Chapter 3

To know how to be a good magician is also good to know my personal experience in magic, in which we’ll see my beginnings, the hardest part and last but not least some professional magicians experience.

     Well, the first important thing to know is why did I get into magic. Long time ago, about 6 years ago, my cousin Felipe entered into the world of magic, he did card magic like me. First I just saw his tricks but I didn’t pay much attention, maybe because I was a kid or maybe because I didn’t understand them, but later when I grew up that changed. I specially entered in magic because he taught me and made me feel that pleasure about doing magic tricks and learning moves with cards. I wanted to be able to do things that seemed impossible but really wasn’t. If I have to say thank you to someone it is to him.

     It is also good to know how I start or how do I began in the world of magic. Really, I had two beginnings.

      The first one was when I was a child. I wanted to learn magic and be able to do the same tricks that my cousin but I didn’t know where to find them and how to learn it.  I just started to search on the internet, for me it was very complicated to understand so I had to ask for my brother’s help but he didn’t want to help me. I just learned to do some very easy tricks, for the record this tricks are known as self working tricks because whatever you do, the trick is going to work and you don’t need any sleights or difficult moves. Later I just gave up and I forgot about magic for a few years.

     The second beginning was more or less about one year ago. This began also thanks to my cousin. One day, the school took me and my friends to the school Americano. When I was on the bus ready to go, I saw that my cousin got in my bus. He also needed to go to the Americano school; there he began to do a lot of magic card tricks for me and to my friends. I liked them a lot because the expressions of my friends were very funny, they were astonished. That was when I remembered that I wanted to be a magician. From that day I took magic very seriously, as one of my principal hobbies and one of my priorities.

     I started learning tricks of unknown magicians, just from YouTube and using bad cards. Then I discovered a page of a man called Mismag (thecardtrickteacher.com). This web page had tons of magic card tricks and I started to learn from there, I thought that were the best tricks in the world but in reality, now I realize that those tricks aren’t so good, all the tricks of that page are self working. I spent a lot of time practicing my magic, almost all the afternoon and part of the night. At the time I used some bad cards like the Chinese ones that are sold in any store.

After a time I spoke with my cousin about magic and he suggested that I buy some good cards and told me that he would help me to learn some basic but good tricks and sleights, that’s when I learned from where to get good tricks (without his help I couldn’t     have learned good tricks). Other day he went with me to buy some good cards like Bicycle playing card. Here in Ecuador is very difficult to buy good cards because we can only find those cards in very specific places and they are very expensive, but he went with me to a magic shop were are a lot of cards and magic staff, also the price is not so expensive (magiaec.com). There I finally bought my professional cards to do magic. I spent 24 dollars on 5 decks of cards, 2 blue, 2 red and 1 black. The most amazing thing of buying playing cards is the smell of new cards and also to collect them. I enjoy collecting cards because I like the different textures and types of cards that exist, it’s an obsession.

The last aspect of my beginning is what I learned to do first. As I said, I began learning from YouTube and then with the help of my cousin I learned good stuff like great tricks and incredible moves. Now I know that the best sites to learn tricks are: Theory11.com, Dananddave.com, Ellusionist.com, and Thebluecrown.com. So the first things that I learned were simple tricks and basis sleights like; the double and triple lifts, the pinky and thumb brake, some flourishes, some false cuts some false shuffles and the riffle force.

The first tricks that I learned were from great magicians like: Chris Kenner, Dan Buck, Dave Buck, Oz Pearlman, Daniel Garcia, Jay Noblezada, Erick Jones and Brad Christian.

Just for the record, the first good and hard trick that I learned is called “The Ishkabible Sandwich by Eric Jones”.

Now it’s time to see the hardest part about being a magician and all the problems that I had.

During all the time that I learned magic, it was very hard. I had a lot of problems.

Well, magic can be really complicated if you are a lazy person, if you give up easily and above all if you are not a persistent person.  To recap, in magic you need to practice a lot to master all the moves and sleights. That’s probably the hardest part of magic.

There are also more facts that make magic complicated. Some moves are very complicated, some sleights just the professional magicians can do them invisibly, and just the magicians that have been practicing for 10 or more years can master those moves. To be a good magician you need to sit down and concentrate a lot to master the moves and practice every day more than 2 hours.

As I said earlier, there exist millions of moves but the most complicated are: The passes, Flourishes, Color Changes and the false shuffles. This are more advanced moves. Now let’s explain these moves and let’s see why they are so difficult.

