The New Schedule

The new schedule for the 2020 Jerx Season starts today

There will be a new post daily on the 1st-20th of the month.

Monday thru Friday the posting will be magic related. At least to some degree.

The weekends will be for non-magic content, with Saturdays being reserved for music posts.

“I don’t come here for non-magic posts!”

Well, don’t come here on the weekend, ding-dong.

After the 20th of each month, posting will cease as I turn my attention to that month’s newsletter, which will come out at the end of each month from now through December.

You might wonder how going from 12 posts a month to 20, and from four newsletters a year to 10 is supposed to be less burdensome on me. Well, keep in mind that the post from the 17th of this month is the new standard for this site. So there will be more posts, but they’ll be stupider. And I just think breaking up the schedule this way is going to help me find the right balance insofar as the time spent working on the site, the newsletter, the next book, practicing, coming up with ideas, testing ideas, learning my multiplication tables, etc.

On the 20th of each month I’ll tease what’s in the newsletter so supporters will have something to look forward to during the break.

And—supporter or not—you can come back to 20 straight days of posts every time the calendar page turns. It will just give you something to look forward to each month, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony style.

And we’ll all be smokin’, chokin’, rollin’ blunts… or whatever the magic blog equivalent of that is.

The Bubble: Part 3

Here is an example of an extra-presentational—or perhaps meta-presentational (I haven’t quite landed on the terminology yet)—technique that majorly impacted the responses I was getting to a trick I’ve used for years.

For almost a decade now I’ve performed an effect by Andy Nyman from his book, Bulletproof. The effect is called Windows. In it, you have seven cards, each with a different emotion written on it. Happiness, anger, etc. The spectator selects one of the cards—apparently you don’t know which card—and they imagine a memory associated with that emotion. You look in their eyes and you’re able to tell them the emotion they’re thinking of.

The method is simply that the emotion cards are in a known order and you mix them in a way that doesn’t affect their order. Then you note which card they took by getting a peek at the card above it in the stack. It may be the least exciting method in the history of magic/mentalism, but still the trick usually receives a good reaction.

Then one time I did the trick for someone and their response seemed significantly more intense than usual, maybe three times as strong. I assumed this was just a quirk of the person I was performing for, or their relationship to the emotion they chose, or perhaps the specific memory they were thinking of prompted a stronger reaction in some way.

But then it happened twice more. a few months later. I was showing them the same trick that I had been performing for many years, but now—on occasion—people seemed to find it significantly more affecting.

Why?

Well, before I tell you what I figured out, let’s imagine the typical ways someone might try and improve the method for this trick. Here are some ideas:

1. Use more cards: Instead of just 7 emotions, why not 20 or 40? Surely more possibilities would make it more impressive.

2. Add a better false shuffle and a more sophisticated way to peek what card they chose. The handling Nyman recommends is super beginner-friendly. It would not be hard to come up with something more clever.

3. Hell, maybe we could use cards with little implanted electronics in them so we could know what card was chosen without getting near the cards at all.

4. Or, get rid of the cards altogether. Maybe use an app that would allow them to look at an emotion from a list and we could get a peek on our phone or watch. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea. Marc, add this to Xeno.)

Now, all of these ideas are fine. And likely they could make the trick somewhat stronger. But I think we’re only talking about very minor differences. These are changes that might affect the score “inside the bubble,” but they wouldn’t have much of an effect on the experience of the trick, so it would likely not change the impact of the experience that greatly.

So what was causing the stronger reactions I was getting?

Well, it took me a while to figure it out, but then I discovered what it was.

In almost all of my performances of that trick, I would pull out the cards with the emotions on them and then go into the effect. But the three times it got a much stronger reaction, that’s not what I did. In those instances I had grabbed some business cards from wherever we were at and made the cards in front of them.

It was the same trick. Same method. Same presentation. But here the “extra-presentational” technique used was making/obtaining the props in the audience’s presence.

Now, I was just doing this as a matter of practicality. This wasn’t a “technique” I was using. At least not at first. I wanted to show them the trick, but I didn’t have those cards with me, so I just wrote down the words on some cards with them there.

If you don’t see why this could be a significant change, try and put yourself in their position. If I bring out pre-made cards to show you something, you’re going to think, “Oh, this is something he’s planned. Something he’s done before. Probably a lot.” But if I just make the cards in the moment with you sitting there, that can feel like a spur of the moment thing between the two of us. Maybe I’ve never even done this before. Who knows. But even if you know it’s a trick, and even if you assume it’s something I’ve done before, it’s still going to feel more spontaneous and personal than if I pull out my pack of pre-fab emotion cards. Gathering/creating the props in the moment is an extra-presentational technique that suggests, “I hadn’t planned this, but there was something about this moment, with you specifically that makes me want to try this thing out.”

