People ask me what my favorite books or videos are.  I personally prefer books over videos.  Although I did learn many tricks from Michael Ammar’s Easy to master card Miracles series,  it was books that taught me the subtleties and theories needed to surpass the Ammar clone of doing magic.  Yes, I said it, I was a Asian Ammar Clone.  (magicians call it A.A.C)  Before I give my list, I will not be listing the basic books that everyone needs to have.  That is of course the Card College series, Expert at the Card Table, Royal Road to Card Magic, and Expert Card Technique.  There are many more, but those are my must haves.  So here is my top list of books that I recommend.

Paper Engine by Aaron Fisher
This book focuses on taking tension out of your card magic.  Designing moves around gravity is an amazing concept.  My favorite book of all time.  When magic is done slow and elegant, we call that person a “Smoothie”.   I love Smoothies.  Not sexually.

By Forces Unseen by Ernest Earick
Move Monkeys beware.  This is the hardest book ever devised on sleight of hand related to a deck of cards.  Currently my Bible®.  You will be seeing more videos from this book.

Card Fictions by Pit Hartling
Even though it is a small book, It’s the only book I would perform every single trick to an audience. Try “Color Sense”.

Revelation by Dai Vernon
The new edition that just came out this year is by far the more beautiful book I have seen.  It is a must have.  Not only do you get to go through Expert at the Card Table again, you get to hear what the master, Dai Vernon, has to say about it.

Pure Effect by Derren Brown
This book is pure gold.  Derren Brown’s touch of mentalism while he was still a card magician?  What else do you need.

Absolute Magic by Derren Brown
This is the only book on theory I would really recommend.  I read it every half year to inspire myself.

No major updates today.  Filling up the blog with some fun sleight of hand stuff.  Dug this video up from the grave.  Tell me if this is convincing as a false cut.  It’s something that either looks good or is just plain obvious.

Password is again the same as the last post.  “What was the Elmsley Count first called?” The _____ Count.

False Swivel Cut from Tony Chang on Vimeo.

Good friend of mine, Gary “Auuuu sexy” Au doing some quick passes for the blog.  Nothing major, caught him off guard doing some passes.  He has some great hands and a major move monkey when it comes to magic.

The password for the video is the answer to this.  “What was the Elmsley Count first called?”  the _____ Count.

Gary Au Pass Work 11.09.09 from Tony Chang on Vimeo.

Here is a prime example of what magicians think good sleight of hand is.  In the video he is “performing” the classic pass, or some sort of horrible shift.  Obviously he is using dupes to trick you into believing that his pass is “My Best Invisible Pass Video card trick magic” there is.  He says in his description of the video so it has to be true.

"Well this is my final pass but it can always be better i do need
to work on my double lifts and color change thou but i would one day do
the pass with out even moving my hands if that is possible. love the
invisible pass no one can catch it even if i am surrounded with 100
people coz they just dont know. Check my other video old one but that
is slow invisible pass + learn how to do this with the tutorial."

So this begs to ask the question.  Is it really that hard to do something so simple?  The layman’s perspective is showing the card in the middle of the deck and squaring up the deck making them believe it is lost in the deck.  For the sake of argument, lets say that using a duplicate card would be the most convincing way while keeping control of the card on top.  Then why does he square up the deck so horribly.  Its like an infant who never seen a deck of cards.  Is it REALLY that hard to square up the deck?

Next time you perform any sleight of hand, ask yourself that question.  Is your D.L. easy on the eyes?  or does it feel like you are turning over a brick?  is it REALLY that hard to turn over a single card?  The whole point of sleight of hand is that it should emulate the same exact action as if done for real.

The video.

Why do magicians think just because they are doing sleight of hand that they can get away with it when it obviously looks like shit?  Does something go off in their brains that say “Oh, that looks perfect! The illusion is complete.”  Looking back now, I can see how horrible I was younger but yet easily blinded to it.  Its like someone new to using Photoshop who would basically put all the filters known to man onto one photo and parade it around like some masterpiece.

I strongly believe in order to break this “spell”, you have to go out and perform for the real world.  They are the real judges.  All those Youtube magicians get no feedback and even if they do, they don’t listen.

Below is an excellent example of this phenomenon.  Be warned, the spell has taken over this kid greatly.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAYN2ZmZpG8&feature=related]

Does this kid really think he fools anyone?  Why does he publish this onto You-tube?  Why does he even film it?  This stupidity is what ruins magic as an art.  Knowing the method does not mean you have mastery over it.  The only reason I think the performance is bare able is because I really do think this person has serious arthritis, the mental toughness of a 3rd grader, and Arachibutyrophobia.