     A pass is a move where you have a card selected in the middle of the deck and with a pinky break you transpose both packets, the one that is on the bottom goes to the top and obviously the one that is on the top, goes to the bottom, allowing controlling the selected card to the top of the deck. The passes that I know are: the Classic Pass, the Turnover Pass, the riffle Pass, the SWE Shift Pass and the Spread Pass. The pass is so difficult that only professional magicians can do it right and invisibly.

Some Flourishes could be easy but the advanced ones are very hard to do, I could say that a flourish need to be practiced more than a card trick.

A color change is a move where you have a card, and you change it into any other card in just a few seconds, of course is a very strong visual change. The move is difficult because you need to do it invisibly, do it very faster and clean.

The last hard moves are the false shuffles. The false shuffles are very hard because you need to do it super faster and have a lot of precision while doing the move. For me, the hardest false shuffle is called the Zarrow shuffle

     Also we can have some problems. My first problem was that the first time that I started to learn, when I was a child, I didn’t know too much English, so I couldn’t understand the tricks. Most of the good tricks are in English, so a magician needs to know well English to understand perfectly how to perform the trick, that’s why I stoped doing magic tricks, because I didn’t understand them and I need to bother my brother to help me understand.

    There also exist other problems, like cards. For me without good cards, it is impossible to do some moves or to perform well, that’s why I take care of my cards. Other problem could be that when I’m practicing, I accidentally drop the card to the floor, and that is very bad because the cards gets lost or gets dirty. The worst thing is to practice with dirty cards or with old card because they smell bad and because they are sticky.

Finally, we’ll see how people react and how this caused me some trouble.

     The reaction of some people is amazing. After I perform a trick they are astonished, but also they are trying to discover how I do the trick. The problem is when I have as spectator’s people that don’t believe in magic and don’t make magic happen.

An example is my uncle, I can’t do magic to him because he doesn’t react, he is so “smarty”, he thinks that he know everything, he suppose that he knows how to do how all the tricks. This is the problem in how people react. Another problem could be that there are a lot of people that don’t let you do the magic, they are always saying “why do you do this? Or do this thing!” But they screw your trick and your magic, a good spectator just needs to watch and then react.

As a conclusion, I want to thank my brother because he has been a lot of support for me. He also supports me and gives me great advices about what I did wrong in the card tricks.

     Know that we have seen my personal experience it is time to see the experiences of professional Ecuadorian magicians. These amazing magicians have shared his experience: Felipe Bolaños, Isaac Yepez and Ignacio Merino. Is very interesting to know other magician’s experience because we can learn a lot, especially how to act in front of people.

     This magician have more than 10 years of experience, his name is Isaac Yepez. His artistic name is Isaac el mago. He is a terrific magician because he has more that 10 years of experience, so he knows a lot of things, specially how to perform in a place full of people.. The types of magic that he performs are:  Magic for kids, close up magic, restaurant magic, mentalism, etc.

    First he said that he entered in the world of magic because when he was 6 years old he saw a magician called Smollen, then instantly he knew that magic was his profession. Then, he told me how he began. First he began learning for himself and trying to practice a lot. When he was 12 years old, he bought his first book of magic. He just learned with books because in that time tutorial videos didn’t exist.

The first things he learned were everything that was in his book. He thought that everything was important in magic and he learned everything that was in his first book.

     Isaac thinks that a magician can have problems but all of those problems can be resolved. He thinks that the audience is not a problem, “You make your own audience”.  He realizes that the audience has a lot of reactions: Nervous, they freak out, they ask how the effect is done, they scream or sometimes they don’t know how to react, etc. He thinks that the audience is not a problem although the biggest problem could be when someone is drunk is the audience. “I know how the audience will react”

     His inspiration was David Copperfield.  He said that the best part of magic is “The beauty of wonder”.  For him the most difficult presentation were his first presentations, when he performed in CCI in front of a huge crowd (one month, four times a week).  For a good performance there exist many factors to take into count like: Acting, makeup, attachments,lights, music and of course a lot of practice.

Finally he thinks that the best type of magic is card manipulation because it’s difficult to perform and we can use any thing that we have in our hands.

     Now it’s time to learn the experience of another young and great magician called Ignacio Merino. Ignacio 23 years old and his artistic name is Ignacio Kumati. He is a terrific magician. The types of magic that he performs are mentalism and card magic.