That runs counter to people’s expectations regarding magic. They don’t usually believe it matters too much who the audience is. When David Copperfield floated the paper rose for that lady, nobody thought, “Well, I guess he found just the right person that created the ideal circumstances to float a paper rose.” No, they realize he could do the same thing for any woman, or a corpse, or a ficus plant.

---

As discussed in the previous post, “The Bubble,” that I’ve been writing about in this series consists of the potential area within a person’s range of experiences that they might rate a magic trick. At one time or another in your past, you’ve probably performed for someone who considers magic frivolous or stupid and it didn’t matter how good the trick you performed was, they were just not going to see it as an enjoyable experience. And you’ve probably performed for someone who just really likes the experience of watching magic and they respond really well to anything you show them. If you’re lucky, you may have performed for both of these types of people at the same time. When that happens, the reality of this bubble concept I’m talking about becomes very clear. This is a good education that it’s not all about the strength of the trick. Their reaction is going to be dictated in a large part depending on where their “magic appreciation” bubble exists.

The reason I think it’s beneficial to recognize the bubble is because I know that for me, in the past, I wasted a lot of time jumping from trick to trick, dissatisfied with the reactions I was getting. Even though they were good reactions, I felt there was the possibility for something deeper and more intense. And I was looking for that in better tricks and techniques and presentations—but that’s all just bubble shit. You definitely want that all to be strong, but those things are limited in how much they can affect people. The real powerful stuff is everything that surrounds the effect.

It would be like if you were trying to create the best dinner experience for someone you were interested in and you concentrated solely on finding the perfect recipes, the best dinnerware, and the nicest table-cloth. Sure, that’s all part of it, but only to the extent the other person cares about such things (their “food appreciation bubble”) What’s going to make that the best dining experience is the conversation and the connection and the elements that stand out as particularly fun or interesting or romantic or surprising.

I think this is true with magic too. It’s the elements that surround the effect that truly make the experience for someone.

The best way to exceed the limits of their magic bubble is not to go on an endless search for a more amazing trick to show people. The way to get reactions outside their bubble is to defy their expectations of what the experience of a trick is going to be like. And I think there are countless techniques to achieve this. Read through this site if you need ideas (or if you’re a supporter and you’re a lazy bitch, wait for the next book).

The Bubble: Part 2

[Note: First: “Hey, Andy, I thought the idea was to start doing short posts?” Yes, that’s the plan. Once March rolls around and the new schedule commences, expect shorter, breezier, posts.

Second, I don’t know how clear this post is. If you don’t really “get” what I’m trying to say here, that’s fine. I’m still kind of working my way towards a better way of explaining the concept. This post might be pretty abstract, but tomorrow’s post will have a couple concrete examples.]

---

Yesterday I wrote about the testing we did that compared the simple handling of a trick against the more advanced handling of the same trick and showed how it significantly increased the audience’s rating of that trick. (Presuming the advanced handling creates a more visual or more convincing illusion.)

I also included this incredibly informative graph to plot the results of where the simple handling and the advanced handling fall as far as people’s rating of the trick goes. (At a 5.8 and an 8.5 respectively.)

The advanced handling scores almost 50% higher than the simplified handling. So the hours you put into working on sleights and the effort you put into carrying around gimmicks is not wasted. How could anyone suggest it’s wasted effort if people enjoy the tricks 50% more?'

Ah…. but that’s not what that chart tells us exactly.

That chart was their rating of the trick against other magic tricks.

But that’s not why you’re showing people magic. At least, that’s not why I’m showing people magic. I want the entire experience to resonate with them. I don’t just want them to like a trick relative to other tricks. I want to show them something that feels incredibly worthwhile on its own.

---

When we asked people to rate their enjoyment of the experience of watching those ace assemblies, the simplified version got an average score of 6.8 and the more advanced handling got a 7.0

At first blush this might look confusing. The people who rated the trick a 5.8, just on the basis of the trick itself, rated the experience of watching the trick a 6.8? And the people who rated the trick itself an 8.5 rated the experience of watching it only a 7.0?

It almost feels like there’s something counterintuitive going on here. Like the results don’t make sense. Like we need to come up with some psychological theory to explain them. “Maybe people don’t like being fooled.” Or something like that. But actually, the rationale behind this scoring is perfectly logical and mathematical without having to do any mental calisthenics.

The problem is, we’re too close to the subject of magic to understand it.

---

So let’s imagine we’re talking about something else. Let’s say tap dancing (if you know a lot about tap dancing, then think of some other subject you don’t know about).

