You should revisit the basics of sleight of hand, here is why!

One subject that I’ve been recently obsessed with is the basics of sleight of hand.

With this I mean those moves that we learn in the beginning such as an overhand shuffle, a top change, and a palm. You know, the moves that allow us to create miracles. Essentially the basics are the foundation of magic, the most important thing that we can ever learn, and yet it is overlooked. Why are these moves so important, yet don’t get the attention that they deserve? Let’s find out, shall we?

Martial Arts

When I was younger, I started to train in martial arts. First, I trained together with my dad, until I eventually went to classes alone. Martial arts were fun, and difficult and stretched my abilities for self-discipline quite a lot. I learned a lot in these classes, much more than just defending myself. Something that all of us as magicians can learn a lot from.

One thing I remember was that every lesson would start with all of us doing the exact same techniques and katas. The white belts and the black belts were both training together. You had people who have been doing this style of karate for 20 years doing the exact same thing as the people who started just last week, and this wasn’t to show the new guys what it should look like.

Within martial arts, there is a deep understanding that you can’t build a house without a great foundation, and those starting moves, are the foundation. You can’t win a fight if you don’t know how to properly punch, kick, and defend. Just like you can’t learn to do miracles if you can’t understand the foundations of magic.

Over the 10 years that I trained, I started every training with the exact same moves and the exact same routine, you might think that it would be boring, but it was the complete opposite. I started to notice the most interesting things, I started to notice not just that my body got better at the movements the more that I did them. I also started to notice details that I hadn’t seen before. I started to realize why certain ways of punching or defending were the way that they were the more that I learned about the art. Essentially, I got to revisit the basics every single time that I learned something new and this deepened my understanding of the art by so much.

The exact same is true for magic, however, often we don’t see this because we’re learning magic from books, and DVDs, and few of us are taking classes. This means that we’re working with a lot less structure than while working with a sensei.

New eyes

During our magical education, all of us start with the same basic techniques. While it is true that some of us start with way more difficult books than others (my second book was drawing room deceptions). Indeed, all of us learn essentially the same basics when we’re starting with sleight of hand. If we look at card magic those are:

- A visible control (jog shuffle, lift shuffle, or riffle shuffle)

- An invisible control (pass)

- A change (double lift, or top-change)

- A palm

- A false count (Elsmley & Jordan)

All of these basic moves are the moves that we need in order to create miracles. The better that we are at the moves, the better that the miracle will look.

The main problem with all of these moves is that they are basic, but they’re not necessarily easy, at least, not easy to do them perfectly smoothly and deceptively. We, however, tend to think that we are good enough at the moves because we “get away with it”.

And so after learning the basics and doing all of them ok, we move on towards the more sexy and exciting moves. The ways of invisibly controlling a card to the top by other means, ways of doing tricks that can fool magicians, and so we put the basics aside.

Since that is the path of many magicians, that also means that they never truly look at the basics with the eyes of an intermediate, and so their basics will always stay at the level of a beginner. You see, if you want to truly progress at magic and do better magic the most important investment that you can make in yourself is to go over the basics again.

This is true for any art, be it music or martial, the person who can do the basics better is usually the better person at that art.

Now, since magic is art, your technical ability is not the only thing that will make you a great artist, magic is way more complicated than just perfect sleight of hand, but to start being great at magic, your foundations need to be great, or there will be no illusion.

When we revisit the basics after multiple years of study, we start to look at them with new eyes and so we start to understand the moves that we’ve been doing for ages more deeply. We started to find problems with ways that we were doing moves and fixes for things that we didn’t even know were broken. We start to develop a smoother way of handling cards that is void of all tension, and eventually, we start to appreciate that some of the basic things, even tricks are the strongest things that we can do.

Fooling magicians

The basics are fun and all, but what about if I want to fool magicians if I want to show other magicians how good I am?

So first of all, that should never be the goal of magic. It is certainly fun to fool other magicians and I’ve had plenty of wonderful evenings sitting down with magicians and jamming about our most recent ideas. But by fooling magicians is not the way to get their respect. The way to get their respect is proper card handling, knowledge, and an overall love for the art of magic.

When we talk about fooling magicians, I see my good friend Michael Vincent fry other magician’s brains all the time with the most basic principles. He fries their brains with techniques that all of them know, only Mike can do them better than any of them know how to do them. Of course, Mike is also a very clever thinker and can reimagine routines in a way that no one has conceptualized before. However, within all of the changes that he makes he is still heavily relying on the basics of sleight of hand listed above. It is all relying on the basics and he is a genius for that.

The Royal Road

So now I want to revisit the basics, but where do I begin and how? Do I just look at my techniques and see what I can improve? Well, yes and no.

You should always look at your techniques and see if you can find problems with them and then try to fix those problems, but, an easier and often more effective way of doing this is to go over a magic book that teaches the basics. In my case, I like the royal road to card magic.

Recently I’ve been going over this book again together with one of my students, and I’ve started to notice so many new details that I’ve never seen before. All because I’m looking at the book with other eyes, with the eyes of a professional.

I started to see why certain moves were done in certain ways but also, I started to notice how powerful some very basic tricks and moves in the book can be. These are details that are not explicitly listed because it would be way too overwhelming for a beginner, but all of those details are there. We can only start to see them once our minds aren’t busy anymore trying to comprehend where our fingers should be placed and what the move should achieve. Now that we are already able to do the move, and we know more applications for the move we can truly start to appreciate the little details and touches, and so the best advice that I can give to any magician out there is:

“Revisit the basics”

If you’ve enjoyed this blog, please share it with your friends, and feel free to subscribe to my newsletter below to get regular updates whenever a new blog is posted.

-Rico