Street Magic Learned at Home

'Flipper'

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:10:00 +0000

Today's trick is one I like to call 'Flipper' hence the title of the blog post. Good ol' David Blaine performed this card trick on one of his TLC specials. If you haven't noticed, I really like doing the tricks that he does. Flipper is a trick that everyone who sees it gets t take part in it. So it is not just a one on one trick but could be a one on countless people trick. If you don't understand what I mean, I will explain in a bit.

This was one of David's opening tricks where the spectators who he was doing it for were the viewers at home. The trick is a simple one but captivates everyone who sees it. He holds the deck of cards up to the video camera and tells the viewers to think of the card they see first as he flips through the deck. He flips through the deck very quickly, to fast for anyone to really see a specific card, so he does it again. This time, everyone at home picked a card. David than says one card and believe it or not, if you saw this trick on his special, it WAS the card that you were thinking of.

Setup: So for the setup of the trick you need 52 of the exact same cards... but not really. You see, the only setup you need for this trick is to shave off a bit of the top of a card and place it in front of a card you want the spectators to see. You usually want to pick a very distinguishable card like the queen of diamonds. The card you are shaving doesn't have to be any specific card.
It is best to put the 2 setup cards near the top of the deck as well.

Performance: Now I'm not going to lie, there will be on occasion where someone does see a different card. But 9 out of 10 times, they will see the one you want them to. So, the performance is a pretty easy one. Someone who has never attempted any kind of magic trick can do this one. It is best to flip through the deck pretty quickly the first time and ask them if they gt a card. When you do it the second time, because one of the cards is shaved at the top, you will stop for a split second on the card you want them to see making them choose it. From this point forward, you could do a little acting job by asking them to tell you their card in their head and pretend to actually receive it.
You could narrow it down by saying things like" Now, I know its not a black card so that leaves us obviously with a red one. I couldn't fully hear what you said in your head but from what I got from it, it wasn't a face with a number on it. That leaves us with 4 choices and what I understood was you said diamonds. I believe the card you saw was the Queen..the Queen of Diamonds."

You can finish the routine which ever way you want. If your not into making up a bunch of stuff you could just say what their card was right off. It is completely up to you. There will be times when the pick the wrong card, but the best thing you can do is just move on to someone else and to not fret about it. But when this trick is done, and everything goes the way it is suppose to, than you have a sweet trick to use on your hands.

practice,practice,perform The 3 P's

'Voodoo Ash Trick'

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:03:00 +0000

Alritey! Here we go with a pretty sweet street magic trick. This trick is especially fun to do around anyone who smokes or at a family BBQ; you will understand why in a bit. In this trick, you will need to know how to do the 'glide force' ,which we already learned earlier, or any other kind of card forcing technique. Once again, I am going to use the glide force in the explanation because it is one of the easiest forces to do. You will also need to write on your arm with chap stick. Why you ask? Once again you will find out in a bit.

What is this trick?: The voodoo ash trick is a trick that gives the spectator a very eerie feeling after it has been done. It is not like any other card trick that we have done so far. I would definitely leave this trick to the last if you are doing a routine on the streets or where ever.

Performance: The magician has a spectator choose a card and place it back in the deck. He then hands the spectator a piece of paper and pen and tells them to write what their card was on it than to fold it. The magician than asks if he can borrow a lighter from someone and begins to set it on fire. The paper burns up and he takes the the ashes and rubs them on his forearm. When he removes his hand, the ashes from the paper have written their chosen card on his arm.

Let me tell you something, this trick honestly does have a sick ending and you will find that some people will actually believe that some kind of voodoo was used. But since voodoo obviously wasn't used, how was this trick really done? The answer is simple, chap stick.

Setup: Before you do this trick, you need to write the name of the card that you are going to force on your spectator onto your arm with chap stick. The ashes will than stick only onto the chap stick writing which makes it seem like some sort of voodoo was used.

So when doing this trick, make sure you force the right card that is on your arm, otherwise you will look like a moron. You can do this trick anywhere really. If your older, doing this trick in bars would be an ideal place. Or if your school has a smoking area you could borrow a lit cigarette or a lighter. But if your like me, just doing it at home with a BBQ lighter works just as well.

'Card Swap'

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:12:00 +0000

Well today's trick is a trick that involves little to non skill to perform really. The only move you need to know, is one that we have already learned 'The double lift'. If you have not learned this move yet, click on the the double lift link under Tricks. This is probably one of my favourite card tricks to do for people and the ending has a real 'Wow' factor.