Let’s imagine two universes. In both universes I know nothing about tap dancing.

In Universe One, you have me watch someone who has studied tap for a month and ask me to rate their performance out of 1-10, I might say, “They look pretty good. I give them a 6.”

In Universe Two, you put me in front of the greatest tap dancer in the world and ask me to rate their performance. I might not know the intricacies of the art, but I’d sill probably be able to tell this was quite impressive. Let’s say I give it a 9.5.

Now, in both universes, you ask me to rate my enjoyment of the experience of watching the tap dancing presentation. A rating of 10 would mean it’s on par with the ultimate experiences of my life. A rating of 5 would be neutral. And the further you get below 5, the more negative the experience would be for me.

In Universe One I say, “You know, I haven’t seen too much tap dancing in person. That was kind of interesting. I’d give the experience a 6.5.”

In Universe Two I say, “You know, I haven’t seen too much tap dancing in person. That was really impressive. I’d give the experience a 7.”

In that context the numbers make sense, yes?

When I’m ranking the tap-dancing just as tap-dancing, then anything that is in the area of “competent to amazing” will be in the 5-10 range. But when I rank it as an experience, that ranking is going to be bound by the bubble that represents my potential appreciation for tap dancing. That bubble may only exist between 6.5 and 7—that may cover my the full range of my ability to appreciate tap dancing from a competent performer to the best in the world.

---

The same thing is happening with the magic ratings. The blue graph above represents their ranking of the trick against other tricks. Essentially it represents where in the bubble itself the trick ranks. We’re zoomed in on the bubble. But that bubble exists somewhere on their range of experiences from negative to positive.

So, when we zoom out, we’re actually looking at something like this…

That bubble is going to be in a different position for each person—depending on their innate appreciation for magic—but I feel this is a good representation of where it is on average for a layman.

In my experience testing these things, if you present a naked, unembellished trick to a layman and then have them rate the experience of watching that trick (relative to other life experiences) you will get something that falls into this range, on average. And that’s whether it’s a card trick, cups and balls, linking rings, coins across, or whatever. (This assumes the trick fools them.) Whether people naturally like magic or naturally dislike magic, they’re still going to have some sort of range. And while I’ve never really crunched all the numbers across the board on this mathematically, I estimate that range to generally be around 6.4 to 7.4. That’s the “average bubble” for a magic trick as an experience.

(In a future post I’ll give more details on how we get random people from all walks of life to synchronize their “experiential” rating in a way that makes it an actually useful measurement for us to use. It took some time to figure out how to explain the concept so everyone was applying a similar standard.)

You might say, “A 7.4 is our average ceiling for a trick? That seems kind of underwhelming.”

That’s not how I would look at those numbers. They should actually be seen as encouraging. They suggest just performing a trick competently gets you around a 6.4. Magic is inherently on the positive side of the experience rating when performed with any kind of baseline competence. (Now, what constitutes a competent performance is a conversation for another day.)

---

Again, keep in mind that I’m talking about the average layperson. It’s different when you’re very familiar with the subject. The bubble that represents your potential level of appreciation for something expands (in both directions) the more familiar you are with that subject because you are able to see and appreciate (or find flaws in) the things the uninitiated can’t.

---

So what’s the takeaway here?

Here’s how I see it…

Most of the things we get excited about as magicians—the mastery of more demanding sleights; cleverer gimmicks; new methods—are things that tend to only affect an audience’s rating within their bubble of how they rate magic tricks. Within that bubble, the difference may be significant, but when you look at the experience as a whole, it carries much less weight. If your goal is to be the most popular guy at the magic convention, it makes sense to spend 1000s of hours perfecting an invisible bottom deal. But if your goal is to go out and provide regular people more engaging experiences using magic, then it’s probably not a great use of time to “perfect” your methodology much past the point where you have something that already fools people. You’re going to hit the limits of their appreciation for an effect long before you hit the limits of your potential to “improve” on it to a degree they can’t perceive.

I don’t think that’s exactly a controversial point. I think if you’re someone who wants to master the hardest moves in magic because you think it’s going to make you a better magician, you’re a dope. But I don’t really believe that’s how most people think anyways. I think they think, “I want to master the hardest moves in magic because I want to master the hardest moves in magic.” It’s more of an inward focused objective than an outward one. I have no issue with that.

---

In the description of the testing, I mention that the tricks were performed “naked” with no real presentation other than a description of the effect. So you may think the answer to wringing a higher rating for the the experience of the effect would be to add proper patter and routining. While I believe that can make a trick stronger, I still think it’s kind of limited in the overall experiential impact it can have.

