mentalism – MagicShow.Tips

Father’s Day Magic Trick!

I was playing with an interactive “touch the screen” style trick for father’s day. This is the type of trick where someone starts by touching a object, then spells/counts several times eventually ending up on an object that you know.

The cool thing that I noticed is that if you spell the three words HAPPY FATHERS DAY the math works out for each word for to make it easy.

To do this you’ll start with five objects. These could simply be little pieces of paper that say things about dads, or whatever. You will line these up. For simplicity, I’m going to just use the numbers 1-5.

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5

Touch the one on the left. You are going to move one space per letter. You can move left or right, but only to the one next to it, you can jump spaces or from end to end. Spell HAPPY, moving one space per letter and keep touching that one.

You’re not on the one or the five, so I’ll eliminate those.

2 – 3 – 4

Now you’ll spell FATHERS moving one space for each letter.

You’re not on the four, so I’ll take that one away.

2 – 3

Now spell DAY, moving one space per letter.

You’re on the 2!

That’s a very simple interactive math trick you can do for father’s day!

-Louie

Making Spirit Hands!

I was procrastinating recently, so I made a couple of spirit hands!

I made a mold of a vintage spirit hand and make these out of resin.

These are ungimmicked, and if you’re interested in one and want to gimmick it yourself, or use it with an existing board you can get one at:
https://www.magicshow.tips/spirit-hand/

-Louie

Spirit Rapping Hand

Awhile ago I made an ungimmicked spirit hand for someone in Arkansas. They then added the gimmick to the hand and decorated it so that it looks old and cool and here’s what it looks like:

I was chatting with the guy who gimmicked the hand and he’s willing to make more. If you’ve been wanting a gimmicked spirit hand, shoot me a note and we can get you pricing options for one!

-Louie

Spirit Rapping Hand

A long time ago I made a mold of a vintage spirit rapping hand that I had acquired and then made a few hand out of resin. (You can read the post about it here).I sold them a long time ago, but someone contacted me asking me to make them one. I has some time, so I made him one:

It turned out well! These hands are kind of a pain to make, so it’s something I don’t offer on my online catalog. However if you want one, feel free to contact me and if I have some time available, I’ll gladly make you one!
-Louie

Pi Day Magic Trick

One of the things I do to try to keep creative is come up with tricks for holidays. While Pi Day 3.14 isn’t a traditional holiday, it’s a theme that I can create a trick for. Here’s a counting trick using Pi Day as the theme.

“We’ll the first 5 digits of Pi which are 3.1415, without the decimal, so we’re using: 31415”

“Let’s start on the first digit, so touch the three. Now you’ll spell “Pi Day” jumping one number per letter. You can move forward, or backwards for each jump, you just can’t jump from end to end. Go ahead and start jumping now.”

“Pi is a number that never ends and I’m going to guess you’re not on either end, so eliminate the 3 and 5. That leaves us with the 1, 4, and 1.”

“Using the number you’re touching, jump that many times, forward or backwards.”

“I’m guessing you’re not on the first number one. That leaves us with a 4 and 1.”

“Using the number you’re not touching, jump that may times.”

“You’re on the number one!”

There you to a simple trick that could be used as a social media video or as newsletter content!

-Louie

Mental Voice vs Inception

When Promystic’s Inception came out many years ago, I immediately got it. My routine with it has become a highlight of my show! It like everything about it, the only downside (and I don’t really think this is) is the price. The unit is about $1k, and for me it’s totally worth it! I use the heck out of it!!

I’ve been looking for a solution for a back up that’s not quite as expensive. Basically I want a unit that I can have around in case of an emergency and something happens to my Inception. In the past I’ve tried Alien Mind Reading and Echo. I didn’t like either of them because they required you to be connected to your phone via bluetooth. The more things you have attached and more connectors the more than can go wrong. Promystic’s Inception is a stand alone unit, there’s nothing additional you need and it’s not wireless connected to anything.