Performance: The magician has a spectator choose a card (we'll say the ace of spades) than places it back on top of the deck. The magician than shows them their card and places it in between the spectator's two palms. He than shows them the next card(queen of hearts). He waves the face down queen of hearts over the spectators hands and than turns it over revealing that the card has changed into the ace of spades. The spectator opens up their hands and finds the queen of hearts. The 2 cards have magically swapped places.

How in the world could those 2 cards change places! The answer is simple, there are 2 identical queen of hearts. I know. You were hoping for some crazy sweet cards that change faces on demand but all you need is 2 of the same cards.

Set up: The setup is a simple one. Have the 2 queen of hearts on top. That's it; that is the setup. From here, all you need to do is when the spectator is looking at their card, have the top card palmed and place it back on the deck when they put their card back on top. Do a double lift showing them their card. Turn the 2 cards back facing down and place the top card(queen of hearts) in between their hands. Do another double lift showing them the queen of hearts. Once again flip the 2 cards back face down and take the top card (ace of spades) and wave it over their hands. The 2 cards will seem to have switched places.

That is it. That is the 2 swapped cards. If you don't want to palm the card, you can do the trick an alternate way by having it pre set (queen of hearts, ace of spades queen of hearts). So all you ed to do is do double lifts. Doing it the other way is a little better cause they are the ones who pick the other card.

Don't forget the 3 P's Practice, practice, perform

'Cough Cough'

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 23:58:00 +0000

Today's trick to be learned is highly known as 'Cough Cough'. You will understand why it's called this very shortly. Once again this is a trick that Blaine performed on his TLC special and what makes this trick pretty cool is that it breaks any kind of language barrier. David performed 'Cough Cough' trick for a group of Asians who could apparently understand no word of English. So, if you ever find yourself stuck in a place where no one can understand you but you still have a desire to entertain them, than this is the trick for you.

Synopsis: This trick has a pretty original ending to it and is guaranteed to make people wonder what just happened. The lay out is like this. The magician fans out a deck of cards and has a spectator choose a card. After they choose one, look at it, and places it back into the deck, the magician puts the deck behinds his back and tells them that he is going to find their card. He brings the deck back out in front of him, up close to his mouth, and blows on it while pulling off the top card. The card he revealed is not their card, so he does the process a few more times. Finally he gets frustrated and stops doing the trick. But all of a sudden, he starts coughing
(see that's where the name comes from. Pretty witty eh?) and the card they chose is in his mouth! They could have even signed it if they wanted to.

The reason this trick breaks a language barrier cause you could technically do it all completely with out saying anything. Just fan the cards, they take it and look at it. Put it back in the deck and the magician just blows on it revealing the wrong cards. Coughs out the card and no matter what language they speak, they will understand that what they have just seen was intense!

Okay, before we can perform this trick there is a method that we need to learn in order to control their chosen card to the top of the deck. There are multiple ways to do this and one of the best and easiest way to do it is by doing the move known as the 'hindu shuffle'. Watch the video below to learn how to do this shuffle. This video isn't one of me but the guy who teaches it, does a very good job at explaining it.Once you have a good understanding of how to do it, come back up here and read rest of the post.

Performance: Have the spectator choose a card and place it back on top of the deck. You then do the hindu shuffle in order to keep their chosen card on top of the deck. After you complete the shuffle, announce to them that you are going to place the deck behind your back and find their card. You are, at this point in time, going to take the top card and fold it into eighths and place it under the third card in the deck. When you are done placing the small folded up card in position, bring the deck up to your mouth and blow on it and pull off the top card. This wont be their card so do it over again and again until you come to the card that is just above the folded up one. As you bring the deck up to your mouth, push the folded card into your mouth so that it is in between your cheek and gum. you should still be able to talk if need be. After you blow on the deck and once again reveal that it is not their card, act frustrated or what ever. After a little bit of acting it up, start to cough up their card. This trick, when done correctly, will get a pretty sweet reaction.

note: This trick works best when you use thin cards. normal Bicycle cards are usually pretty thick and hard to fold up small enough. If you go to the Dollar Store or Dollar Tree you can usually find some thin cheap cards there.

Using the double lift- '2 Card Monte'

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 18:25:00 +0000

Alright everyone. We just learned how to do the double lift. Now it is time to take that skill to a whole new level. The next trick that we are going to do is called '2 Card Monte. This trick was also performed by David Blaine and involves two of the skills that we have learned thus far. It involves misdirection and the use of the double lift. David performed this trick for some professional football players and they loved it and so will everyone else you show it to. This trick does take some time to get down the mannerisms of it but once you have them down pat, you are ready to amaze some people. The good thing about this trick is that you do not need any duplicates or anything like that. A normal deck of cards will do.