Again, let’s look at an analogy. If I tell you a joke from a joke book, and it makes you laugh, that’s a successful joke. You could rank that joke on a scale of 1-10 and since it made you laugh it would probably be at least a 5. If it made you laugh a lot, it might be a 10.

But that 1-10 ranking is going to exist in your bubble that represents how much you appreciate a joke. For most people that bubble would probably be, I would guess, in the 5-6 area as far as a joke as an “overall experience.” The funniest joke-book type joke you ever heard probably didn’t have a huge impact on you. It was a bright moment in your day and then forgotten.

Now if you work on that joke and make it really punchy and you perfect the timing and the delivery, you will probably push it to the high end of the bubble, but you’re not going to go much beyond that because it’s still “just a joke.” Similarly, a really polished trick with good patter might push the boundaries of the trick bubble. But if it still feels like “a trick” then you’re still going to be somewhat contained by the boundaries of the “trick bubble” of the person you’re performing for.

---

In Tuesday’s post I mentioned the next book would cover “supplementary presentational ideas…things that aren’t necessarily trick-specific, but concepts you can apply to many different tricks in order to increase the impact they have on spectators.” One of the reasons I want to write that book is because of this testing. The data we’ve collected suggests there’s something of an upper limit to the extent that working on your technique and presentation can increase the strength of an effect. But we’ve found we can affect people’s “experience” scores with some of the extra-presentational ideas (extra as in “beyond”), that I’ve written about on this site. This is how we can consistently push people experiences outside of that bubble.

---

As I said, this is probably all confusingly written. I think tomorrow’s post will clarify the concept somewhat and then I’ll refine it further in months to come. I think if you perform regularly for real people you may already understand where I’m coming from. You’ve probably had the experience where you performed a trick in a way that got a significantly stronger reaction than it had in the past. And it probably wasn’t because you went from using a double-undercut to using a side-steal. In my own performances (and in our testing) the biggest increase in reactions to the experience of watching magic come from some small thing that makes the effect feel more personal, or more spontaneous, or more surreal, or less like a “just a magic trick.” Those are the tactics I’ll be collecting for the next book.

The Bubble: Part 1

In the history of mankind, no one has been involved with asking more people to rate magic tricks on a scale of 1-10 than myself. “Who are you trying to impress with that?” you might ask. No one. It’s not a boast, just a sad fact.

The focus group testing I helped start in NYC has been going on for almost 15 years now. In the early years it was super informal and sporadic. These days it’s just mostly informal and somewhat less sporadic since this site has been around to fund it more regularly.

One of the tricks we used to include somewhat frequently in a set of magic tricks when testing was an ace assembly. We’d use it as kind of a “palate cleanser.” It’s a solid trick. It’s fairly simple to follow. It’s generally more impressive than the type of card trick your uncle might do between bridge hands. But it’s also not so flashy or spectacular that it’s just inherently going to WOW people by its nature. We would perform the trick “unembellished,” meaning, without any sort presentational touches or patter besides the most basic sort of thing. “I’m going to put these four aces in the in four separate locations and put three cards on top of each,” yadda, yadda, yadda.

In the early years of testing, the ace assembly was often performed by my friend, Eric. The assembly he used was a fairly standard, beginner friendly version that involved an ATFUS style switch of the aces and no display of the aces after the initial lay-down sequence (since they were already in the lead packet at that point.)

In 2013, Eric left NYC and moved to LA for work. The testing went on and continued to evolve over the next six years. Then in 2019, Eric returned to NY and started helping out with the testing again. We again had him performing an unembellished ace assembly as a sort of “baseline” standard magic trick occasionally in our testing.

But this version of the trick was totally different. It used the McDonald’s Aces gimmicks and some handling which allowed for incredible visual disappearances (well, technically transformations) of aces that were just there, only to be found in the leader packet moments later. It was so much more impressive than the basic handling he used to do.

Last year we decided to test the “simple” version of the ace assembly against the more complex gimmicked version of the same trick. I was wondering… what if the audiences just ended up rating them the same? Wouldn’t that be interesting or funny or sad, if we spend our time and energy working on more impressive sleights and cleverer gimmicks, and—in the end—it has no real effect on how people rate a trick?

Or, even more interesting, what if the simplified version scored better? The counterintuitive results we occasionally get in testing are the ones that I’m most interested in because it means there is some detective work to do. We need to go back and determine where the disconnect is between what we expected and what we got.

However, in this case, the expected result is what we got. The more visual, difficult, and seemingly more “impossible” version did, in fact, score significantly higher when we asked people to rate the tricks on a scale of 1-10, where a 5 would be considered a fine, average trick and a ten would be as good as any magic trick they’d ever seen.