Recently Mental Voice by Blackbox Magic Creations came out and priced at about $200. It’s a stand alone unit and I would say it’s basically a stripped down Inception that’s got a few design flaws.

Here’s what I don’t like about Mental Voice:

It doesn’t have any sort of low battery indicator. They say it will last a month or so with regular use. I don’t want to have to remember which day it was charged last or how many shows its done since it’s last charge.
It has a physical volume sliding lever. This lever sticks out and the volume setting is easy to accidentally change.
The shape of very thick and kinda round near the metal panel. This shape make it difficult to get the bone conductor flat against the person’s head. It’s not hard, but you have to pay attention.
If you have more than one message on it, it’s clunky to toggle between them. If you want to use track #1 for your first show and track #2 for the second and don’t have access to a computer you’ll need to push a button twice for the second track. While this doesn’t sound like a big deal, during a show it is. There’s no feedback (haptic) or visual that you’re on the correct track.
Can’t use other props with it. I know I said that I prefer props that don’t have external things connected to it and that’s true. However I’d be lying if I said I’ve never used Inception‘s ability to connect to other Promystic devices. Mental Voice isn’t compatible with other magic/mentalism props.

With that said, I would say that Mental Voice is Inception with 1/5 of the features for 1/5 of the price. It’d be a good intro to using a bone conduction gimmick to work out a routine before investing in Promystic’s Inception. Then the Mental Voice becomes your emergency back up unit. I play on keeping my Mental Voice, but it will be my backup unit.

One more thing, I would NOT recommend buying direct from Blackbox Magic. I ordered from them it was a sh*t show getting the product shipped to me. I may write a blog post about my horrible experience dealing with Blackbox Magic. Murphy’s now distributes it, so order it from a dealer like Hocus-pocus.com or another reputable dealer.

-Louie

ProMystic 50/50

ProMystic just put out a new trick called 50/50 and it’s great! It’s basically a location of someone holding a stack of your money.

The base routine is someone out of a group holds some money of yours. You say you’re betting your money that you can find it. You then narrow down the group until you have one person left and they have your money.

What I like about the routine is that it really fills the stage with a few bills. It also has a feeling of a chance of failure and while the method isn’t 100% is is 99.9% surefire. There is a strange scenario that I can imagine where it could fail, but it’s very unlikely.

I’ve done this three times as preshow and it’s worked great! I need to do some writing and hopefully can move it into the show soon!

-Louie

ProMystic Color Match FTW!

About a week ago I was able to switch back to using the ProMystic Color Match and I’ve been using it with 100% success! I’m glad to be able to not Anverdi Color Match set where I was constantly getting a missed signal. That doesn’t mean that the Anverdi set is bad, it just doesn’t work for how I work.

The ProMystic set is the set I’ve used for years, and that may be why I prefer it. I know why it works, and when it doesn’t, I know why it’s not working. I feel like I definitely committed giving the Anverdi set a chance. I know tons of people that prefer the Anverdi set over the ProMystic. I think ultimately your performing style will dictate which works better for you.

-Louie

Clock Prediction

Recently I did my clock prediction at a virtual magic open mic. I stumbled on a couple of jokes and probably could have “listened” more, but I think it went well.

One thing I that wasn’t really possible due to me being in a hotel room was that I couldn’t have the clock displayed the whole time. I kinda had it balanced on a chair, but it kept falling off. The routine still has a bit to go, but I like it!

-Louie

Color Match – Figuring it out

After adding a second transmitter to the Anverdi Color Match pens, I’m not having any issues in the show with not getting a signal. This is something that I think that most magicians wouldn’t do because of the cost. It’s literally double what it should cost.

Somehow both sets of transmitters are signaling one receiver, I’m not sure how that’s happens, but it is. I independently tried the transmitter and they are all signaling the same receiver.

This is a good development, however I’d prefer that I have two complete systems running, and not one and half. With two independent systems, I have a backup if the receiver fails.

Hopefully this is the solution for me…

-Louie