The effect: You, the magician, shows a spectator the ace of spades and place it in between there thumb and index finger; so that they are pinching it. You then pick up the next card on the deck which is the ace of clubs, show it to them, and quickly jab the card in between the card that is being held on to by their finger and thumb. After a few more gestures, the spectator than flips over the two cards revealing 2 completely different cards.

The preparation: Before you even start this trick, there is a certain setup you need to do beforehand. You need to set the deck up as follows: Ace of spades on top, queen of diamonds, ace of clubs and then the queen of hearts on the bottom of the packet.

The performance: Alright. So we have the deck all set up and ready to use. The first step to the trick is an easy one. Just flip over the top card revealing that it is in fact the ace of spades. Place it in between their finger and thumb. Now here comes the first part where it takes a little bit of skill. Do a double lift of the next 2 cards on the deck showing that it is the ace of clubs. Flip them back over and take the top card in your hand.
(Make sure to tell them not to look at the cards unless you say its okay.) Jab the card in between the other card quickly and do it again right away. Tell them that you just switched cards. They wont believe you so do it again in slow mo, this time actually taking out the ace of spades from their hand and placing the queen of diamonds in their hand. Now ask them what card should be in their hand. They should say one of the aces. Now as your talking to them and keeping eye contact( misdirection) you need to take the card in your hand and swap it with the one that is on the bottom of the deck. This sounds like it cant be done with out them seeing it but believe me, if you have good misdirection skills, they wont even see it happen. You should now have the other queen in your hand. You can now place the card back in between their fingers. You can now ask them questions like which card should be on top or would you be impressed if the cards were reversed in order? They can now turn over their cards and their reactions should be a good one!

The 2 card Monte is a trick for the ages. It never gets old and people just really seem to enjoy it. Practice, practice, practice than perform. Those are the 4 P's. Do them always and the tricks should go well.

The Double Lift

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:40:00 +0000

In this blog post, I am going to be talking about a secret move known as the 'Double Lift'. This move is used quite commonly among various card tricks and is going to be a vital move to learn in order to do some of the card tricks that are to come later on. What it is: The double lift is a method in which the magician can keep the identity of the top card unknown to the spectators by lifting up two cards instead of one. There are various ways to do this move. The one I am going to explain is the one I use. How to do it: One of the key things to keep in mind when doing the double lift, is to never look at the deck of cards while you are doing it. We have to keep in mind that when doing any kind of magic trick, when your eyes look somewhere, more than likely others will follow the path of them. So with this in mind, let's get on with the explanation. 1) Hold the deck in your left hand faced down. 2) Bring your right hand above the deck as if you are going to take it 3) After your right hand is on the deck, lift up 2 cards corners at the bottom left hand side with your thumb making sure that the move is concealed by the rest of your hand. 4) Flip over the 2 cards using your thumb and index finger having them rest on the tips of your left hand fingers. 5) Slide your thumb and index finger to the opposite corners and flip the cards back over. If you don't fully understand this tutorial, I will have a video of how to do it uploaded shortly. When you have this move down pat, you can use it in countless ways. I will probably be saying that for most of the tricks but it is true. Most the stuff Ive learned, Ive been able to use it for more than one trick. So anything you learn will definitely come in handy for other tricks. One way to use this trick is to have someone pick a card out of the deck. As they pick it out and look at it, you simply palm the top card. 'Palming a card' simply means to hide a card in the palm of your hand. As they put the card back on top, you simply square up the deck and place the top card on top. You now just do a double lift showing their card, place the cards back on top and take the real top card and place it somewhere in the deck. You can now snap your fingers or do what ever to reveal that their card is still on top. This trick seems a little bit kiddish but I will talk about another sweet trick that David Blane does using the 'double lift'

Card Through Window

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:52:00 +0000

Here we go. Our First David Blaine card trick. If you know who David Blaine is or have heard of him, it is probably because of this amazing card trick that he performs. It is known as 'Card Through Window. This trick has one of the best crowd reactions possible. This is one of the tricks that he performed on his TLC special that I had mentioned in an earlier post. The scene starts like this: David gets a random spectator on the street to select a card, any card from the packet that he has. The spectator picks the Ace of Spades and obviously doesn't show it to him. They then place the card back in the deck and David shuffles it. He then takes a card out of the packet and asks if that is their card. The card is not the one that they selected so he starts the process over again trying to find their card. After failing miserably countless times, He throws the packet out of frustration against the window that was behind the spectator, and everyone is shocked. The card the the spectator selected is stuck to the window and not only that, it is on the inside of the window. Like I said before, this trick has an amazing reaction factor. If you have any kind of magic background, you may have already guessed how this trick is done. If not, I will explain it now.

