic tricks.

The third principle listed here involves a manipulation of words. I would like to call this double-talking. Whenever a magician engages the audience in a conversation, his instructions and predictions may seem to mean something but it could also mean another thing. Besides double-talking, he would possibly instruct the audience to do something subconsciously by a play of words.

Sleights are skilful manipulation of hands. Mastering sleights is the most time consuming task magicians have to spend their time on. Although it may not necessarily be true that the magician who is the most skilful at his sleights is the best magician but a magician must be skilful at his sleights in order to be a good magician. Thus I have always advocated beginner magicians or aspiring magicians to learn magic tricks that do not involve the use of sleights in the beginning but to perform simpler form of magic tricks while giving themselves time to practice their sleights.

In my next article, I will talk more about Misdirection in magic.