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In this article, we’ll be covering the steps you need to take to learn easy magic tricks. Good news, you’re already in the right place. That’s pretty much step one already covered!
There’s lots of sites out there that claim to be teaching you easy magic tricks, but the people teaching are often not very experienced magicians, or the site is just trying to get to the top of google in order to show you ads for other things.
Here at Vanishing Inc. we know magic. We live and breathe magic. We’ve been selling magic tricks to people all around the world for 12 years. Andi Gladwin and Joshua Jay are two professional magicians and they founded the company in order to provide magicians a trustworthy, fast place to buy magic tricks. But, they’re also very involved in helping new and young magicians develop. They even set up a magic non-profit to do exactly that! We’re now the largest magic store in the world and have helped thousands of people learn easy close up magic tricks and easy mentalism tricks.
So that’s our credentials out of the way, let’s get on with the different steps there are to learn easy magic tricks.
We are the largest publisher of magic books around. So we do love magic books and recommend magic books for beginners all the time. But maybe you're not quite ready for books yet.
There are millions of tricks out there. So the first thing you need to do is work out which easy trick you want to start with. We’ve got some lists of suitable tricks if you need some help here:
Those links above will teach you some easy magic tricks for free. Just grab some playing cards, or a couple of coins and follow the instructions.
We’ll assume you’ve picked a coin trick. OK, so you’ve read the instructions. Now, read them again with the coins in your hands and follow along. Do this again. Now, try and do the trick without reading the instructions. Repeat this step many times until you can do the trick without really thinking about what you are doing with your hands.
There is a big difference between practicing and rehearsing. You can practise whilst in line in a store, or while watching TV. Practice is really just going through the mechanics. Rehearsal is more to do with working out what you are going to say and do during the trick.
The biggest mistake beginners make is not having anything prepared to say. There is a lot of umming and arring. There’s often a default of narrating the trick. For example: “OK put your card back, now I will shuffle the cards like this and then deal the cards in a pile like this”. It’s not very entertaining. Try to find something more interesting to say. Maybe you could say your Grandfather taught this trick to you, maybe you’re trying to demonstrate new found powers after a radioactive goat bit you. Whatever. Anything other than umms and arrs and narration.
You also need to do this rehearsal stage as you will when you perform. If you plan to be standing, then stand. If you will be at a table, then sit at a table. Do it as if there were an audience there.
Seriously, when you think you’re done, do step three some more. You cannot over-rehearse.
Now, this is going to seem counterintuitive. But see if you can find some people that are not your friends or family to perform for. Why? Because your friends and family are often your hardest critics and the trickiest people to perform for. They know you. They know you don’t have magic powers, they know you can’t read minds. So trying it on new people is actually easier, even if approaching them may be more nerve-wracking.
Here’s some examples. If you’re at school, go up to some people you don’t know that well at recess or lunch and ask if you can try something you’ve been working on for them. If you’re an adult, try asking someone at work you don’t normally talk with much, or someone at a bar, or bus stop.
Remember, not everyone will want to see a magic trick, so don’t be put off if you’re rejected, just keep going. You’ll find someone willing to watch soon enough. After all, magic is pretty cool!
We cannot emphasize enough that the more you perform the better you will be. Will you screw up? Sure you will. Does it matter? Not even slightly. This is another benefit of performing for people you don’t know. It means the stakes are low. You don’t know these people, it doesn’t matter if you mess up.
Take a deep breath, and start what you worked on in step three.
Remember, you’ve built up to this moment. You’ve learned the moves, you’ve worked out a script, you’ve rehearsed, and now you deserve your moment to shine! People will laugh, gasp and clap and you just enjoy that moment
Ideally, you will at least audio record every performance. Video would be even better. Why? So you can play back the recording and listen to what you say and how your audience reacts. Do they laugh where you expect them to? Did you pause too much or not enough? Did you say too many umms and arrs? Did they laugh somewhere you didn’t expect them to? Why? Did you come up with some ad lib that worked? If so, write that down in a notebook so you remember it for next time.
You cannot possibly perform too much. The more experience you get, the better you will be. So get out there and show as many people what you’ve been working on as possible and try to make each performance better than the last one.
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