He entered into magic because he saw a magician called Juan Tamariz and he liked very much. Later at the age of 14, he bought a DVD with some easy effects and that was all until he was, 18 when he entered into the world of magic again because he met a group a magicians and he had the chance to learn magic. He started with classes, he took magic classes with Magnalucius (†) and the magician Isaac, after this he began to buy some books and DVD’s.

He first started learning some simple card tricks and little by little he discovered new techniques and new sleights up to do some amazing but hard tricks.

He thinks that he most difficult part of being a magician is the acting. Acting is very important. “They say that if the actors were magicians, magicians would not work”.

¿What problems can a magician have? He said that the world of magic is so great that sometimes the magician feels confused. The magicians don’t know where to begin, what to read or learn. “It’s very difficult to study magic without a guide”.  He thinks that all the “magicians” doing card tricks in Youtube are not so good and for him that is not magic. Constant practice, both the tricks and the presentation will eliminate any problem a magician can have.

Ignacio thinks that the spectators can have a lot of reactions. Among these are laughs, cries, silence, fear, etc. “Applause is very common in magic but silence is also very common. A lot of magicians do not value  silence but silence is a great form of reaction and silence needs to be very valued, but also in a presentation  need to be all of the metioned reactions.

His major influence in magi was Juan Tamariz, Jeff McBride, Magnalucius and the Isaac el mago.

The things that Ignacio Kumati likes the most about magic are the surprise and the pleasure that occurs in magic. “The fact that there is something so strong like magic, freak out people for a moment is the greatest beauty of this art.

Finally, the type of magic that he prefers is card magic because he thinks that a magician can make a tremendous show with just 54 cards with the jockers, which is fantastic.

Now, the last magician is Called Felipe Bolaños. He is an incredible magician with more than 5 years of experience. The type of magic that he performs is card magic.

So, he began in magic because of “his friends fault” because his friend performed some tricks for him, so Felipe was tired of not understanding anything. As a result, he began to learn magic by himself, his friends didn’t know that Felipe was learning magic and he took advantage of that so that he could learn more techniques. He pretended to be surprised about his friends’ tricks but he already knew how to perform those tricks. He begin in magic watching 9 DVDs made by a magician called Michael Ammar, this DVDs were called “Easy to master card magic”.

The first thing he learned was a very easy card force to “guess” the spectator’s card.

     The most difficult part of magic is practicing. “Magic occupies a lot of time”. Sadly, Felipe hasn’t been practicing a lot recently because of his work and education. “It’s my hobby, not my profession”.

In the problems that a magician can have, Felipe thinks that there are no problems that  don’t have a solution. “If you practice a lot every problem can be overcome”. Even with a difficult audience that could be a real problem or can cause you a headache, if you practice enough you can overcome them. He thinks the most difficult spectators are children because it is very difficult to attract their attention.

He thinks that there are difficult spectators. Always in a group of people there exists a person that thinks he know everything. “I enjoy performing magic for people that have never seen magic because their reaction is what makes magic exist.

For the record, Felipe’s best influence in magic is Michael Ammar. “Without him I could never have learned anything I know”.

What Felipe like most about magic, he explained with a phrase from a Ecuadorian magician: “la magia hace lo posible sea posible y lo imposible sea posible también.”

He also says that people who don’t know about magic think that the more difficult is to do a trick, the most impressive it will be. He says that sometimes he was frustrated because a trick that took him many months to master do not create the impact in the spectators that he believed, so hard tricks are not necessarily the best ones. “I can’t qualify how good the trick is, who qualify it are the people”. He said that sometimes you do some tricks for a group of people and they end up very shocked but for other groups the effect of the trick is not so good, so people have different reactions.

Finally, he says that the type of magic that he likes is card magic. He likes this thing called “One on One magic” which is basically when you perform magic to people and they are very close to you so they can see you don’tt have anything hidden or anything to cheat. With relation of his best type of magic he said, “I don’t say I don’t like another types of magic, I like stage or scenario magic but I rather prefer to do magic with cards or coins even though the cards are not mine”.

In conclusion we can say that they have a lot of things in common. They entered into the world of magic because they think art is a very powerful art and because they love the spectator’s reactions. Also they began learning the basic same basic things like card forces. In the way that they are different, I could say that they have different likes about the types of magic. Felipe just performs card magic, Ignacio performs card magic and mentalism and Isaac performs a lot of magic but not so much card magic.

I have learned a lot from the and I am very grateful for letting me interview them. No I know magic is a beautiful art. I will keep making a lot of effort and practicing a lot so I can get to be as good magician as them. Someday I will perform in front of a huge crowd.