Last week at the fair, their sound system only had one input and no mixer. My show uses up 3 channels, so I was in a little bit of a bind. Luckily I usually have a Zoom Recorder in my backpack for recording show audio and working on The Odd and Offbeat Podcast that I cohost with comedy juggler Matt Baker.
The zoom recorder has three inputs, 2 XLR’s and one 1/8 inch, which worked perfectly for my show’s needs. I then used the audio out to plug into the sound system and it worked great! As a bonus, I was also able to record my shows audio so that I could review it!
I’d never used it as a mixer before and glad it worked out, and now I know that in a pinch, I can use it!
One night, last week after my show a kid came up to me as asked if I could do a trick with his pretzel stick. I took it and did a quick little routine:
Of course this wasn’t planned, but I’ve done things like a coin flurry in the past, so the structure of what I was going to do I was familiar with. The part I was worried about was the sleeving and I was kinda amazed that I got the pretzel into my sleeve! Sleeving is something that I can do, but never really have done it in a show, so it was fun to do.
Personally I love “playing” with magic, it’s what keeps me in love with it. I think if I did the same thing the exact same way every time, I would have burnt out a long time ago!
One of the things I’m playing with in my Tik Tik videos is not bumping the edge of the screen to ditch things. Here’s an example of a ditch where my hands are in full view the whole time:
I’m essentially using my forearm to block the drop of the fork. It’s a good clean up, that honestly I think only magicians will notice or appreciate that I didn’t take the lazy route of just dipping my hand to the edge of the screen. It’s not always possible to do it this way, but I think whenever possible using slightly more creative ditches are better.
Over the last few years I’ve started to really prefer the Sanada Gimmick over a thumb tip for stage use. I primarily use it for a bill switch and it allows me to not fold up the bill as small as with the a thumb tip. This makes it play a little bit bigger, but also I think looks more fair.
When I use something like a thumb tip or Sanada Gimmick, I try to stock up on them so that I always have them. I just had 10 arrive in the mail.
These are just for general use whenever I need them. Having access to a lot of them allows me to make some custom gimmicks with them like my tennis ball to confetti gimmick.
If there’s something you use, stock up on it, you never know when they’ll be temporarily or permanently unavailable.
I’ve always been interested in Tommy Wonder’s Cups and Balls routine. I finally plunked down the cash and picked up this set:
Right out the gate, I think the bag is a little bit too small (not long enough) for the cups. You need to be able to tie it shut with the string with the cups in the bag. I really had to force/stretch the bag to get the cups into it and tie it shut. This isn’t a huge deal, as over time I imagine it will stretch and get easier (I hope).
I started by reading the routine in The Books of Wonder Vol 2 and working it out. The routine didn’t feel right, so I then watched some videos of Tommy performing the routine. There’s a lot of flow that’s missing from the book and it really would have benefitted from having a bullet point list of the effects that happen in the routine.
Here’s one of the videos I watched:
One thing that I noticed about the routine is that it’s not a show stopper like when you see Gazzo, Ammar or Bob Read do the cups. At the end of those, there’s a punctuation at the end, a definite end. Tommy’s routine is more of a middle piece than a closer.
In Tommy’s book he mentions that he’s known to magicians for his cups and balls. There’s a clue there, I don’t think he thought it was the best for non-magicians. It’s certainly innovative in how the loads were done, with none from the body/pockets, and resets instantly, but I’m not sure that translates to non magicians as much as it appeals to magicians.
I’m going to learn the routine, and give it a try, hopefully I can get it down in about a month for a week long run of shows I’ll be doing next month.
I just wrapped up building a custom prop for another magician. I don’t know if people know what goes into creating props. Below are the first three attempts at making part of the prop, I forgot to take a picture of the forth and final version.
The first version which is on the left, was kinda my “proof of concept” version and it let me know that the idea was solid.
The middle version was a slight tweak, where the slot is bigger, but that brought me to a second challenge, the top needed to taper in. I also realized I has a little more room to play with with the prop, so I extended the gimmick.
The third version on the right, fit great, but internally I discovered there was a “pinch point”, so I had to go back and to a quick redesign, which led me to the fourth and final version (not pictured).
Looking back, the second version was clunky, but functional. The third version didn’t really work, but the final version worked soo much better than second version. I’m glad I pushed forward to get it to the final version!
If you’ve got a custom prop you are looking to get made, contact me and we can chat about it!
Last night I was trying to come up with some ideas for a Valentine’s Day magic trick for social media. I had some ideas, one was a touch the screen type trick, another was a rose pedal to confetti as well as a couple of other pretty generic ideas.
The one idea that I liked enough to actually record was this:
There’s not much to it, it’s my Take Out Production Box made from a box of Valentine’s Day candy. The shape of the candy box had a couple of challenges to covert to a production box, but it was fun little challenge!
I frequently say that holidays or national days are great days to be creative and try to come up with new tricks around that theme. Some days you’ll simply put new clothes on something old, and other times you’ll come up with something completely new!
The trick “Stirring Silver” by Jay Sankey has always fascinated me. I can do the trick, but really only do it in impromptu situations when I need to bang out something quick. I’m not sure what I don’t like about it, I think that ring spends way too much time on the handle of the spoon in the first phase. I do understand that it needs to be there for how the trick works.
Here’s a version of it that I came up with and I posted a video of it on Tik Tok a bit ago:
The method is different from Jay’s routine, but the effect is visually the same. The challenge with a key is with the shaft soo much shorter than a spoon you have less room to hide things, which is why I had to go in a different direction with the method.
I think the trick came out well, but it’s something I’ll probably never do in my actual work. -Louie
For this tour I started using my Media Star remote control that runs my music with the magnet ankle switch. Early on I realized that it was running about 2 shows before it stopped reliably working. Changing batteries every couple of shows solved the problem, but is annoying and I have a feeling that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
In the show I use the ankle (magnet reed switch) in a few spots to make the music play seamlessly, however there’s one spot where I need it as I can’t use my hands. I have someone from the audience playing sound effects from a fake music remote, and I need to trigger them when they push the button. With the ankle switch giving me problems, I needed to think of a way to make the gag work.
I defaulted to the mentalist’s old friend, Dual Reality! I put three different colored dots on my remote control.
I simply say “push the blue dot” or “push the red dot”, which implies to the audience that there are different buttons, when in reality it’s all the same button. I’ve done this for one day (2 shows) and it’s working out well and is a great, simple solution to the problem of the ankle switch not behaving properly.
Yesterday was the end of the third week on the road performing my new school assembly show. This week I was really focusing on getting more out of the people who help me onstage in the show and letting them “shine” more.
One bit in the show where I draw a picture of a kid. I have the kid face the audience and do different emotions. I was using and older kid in the 3rd to 6th grade range and they weren’t really doing much interesting. My reasoning for an older kid was they are standing on stage by themself, so I was worried a kid that a younger kid would be uncomfortable onstage alone. Turns out I think that was the issue with an older kid, they feel a bit self conscious.
This week I switched a kindergarten or first grade kid and the difference is HUGE! Every kid I’ve used was great, and really played up the emotions that I was asking them to do. Also there’s something that all ages love is seeing a little kid have fun. Their joy is infectious!
It’s little things like this that make a good show great! My show still has a lot of these little things to be fixed.
