Stinger Music

Today I was messing around with adding stinger music to trick that didn’t get the final reaction I wanted. Stinger music is a short, usually upbeat musical tag that’s used to punctuate the end of a trick. I was really surprised at the effect it had on the trick. It took the trick from a mild response (much less than I thought it deserved) to a good response.

The two places I put it, one in a magic trick and one in a mentalism trick worked out great. The mentalism trick was where I think it really needs it, the effect is there, but it lingers in the audience’s heads. I need something to snap it out of their heads, and this may be the way.

Now for me the trick is to make it make sense. I don’t want to just blast music at the end of the trick. I think there needs to be music leading up to the stinger. This isn’t much of a problem, I just need to find music with lyrics that I can talk over.

I’m hoping to add a little bit more theatrical / production elements to the show. I’m trying to “level up” my show a little bit.

Four Card Monte…

Recently I ended up with a collection of magic tricks and in that collection there were a bunch of packet tricks. Most weren’t very good, but that got me thinking about trying to improve them. The first one that I tried was called 4 Card Monte, and there are a lot of packet tricks with this title, so don’t judge them all by this one.

Here’s the effect as written in the instructions, then the effect reworked by me:

The trick as written is pretty bad, and doesn’t make much sense with the addition of a fifth card at the end. I think my version where there’s only four cards shown the whole time makes more sense. The addition of the kicker ending really adds a punctuation to the end.

One thing I think that’s important when you get a magic trick is to not discard because you don’t like the trick as written. Play with it and see if you can make it work!

Leaving My Show…

One thing that’s great about my show is that I can fly with it. However right now my show is in the trunk of my car at the airport in Sacramento, I flew home during a gap between gigs in California. This summer I’m driving to all of my shows, this is due to rental cars being expensive right now and all of the reports I’ve been seeing about people with rental car reservations being denied a car because the rental car company over booked and there are no cars to rent.

Leaving my show in my car always causes me a little bit of stress. When I left the car I locked up my show case:

In my street show I do a chain escape, so my case is locked to my suitcase and they are both locked to my car by about 75 feet of chain! What that means is that if someone wants to steal my case, they can, it’s just going to be a pain in the butt! It’s not a quick smash and grab.

This gives me a little bit of peace of mind leaving it in another state.

Even More Key of Fate…

A few weeks ago I wrote about working on Luca Vulpe’s Key of Fate, you can read about it in these posts:

http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/reimagining-the-key-of-fate/

http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/more-key-of-fate/

The big change to the initial changes I made is that originally I was using four keys with three spectators, with the idea that I none of them would win, and then I’m surprised when one of them wins. I’m now doing it with three keys and three spectators, so that one of them is going to win, and two lose. I think knowing that one is guaranteed to be a winner, and it’s a game takes some of the sting out of the two that don’t win.

The other change is the prize. I’m forcing the prize as a bar of soap. This prize is something funny, easy to travel with or acquire in any city and for some reason the kids who have won it seem to be excited about it!

I just ordered a box of hotel soap:

It’s pretty cheap, coming in at less than 50 cents per bar. I bought a box of fifty, so I’m kinda committed to doing this routine fifty times, unless it really starts falling flat with audiences.

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Amy G

The Moisture Festival hits the phone lines to welcome in the multi-talented and hilarious Amy G. Amy discusses how she transitioned from a shy kid to a powerhouse performer that has traveled to every country you can think of (and more you can’t think of.)

She discusses what life was like for her during covid and how she was forced to pivot to something she never knew could be so much fun. A fun and inspirational interview that we know you are gonna love. We sure did! 

Final Virtual Show…

My final scheduled virtual magic show was yesterday at 9:30am…and it was for a group of middle school aged kids. I’m going to say that middle school age isn’t the ideal demographic for 9:30am. They had fun, and so did I!

This show had some problems which are why virtual shows stressed me out. The big one was my internet dropped about 2 mins from the start of the show. I was back in the zoom before the show started. it’s one of those things that had it happened 5 mins later, it would have been a bigger issue. Zoom also wasn’t recognizing my mic, so I had to use my laptop’s mic. That also wasn’t a huge deal, but it just adds to the stress of these gigs.

I ran this show solo, normally I have my daughter run the production on the show. It was fun, but I’m glad to be back to performing in person.

I had a great time learning to perform in a virtual venue, and I really loved creating magic for virtual shows. I’m not saying I will never do another virtual show, there are just no more on my calendar.

Final Virtual Show…

Today is the the day that I perform my final virtual magic show! I’m pretty excited that I’m back to doing in person shows, however going forward I will still do virtual shows if requested. In the last year and a half, I think I’ve figured it out at a workable level. My virtual show was decent, not crazy amazing, but passable.

The HUGE thing that I’m not going to miss going forward is setting up my studio. I don’t have a dedicated space to do virtual shows, so I had to build and tear down the studio every time I did the show. That made the effort to do the virtual show close to what it would be to drive to an in person show.

The other big headache is technology. I think that’s the thing that was the most stressful about these shows. The internet has mysterious dropped out during shows, or gotten laggy while I was performing. That part that’s completely out of my hands, but affects the perception of how good the show is caused me a lot of stress!

I’m hoping today’s show virtual show is uneventful!

Capping the Kicker…

I’m really trying to clean up the sloppiness that has crept into my show over the last 18 months of not really performing it much. That’s my main goal this week at the fair. However I am adding some newer stuff to the show and also trying to figure that out.

One thing I’m working on in my version of Luca Volpe’s Key of Fate. It’s playing alright, but it was missing some punch at the end. I was trying to figure out what to do, as the trick has a kicker ending, so I can’t really add another kicker on top of the first one.

What I ended up trying was adding some “stinger” music. Music that’s upbeat that I play right after the kicker is revealed, and it worked great! It got a much more applause at the end. Now I’m not sure this is how I want to do it, but it is a definite improvement!

Small things…

I’ve been working on my show this week at the fair. One thing that I’m doing is trying to correct little things. Little things are easy to fix, and can add up to a much tighter show!

In my show I do object in ball of yarn. I have a bowl that’s on a stand and it’s been on stage right with me and someone from the audience standing center stage. In it I give the person from the audience a fishing pole to reel in the yarn. Because the fishing pole is right handed, the person is using their upstage arm to turn the reel. I think the picture would look better if you saw the person’s hand cracking the reel.

The super simple fix was to having the bowl placed at stage right. Now you can see the person’s upstage hand cranking the reel. It really didn’t take much effort to figure this out, other than paying attention to the show.

On it’s own, it’s not a huge leap for the show, but bundle this with a dozen other small changes and it starts to be noticable!

Simple Solutions…

This week I’m performing at a fair and here’s the view of the audience from the stage:

The table and chairs are for the judges of the pageant which happens at the end of the day (after my shows). Also all of the chairs have notes that say “reserved on them”.

This particular fair has trouble getting audiences to watch shows at this stage.

Can you guess why?

If you answered there’s no where for the audience to sit, you are correct. Most people given the choice will choose to not sit on the grass.

For my first show, I told people they could sit on the chairs. Quickly I filled all of the chairs for my show. With the success of giving people somewhere to sit, for my second show I drug over a bench. That bench filled. For my final show I drug over two more benches and those benches filled.

The solution was soo simple, give the people somewhere to sit, and they’ll watch the show.