As magicians, we lie to our audiences to create the illusion of magic.  Just like actors aren’t really the characters in real life, they “act” that way to create the belief that he/she is the character.  Being decietful is part of the game.

So then why do magicians get really angry when other magicians try to fool them by non-sleight of hand methods?  For example, Daniel Madison’s color change.  This is pretty amazing in its own right, but why all the controversy about it being a video-editing trick instead of real sleight of hand?  Regardless of what the method might be, the illusion is still the same.

So my question is, do magician’s have some “right” to not get fooled?   I mean we fool magicians all the time with methods of sleight of hand that they don’t know.  But what about making a video of a trick claiming it is sleight of hand but in reality you use some other method like video editing?  Did we step over the line there?  Why can’t we do that?  we do it to laymen all the time.  We tell them false methods making them believe we have more power than we do.  If you think we don’t, then think of pseudo center deal gambling routines.

What gives us the right to bitch and cry foul play when it is us that is being lead in the wrong direction.

What do you think?

-T

Hey guys.  Sorry for the lack of updates.  No more. I have gotten myself a Flip Mino.  I will be updating this hopefully daily or every other day.  Every Sunday I will upload a new video talking and showing little things here and there to help improve your card magic.

Just to soft launch back into this website, Here is my little performance of the Cherry Control.  I WILL be password protecting all my videos due to the lack of ethics in magic lately.  Don’t worry, they are nothing major if you are respectful of the art.  the password is the last name of the Cherry Control’s creator.

More about the whole password thing later this week.  Hopefully Ben Pratt will not convince me to stop doing magic.  He is a douche.

Cherry Control from Tony Chang on Vimeo.

Sorry for the lack of updates.  Surfaced came out last week.  It has taken my soul away and locked it in a cage.  If you have been under a rock, go and get this DVD now.  Its not easy, but anything worth while is never easy.  More postings will come, trust me, I haven’t deserted my 3 readers.

Oh yeah, please do not post your “check out my clip shift! only practiced for 2 hours” youtube video please.  Do yourself and everyone else a favor and don’t embarrass yourself.  If you need something to mesure to, check out this video.  When you can do it this good, feel free to post it.

The best Clipshift.

How do you find that perfect sleight?  That perfect move that makes kids cry and hot women say “so… why should I give a fuck?”  Here is something I recommend any magician to think about when they ask themselves on how good an effect is.

Lets go back to yesterday’s example about the simple effect of a card changing into the selected card.

Once again imagine how the effect would be done if you had magical powers.  How clean would this effect be?  pretty damn clean.  How clear is the effect?  do you even need the deck anymore?

My idea of the perfect effect is this.  You bring out one joker.  You ask them to think of any card, don’t say the card, just think of it.  You ask them to stare at the joker.  With a shake, the joker magically changes into their thought of card.  You give it to the spectator as a souvenir.

Now of course there is presentation envolved, but we are just talking about the method now.  This is my “perfect” effect, you may have one that is even better.  But once you have it, your job is to emulate it as closely as possible with sleight of hand.  How close can you get to that ideal effect?

The idea of magic is to give the illusion of the perfect effect.  So the next time you perform an effect ask yourself is this the best it can be?

If you been in the magic community long enough, you will realize that all the effects and tricks out there are really similar.  They are.  You can only do so much with a deck of cards.  There’s only so many ways to show a random card changing into the selected card.

For this post, we will concern ourselves with the effect of a card changing into a selection.  Very simple effect, which can be presented any way.  My question would be this,

Why isn’t there a standard way of performing this effect? The ultimate method so to speak.

What I mean by this question is this.  If we imagine that we had real magical powers and for some stupid reason we would perform card tricks instead of healing the blind and saving starving children, how would we make this effect work?  Well… by magic.

Now, we obviously don’t have real magic powers, except for the guy who invented the “Indiana”.  But besides him, how would you approach this?  Sleight of hand is the obvious answer. But just like how there is so many variations for a single card effect, there is also many variations for sleight of hand.  There is a god awful amount of methods to control a card to the top and the same amount to perform a color change.

I think there is a perfect method out there for this effect.  My quest in magic is to find the perfect sleight of hand.  Isn’t this something that every magician should be working on?  Why are the majority of performers out there satisfied with just a control to the top because it gets the job done.  Shouldn’t it be PERFECT?

I’m blabbing here, but really think about it.  Why do we have so many ways to perform the same effect when the ultimate purpose for magic is to give the BEST illusion that you do have magical powers. Do you really need another trick?  Another variation?  Why not find the best method and make kids cry and poop in their pants.  They don’t need you to show them 5 variations of the same card trick.  Trust me, they just… don’t.

the video below is my quest to find the perfect method.  It’s progress, but its what keeps me from burning my cards and quitting magic.

Joker being a joker.