Coins!

Recently I have started reading some of the old basic magic books I haven’t read since I was young again. These books are the basics of stage and close-up magic. After looking through these again I have started to re-read them in more detail relearning all the basics of magic once again. Going through these books again after years of doing magic, I feel I have a new perspective on what they teach. My attitude towards what I need to learn and improve on is much more mature now that 20 years ago. Even though I remember many of the techniques I read in these books and use many of them today, re-reading them has given me greater insight into how to make them even more effective and find points I missed when I read them the first time. For me the old has become new again. I find myself as I read them again thinking of new applications and the creative side of my brain is once again stimulated. I am glad that a few weeks ago that I started looking though these or I would not have started to read them once again. My goal over the next couple of months is to try to re-read as much as a can from the classic texts of magic and digest them and start to really apply them in new ways to my current routines and I am sure I will start to work out new and even better routines over the next year or so. So I suggest if you are starting to feel stale with your magic and are tired of many of the newer products, go back and re-read the classics. Your brain will start to awaken.

Aaron

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Gibecière

This week I officially joined the Conjuring Arts Research Center, party because I was so excited and impressed by the access to the Ask Alexander search engine. I blogged about this here. With membership you also receive their semi–annual journal on Magic History Gibecière edited by Stephen Minch. All I can say is WOW. This 180 page publication is worth the price of the basic membership alone. It already has me captivated. One reason is there is an article that relates to my University Degree which is on Japan Society from the Meiji Restoration (1868). There is a series that continues in this issue about Magic in Japan from that time so I am all set to get into it. If you are serious about magic the Conjuring Arts Center has done a great job of producing, and researching on the history of magic very academically and you should really check them out.

The Expert at the Card Table

I also ordered their reprint of Erdanse’s The Expert at the Card Table. It is done “Bible” style. A great little carry around version of this classic text on card magic. I was just impressed by Ask Alexander and now they have impressed me again with the publication that goes with membership. I highly recommend joining the Conjuring Arts Research Center.

Aaron

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Today’s Magic AudioBoo I fixed an old magic routine.

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Talking Magic

If you perform magic then the chances are you will have to speak in front of a lot of people unless you perform only a silent act to music. When performing and speaking it is important that you speak well. What you say has to be clearly said and understandable. I have seen many great technical magicians but their speaking is too quite and no one can  hear what they say. As a performer you need to practice speaking and work on you volume, cadence, diction, intonation etc. If you do have a problem with this I suggest seeking advice from other performers or look into attending a speech club. Watch TV news anchors, comedians, and other people on TV and radio and listen how they speak. Try to work to make your voice clear. On way I practice is by recording only my voice. This way I can listen to what I am saying and what I need to fix. I tend to speak clear but way too fast so it is always a battle for me. Now that I perform in Japanese I am always working on my pronunciation and how I sound. This has made me more sensitive to how I speak in English as well. Anyways work on a clear voice and make sure your audience can hear you it one of the most important things for performing magic.

Aaron

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Burn!

After a long time I finally have some free time. And I am making the most of it instead of being lazy. I have been using the time to rework parts of my show and spend the proper time doing so. Also I have been able to talk with some magician friends online about magic and even found a great new effect and routine for my show which I love! I have spent a great amount of time working on that routine in the past few days and started working on the Japanese script for it. The routine shall remain a secret but thanks to my friend Steve Dickson for the suggestion.

Later tonight I will enjoy Mr. Maric a Japanese Magician who will be performing and doing a seminar online. I am looking forward to that.

I have a lot magic plans during my break so stayed tuned to updates as I post about them! And I hope all of you are enjoying your summer it’s almost over!

Aaron

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Enjoying Performing

I enjoy performing magic. That may be obvious but I think that to be a good magician you do really have to enjoy performing and I have talked about this before on my blog and on my AudioBoo. However today I want to talk about some of the things I enjoy about performing magic.

The first thing I really enjoy about performing is the people. If there were no people to watch my magic I would not be a performer. I enjoy people and how I can enjoy time with them having fun doing magic. I enjoy when they smile and laugh and the things they do. When they enjoy what I am doing  I enjoy it even better. When they have fun watching and interacting with my show I know that I am being entertaining and I am happy that they can enjoy and escape things during my performance.  The people become a big part of my show and I enjoy the interactions I have with them.

