It’s a strange world we’re working in. I was just hired to do roving magic, and in a pre-covid world that’s not strange, however it is in the covid world. That means I need to on some no-contact close up magic. The booker wants something that resembles traditional roving, not small “street style” shows, so I will be working out of my pockets with no table or sound system.
Before you get on me about working during the pandemic, there’s a few things I feel I should mention. Way back in March when cities and states first started putting in regulations I decided that I was going to go by what the local health department where the venue is located says is OK (read the post here). Doing a live, in person show is allowed where the venue is located, and there are some restrictions that I’ll have to follow. I’m not required to do a no contact, however that’s what I’m planning on doing.
Looking at the restrictions, I can still do a lot of my normal roving set that is kept in my pockets. However I need to work on a couple things to add to my normal set. I’m going to add some rubber band tricks. They are small, but can play from a short distance. I’ve done rubber band tricks in the past, so putting them back in isn’t too hard.
The one trick I’m adding is ring on rubber band. In the past I’ve played with the one in Michael Ammar’s book, as well as the one in Thomas Blomberg’s book. I just downloaded Pinnacle by Russ Niedzwiecki and have Pi: Ring on Band by Michael Scanzello on it’s way to me. I think I can put together a workable sequence, it just needs to be a few phase. This is more to have as filler if I need to add some time to a set.
Cocktail Demo…
On Monday night I was a guest on the IBM’s facebook live where I played some online games with Billy Hsueh and Amy Nichols. Before the game, I did a cocktail demo. You can watch it here:
There’s a couple of magic tricks in the demo. I like using a loaded cloth to produce a bottle that’s not loaded in the cloth, then producing the bottle in the cloth and finally producing a third bottle, that’s not in the cloth. All three bottles use different methods, and it’s a fun little sequence.
After having done a few of these demos I’m starting to have little tricks that I like and keep falling back on. I think it’s good to have my “go to” tricks, but I still need to be creating new stuff for them.
Quad-Triumph…
Here’s a video of the Triumph shuffle sequence that I wrote about yesterday. The view is my view, so you can see an angle of the cards that the audience wouldn’t normally get to see.
I kinda like the four shuffles where you flip half over each time, but I still don’t think it’s better than the standard Triumph routine that most people do.
Less Than Triumphant…
Way back in March I was playing with using the old card reveal where you drop the deck on the table and the top card flips over as a clean up for a Triumph type effect.
You can read the post here
It’s an interesting way to clean up a reversed card on top of the deck. You get a little trick that happens that does the dirty work for you.
Last night I was shuffling some cards and came up with a Triumph sequence that left you in position to do the drop clean up. Here’s the sequence:
- Card is selected and controlled to the top
- Zarrow shuffle with half face up and half face down (selection remains on top)
- Strip the face down bottom half to the right, flip them face up. Riffle shuffle by running about 10 cards with your left hand, then shuffling with both hands, leaving about 10 or more cards of the right hands stack to fall on top of the left hands stack. This will put the face down selection about 10 or more cards from the top of a deck that’s face up (the audience thinks they are mixed face up into face down).
- Strip the top half to the left, flip them over (face down card will show) and do a Zarrow Shuffle.
- Strip the bottom card (face down cards) the right and shuffle the card together. Have the left hand’s packet’s top card be the top card of the shuffled deck.
The order from from the top down is a face down card, then the rest of the deck face up with a selection face down somewhere in the middle of the deck. - Do the drop flip over reveal thing to flip over the top card of the deck.
- Spread them out to show all of the cards are now facing the same direction except for their selection.
I’m going to be 100% clear that I think this sequence isn’t the best way to do a this style of trick and is inferior to the common method of a Zarrow Shuffle, Daryl’s Triumph display (Don’t know the name of it) and then openly flipping over half the deck.
It is a sequence that gets me into a position where I can do the drop flip over thingy. It was also a fun exercise to try to figure out how to get the cards where I needed them to be.
Zoom Angle…
Recently I was hanging out with a friend on Zoom and he did Goshman’s Cards Thru Newspaper. This is a fantastic trick and I think a really good trick for Zoom due to the static camera angle. It makes everything easy to see and laid out well (unless you’re watching from a cellphone, like I was).
Exploring trick that aren’t right for a live show for your virtual show is one of the very fun things about right now. Personally I’m doing things I’ve never really been able to do before, it’s great!
Servante!!
The switch of tables from my smaller table top to a larger one that’s mounted on a speaker stand is done. First I added the new, larger dice holder and today I put the servante on it. I 3d printed some brackets to hold the wire frame of the servante to the table.
Here’s how it looks from the floor looking up:
Finally here’s what it looks like from where I stand behind the table:
In my live, in person show, I don’t do any performing on the table top. It’s simply a place to set things. However for virtual shows, action happens on the table top. I really love having a servante and it kinda makes me want to put a topit in all of my coats for when we get back to in person shows. It’s super handy!
Upgrading My Virtual Dice…
One of the things I’m always doing it trying to improve what I currently do. Right now in my virtual show I do a modified version of my Cee-Lo trick, which is a cup and dice routine. This ends with the production of two large dice. The large dice are 1 1/4 inches on each side. To give you some perspective, the picture below is one of the jumbo dice next to a regular die.
The reason that the trick uses 1 1/4 inch dice is that for a live, in person show, it makes the loading procedure work. The cup will hold two 1 1/2 inch dice, but the method where the spectator loads the cup for you doesn’t work well with a larger die.
I was cleaning up and found the old set of 1 1/2 inch dice I tried using for Cee-Lo. It hit me, since I’ve changed my loading procedure for virtual shows, and there are no spectators to handle the props, why not move to the larger size dice. To give you an idea of visually how much bigger they are, the pictures below are a 1 1/2 inch die next to a regular die and a 1 1/4 inch die.
That extra quarter inch makes it look massive! The nice thing about how I load the cups for live virtual shows is that the size of the die doesn’t really matter. I’m getting a little more visual impact for no extra work! I’m a fan of that.
Mixology Magic
There’s an old saying, “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” and this has really hit home for me during the pandemic. I’m having a blast making little cooking/mixology videos.
I’m doing one today for the International Brotherhood of Magicians, it’s an IBMfizz! Here’s the magic ad for it:
Here’s the recipe for it:
I think you can watch the video on the IBM’s facebook page.
I’m enjoying making these videos, it’s a fun theme to add trick to!
Slow Mode…
One of the interesting things about right now is that we live in a world where I can do a show that I did months ago. On Sunday I was in a show where my bit was prerecorded, and I just hung out in the chat section. It’s strange chatting about your show with people while they are watching your show.
That said, I’m not a fan interacting through YouTube’s comments. Every time I’ve done it “Slow Mode” comments have been on/enabled and you can’t have decent interactions with people. Any back and forth quickly gets buried in the chat and makes no sense. I think it takes a lot of the fun out of having me in the comments interacting live with people.
Maybe I’m a dinosaur and the idea of interacting with people in real time is a holdover from being a live, in person performer. I hope it’s not, and that people still want that interaction.
Simple Virtual Set Up…
Sometimes I’m doing a quick virtual show spot and it doesn’t really need much set up. For this short spot, I did a simple set up:
It’s a light, camera, mic and an iPad that’s set up as a second screen for my laptop. Not much extra was needed for this gig, and I was just dealing with hand held props.
The softbox light was a great addition to my home studio. It’s super bright and does a great job lighting up my small space. I like it a lot more than the panel LED’s I had been using.