Explanation: The first part of this puzzle is "How did that card get through that flippin window!?' The answer to that is that the cards he used, were a special type of cards that can penetrate anything up to a thickness of 25 centimeters...could you imagine? That would be intense. The answer is, is that he used two of the same cards. Okay, so we know that there are two cards that are the same, but how does he get the spectator to pick that card? He used one of the many ways to 'force' a card upon someone. So, he forced one of the duplicate cards onto the spectator but how did the other card get stuck to the window? Now this is the sneaky part. Just before he threw the card at the window, his accomplice stuck up the duplicate on the window with magicians wax.

Performance: I was pretty pumped about learning how to do this trick. When I do this for my friends and family, I usually don't have someone place the card on the window for me. It sounds a little lame, but I usually have it already up there hidden behind a curtain. You can do it which ever way you want. The first part of the trick is to 'force' the duplicate onto the spectator.

The way I usually do this is I use what is known as the 'Glide Force'

(see bottom for explanation). Once the card is forced, have them put the card back in. From this point forward it is just an acting game where you pretend to have no idea where their card is. Just make sure that when you throw the deck, that the ace of spades isn't flipped over somewheres which could lead to some very suspicious people.

Glide force-This force is probably one of the easiest and pretty much fool proof card force you can do. You can use it for tons of other tricks as well. What the glide force is, is that you have the bottom card already memorized which in this case is the Ace of Spades. With the deck faced down, hold the deck in your left palm with the bottom card inched a little way down. Have them say a number between 1 and 20, and count as you take out each card from the bottom making sure to not take the actual bottom card. When you come to their chosen number, simply reach a little further down to slip out their card.

So there we have it. Our first street magic trick accomplished. Now as I said before, you can do this trick different ways. You can have someone quickly place the card up, or just have it previously there. Its probably best though that you do this trick to a single spectator just in case.

The Basics and the "French Drop"

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 02:43:00 +0000

Alright, now it is time to begin. One of the most important basics to magic is known as 'misdirection'. Misdirection is when, you as the magician, gets the attention of your audience off of something that you do not want them to see. You can do this by moving your hands a lot but not in the sense that you are having a seizure or anything. By talking to them constantly through your performance and always making eye contact. If you are holding something in one hand and do not want them to know, the last thing you want to do is to keep looking at it.This skill is very important to master in order to do any of the tricks on this blog and any trick really for that matter. 'Sleight of hand' is equally as important to performing these tricks and illusions.

The first trick that uses misdirection and sleight of hand is known as the french drop. This was the first trick I ever learned and is what got me hooked on magic. It is a very easy trick to do but does take a considerable amount of time to master. The best part about learning this trick though is that you can practice it in front of the TV or anywhere really. It only involves your hands and any small object like a quarter or marble. As time goes on, you will be able to make bigger and better things 'dissapear'.

The 'French drop' is a sleight of hand that makes it look like you just made an object dissapear.

The Effect:A quarter or small object one from someone). You hold it in your left hand and your right hand than comes and grabs it and squeezes it. You then open your hand and the quarter has vanished.

ct vanishes.

The Secret: The secret to this trick is the use of the move I already mentioned 'The French Drop'. The picture in the left hand corner, is a picture of how your hands should be when about to take the quarter. You hold the object in between your left thumb or right if you are left handed and your index finger. As you are coming to grab the quarter, drop it into your palm, at the same time making sure that your opposite hand covers the drop. After the move has been completed, make to drop your hand with the coin to your side and keep your eyes on your other hand. The trick is done and all you need to do now is reveal that the coin is gone. This is by far one of the best impromptu tricks that anyone can do. The only thing I ask is that you make sure you practice it alot before you perform it for anybody and that goes for any trick.

First Things First

NBBartlett@gmail.com (Nate Bartlett) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:36:00 +0000

The number one rule about being any kind of magician is to never reveal their secrets. Though if a magician never revealed how to do his tricks, how could future magicians be born? With this in mind, I want to make sure that everyone understands that this is not a "secrets revealed" blog, but a "how to" blog. I am not making this to wreck the secrets of some of these great tricks but to show you how you too can amaze everyone who experiences them.

The reason this blog is titled " Street Magic Learned at Home" is due to the type of magic I like to do- Street Magic. Two of my favourite magicians are David Blane and Brad Christian. These two magicians are two of the best Street Magicians around and I have tried my best to learn some of their best tricks.

I remember watching a David Blane special on TLC a long time ago and remember being amazed by some of the tricks he performed. When I saw him perform, I got hooked. I wanted to do every trick he could do. Before this, I was mostly into doing card tricks I got from books at the library. But once I saw him, I knew I had to learn more intense tricks.

As time goes on and this blog gets more and more developed, I hope to have a full librabry of tricks that anyone can do.