Another aspect of performing that I think is the intellectual challenge of putting together the show itself. Working out how effects fit together and how they fit me and the feeling I want to create during my show is a great challenge. Finding good effects that the audience will enjoy and working on ways to maximize magic theory, performance and fun together is enjoyable for me. Basically building a good show that the people will enjoy is very satisfying.

I also enjoy visiting the many places I get to perform at and enjoy performing in a variety of places. Sometimes certain venues can be challenging to perform at and once it again it brings that intellectual challenge to me that I enjoy. Once again meeting various people at different places is always fun.

These are just a few of the many reasons why I enjoy performing but the main one is common through all reasons and that is the first reasons I mentioned the people. The main reason is that I get to perform great people at many various places and that is what it is all about for me. What do you enjoy about performing magic?

Aaron

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Today magic Audioboo is about pushing your magic and being honest with yourself.

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Spicy Magic

Recently when I have been working on my magic I have wanted to “spice” up my routines. I seem to come up with some neat ideas, however the problem is that the idea may seem cool to me, or maybe to other magicians but logically in the routine for a real audience it makes no sense. As well, trying to work on the patter so that the patter can justify the new element sometimes comes off as too contrived like a bad movie.

So as I work to add that spicy sauce to my magic routines I have to balance the spice with the overall feel and get the right flavor that tastes well. This takes a lot of time and experimentation and testing. What I do is I make the changes to a routine to spice it up and rehearse it. I try to record and video myself doing it. Then I leave it for a while and comeback and watch myself do it. If I feel it is ok then I start to test it with real people both magicians and non-magicians to get feedback. Then go back, or try testing it in a real show to see how the changes go.

My advice is if you want to make changes to a current routine to add spice take your time and make sure everything makes sense and test it out. Add some spice to your routines can greatly improve them if you do it right or be very bad if you don’t prepare well. Any ways back to trying to spice up a routine!

Aaron

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Ask Alexander

Sometimes there are services and products that you didn’t think you needed but once you tried you now can’t live without. This happened with me for Twitter. Now I don’t know what I would do without Twitter but before I used Twitter I never really thought much about it. Well askalexander.org is like that for me now. Those of us who registered with the Essential Magic Conference all received a free month preview of Ask Alexander. Can I saw wow! Ask Alexander is run by the Conjuring Arts Research Center whose Executive Director is Bill Kalush. What is the Conjuring Arts Research Center you may ask well here is a quote from their site:

“The Conjuring Arts Research Center is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of magic and its allied arts, which include psychic phenomenon, hypnosis, deceptive gambling, mentalism, ventriloquism, juggling, and sleight of hand techniques.”

Ask Alexander one of the services that they run is a search database of magic books, magazines, and newsletters. I can say it is fantastic. After my preview month I will continue with the service. You can save publications in the database in a personal bookshelf as well when you research on a topic you can keep them in collections and download them as one PDF or have it emailed to you. Very useful. It even works well on my iPhone. If you are a magic creator, lecturer, magic consultant, magic historian, or just love magic you should have a look. It is not free and there is a yearly membership price and a few levels of membership depending on what your needs are. You can see those listed here. It is well worth it, and like I mentioned I will be continue with a membership after my preview.

In the picture you can see one of the searches I did. You can see my vanity as I searched myself . It turned out to be cool because I found a bunch of Ring Reports I did for the Victoria Magic Circle in the Linking Ring in the late 1990′s that I forgot about and and other places where I was mentioned and this brought back a lot of memories I had forgotten about.

I want to thank Bill Kalush and the staff of the Conjuring Arts Research Center for giving us at the EMC the free month preview.

Aaron

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Kinkaku-Ji in Kyoto

Magic like all art forms is about sharing feelings, and experience. However, I see very few magicians sharing their experiences through magic. I have seen many that use canned experiences to fit a certain effect but I am talking about sharing real experiences you have had. You often see comedians telling funny stories about themselves, and as well hears songs whose writers write about their experiences. I believe that magic is the perfect medium to share your real life experiences because you can create the same feeling you had with your experience in the audience by the effect you perform that relates to your experience. Not only does this give your magic meaning it makes the magic truly yours. I try when I can to do this with my own magic. Here in Japan I try to talk about my life in Canada, as well as what it is like for me to live in Japan as a Canadian. I use my magic to relate to my audiences my experiences living in Japan both good and bad and how I over came them. This is a great way to come up with routines. So the next time you are stuck working on a new effect or routine try to draw form you own life experiences, you may just find the creative pool you were looking for.

Aaron

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