Hope no one had this thread before.

Heres what this thread is about.

Ever had a great performance that made your audience go wow!

OR

Ever screwed up badly?


Share your experiences here!


I am new to magic, but have been performing to my little cousins. Today I amazed my K2 cousin with some VERY basic coin magic.

I never learn coin magic, just got the idea and tried it.

I keep pulling out coins from his shirt, shorts hair etc.

Some time later, he started thinking he had coins in his shirt! He started pulling "coins" from his shirt. :D

Then I made the coin disappear again and "throw" it at him. :)

I never "took" the coin back and he still thought the coin is in his shirt XDD




Failures...or just plainly, "I-sc**wed-up"

The invisible palm.

I did it on the bed ( yes i know, its STUPID) and my sis saw the d****e. <_<

Forgetting patters or steps etc..

P.S My sis has promised not to tell anyone. So I can confide in her. Lets hope she keeps her promise :P

[COLOR=red]*Please, you don't have to describe how you vanish your coins in such details*

Well, wait till you hit the stage. Failure and Success can make a big difference in your life.

A failure to me, means that I did not practise enough and my technical skill is not there, so time to hit back the basic. Alot of time, the problem won't hit you until you met an unexpected crowd, or audience. Expect the unexpected, which is the critical part. I met one before and it hit me really bad, I won't further explain as the failure is part of an important routine i had.

A success to me, is very simple, where the audience applause and the client was very happy with my performance. Its when the urge to perform again will be there, though its tiring, but its all worth while. Thus, its not just about making it right, its about making the magic appear, the Art of Astonishment.. Like what Paul Harris Said.

No worries, I am sure you are not the only one that make mistake when you perform. Everyone who does magic in their life will face failure.

Just make sure that if you are doing a paid show, only do those that you are really good with, for which the chance of failing is close to zero. Which is why I only have a few solid trick which I am very confident in. Then again, no matter how good you are with these stuff, there will still be failure once in awhile. But what is crucial here is how you going to react to it. Such as make a joke out of it or whatever that can bluff through your audience or cover it up. For instance sometimes when I do my ambitious routine, there are times where the card doesn't jumps back to the top, my fault of cause. But I just say something to cover it up and they do believe it.

As for success I think this is pretty much easy to identify. When the audience claps, say you are good, ask for your namecard and all. I think that is considered as successful.

Don't think you should confide in your sis. As much as she might be a very trustworthy person, she might just be tempted to share with her good friends, also warning them "not to tell anybody" (we all know how secrets became "non-secrests)

Also it would make her lose all sense of amazement for magic. I should know... I explained a few effects for my gf last time, and let's just say it was more harm than good.

I know sometimes how hard it is to keep magic secrets. That's why we encourage ppl to come for gatherings, know more friends whom you can share some secrets without harming your own "magical future".

I fully agree with LarryDK's post and he's got some good advice there as well. But sometimes, failure in magic, is not just technical handling and basic execution, it could be reading your audience wrongly, presenting it the wrong way. The technical kind of failing is 'unforgivable' (in a sense) but failing because of the wrong presentation (ie. no audience reaction) you can tweak it.

I think it is more high probability that most of us have failed at some effects more than once before. Be it a sudden technical issue, or the wrong presentation. I have experienced stupid things that happened because i forgot to check my stuff before i perform.

But success, well, it is the resounding applause, and exactly just like Larry has said, astonishing your audience, because magic is just that - art of astonishment (Paul Harris).

Hm... thanks muscleaxl!

haha, my lips are sealed.



*sorrry for the lengthy description, got carried away.* :lol:


Just asking though, not wanting to go

:off: but, how long did all of you all practice before you show the tricks to friends , parents, strangers etc?

The technical part: takes as long as the time you need to perfect your sleights and have a reasonable patter for it. ...

For the emotional part, you only need to pluck up the guts to do it. Easier said than done, I know.

There is no guarantees in life, sometimes you will just screw up. When that happens, just don't take it too hard, improve, learn and move on. I should know... I have screw up more times than I care to count, but hey I had my moments too!!

I don't know whom your targeted audience is, but try not to perform too much for friends and relatives. They can be pretty cruel because of familiarity and prepare for huge blows to your confidence.

But again, not many newbies have the chance or balls enough to perform for strangers at the start (including me), so look out for your own opportunites.