On that scale, the “simple” version of the ace assemble averaged a 5.8, and the more complex version averaged an 8.5. (Different groups rated each trick. It wasn’t the same group viewing both.)

That seems pretty straightforward. We also looked at two other tricks, again, presented with only the most basic presentation. We did a two card transposition effect and a Twisting the Aces effect. For both we had a simpler “easy-to-master” version up against a version that required more advanced card handling and offered stronger, more convincing visuals. And each time the more advanced version scored significantly higher (around 40% higher) than the simple version.

“So… you’re saying more deceptive effects that require gimmicks or more expert handling will be rated higher as tricks than simpler versions? Ok. Pretty sure we could have figured that out on our own. I think you’re running out of stuff to test.”

Ah! But this is where it gets interesting. Or should I say, tomorrow is where it gets interesting. Because that simple graph above doesn’t tell the whole story. Tomorrow we’ll look at it from a different perspective and it will become clear why this testing was the impetus for the material in the next book.

Coming This Week

Those who have signed up for the 2020 support package know that the next book, HTBB, coming out in January 2021 (it’s sold out), is a book that’s going to collect and expand on all the supplementary presentational ideas I’ve written about on this site. Things that aren’t necessarily trick-specific, but concepts you can apply to many different tricks in order to increase the impact they have on spectators.

As I wrote in the email to supporters:

“Some of the most common feedback I get is from people who have implemented what feels like a small presentational idea and have found it to have a significant impact on the strength of the trick. That has been my experience as well, and to have a book of these types of ideas in one place is the sort of thing I wish I would have had earlier on.”

Through some recent testing, I think I’ve come to understand why these types of techniques can have such an inordinate impact on the tricks we do. It’s something I had sort of intuited for the past few years, but didn’t have my head fully wrapped around. The story starts out with testing a couple different ace assemblies, but the insight that provided may affect how you practice and perform every trick you do. Come back tomorrow for the start of that series of posts.

As a Man Inketh

Site supporter, JAJ, got a GLOMM inspired tattoo recently.

This, as far as I know, is the second GLOMM tattoo in existence.

It’s both flattering and a little unsettling when someone you don’t know gets a tattoo based on something you’re responsible for. Part of me thinks, “Shouldn’t you put your son’s face there or something?” But mostly it’s just nice to see. I mean, look, no one is inspired to get an Ellusionist tattoo. Or to get branded with a Vanishing Inc logo.

So it’s kind of an honor, but I also like that it’s rare. If it becomes too common, you’re in for a surprise. I will change the GLOMM from the largest magic organization in the world—and the only one that won’t allow sexual predators in it—to an organization that only allows magicians who are convicted pedos. “The blindfolded rabbit represent the blind eye we turn to our victims,” the website will say.

Then people are going to see that tattoo, wonder what it means, do a little research, and come back to you with clear concern in their voice: “Can you tell me why you have a tattoo on your arm for the Grabby Legion of Molesting Magicians?”

“No, wait,” you sputter, as your girlfriend is packing up her belongings. “It actually used to be a group that was the opposite of that. And then he changed it to screw us people with the tattoos!” You sound like a raving lunatic. Your life falls apart while I’m here giggling like a maniac.

If you’re willing to deal with that potentiality, then this version of the logo which was on the GLOMM postcards in the “elite” membership package would make a dope tattoo.

The Poking Machine

Here’s a heads-up on a non-magic product you might be able to find a use for in your magic performances. It would be especially good for any type of seance effect. Although I could see it having many other potential uses.

Imagine you’re around a table with a couple friends, asking for the spirit to show you a sign he (or she, these days women can be ghosts too) is present in the room. Moments later a framed pictures falls off a bookshelf or a glass topples off the counter in another room.

That could definitely be a pants-shitting sort of moment in the right scenario.

The product is called Fingerbot.

It’s essentially an automated finger press so you can control non “smart” devices with your phone or voice.

It’s meant to turn on your lights or your coffee maker or whatever. But it seems like the sort of thing you could easily rig up to push something or drop something. And depending how cleverly you set it up, they wouldn’t be able to trace the fallen object back to this little plastic box nearby.

I’m also thinking of having it set up on top of a (non-moving) ceiling fan blade, ready to knock a coin or some other object off of it. That way I could take a coin, do some sort of complete vanish with it, then have it “rematerialize” and fall from the sky into my hand.

It’s about $35 on Indiegogo. I’m going to pick one up. I’ll let you know if I end up coming up with anything particularly interesting to do with it. And if you have any ideas, send them my way.