Finding my voice

I was driving home yesterday listening to a Steve Forbert CD. "Romeo's Tune" (a song I love and that he dedicated to the memory of Florence Ballard, late of The Supremes) came on. I started singing with it. I do a pretty dead-on imitation of Mr. Forbert on that particular song. A friend once commented on how eerily I capture his sound.

Similarly, I do a pretty decent imitation of Elton John on "Candle in the Wind" - the one from the Live in Australia album, not the one from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road; I find the former has more emotion than the latter.

Even if a song is not in my key or my range I can transpose and still sound at least a little like the artist. For example, I tend to sing harmony rather than lead on early Beach Boys songs.

When do I sound the worst? When I'm singing 'cold,' without a recorded reference. In other words, I can sing like other people, but I can't really sing like me.

I think this is because I learned to sing from the radio and from records. My goal was to sound like the artists I was hearing. If I were serious about learning to sing I'd hire a teacher, learn to read music, and learn to sing like me.

Le Tourniquet

A MySpace magician wannabe posted a message in a magic group dissing the French Drop. I kinda liked my reply. So without further ado (and who needs more ado?) here is his unedited post and my unedited reply:

seems lame to me. if you just cup it behind your fingers like that people will
instantly think you just left it in ur hand, how do i go about switchin hands to
make it look like the coins totally vanished? should i use a quarter or half
dollar to practice with? vansihing is way fun.

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Like most sleights, getting away with the French Drop is as much a matter of attitude and audience management as it is technique. It isn't just a matter of, "hold the coin in the left hand, take it with the right hand, make a magical gesture, show it gone." You have to manage the moments before, during and after the sleight.

There are several things you can do, depending on what you're going to do following the vanish. One of the things I do if I'm using it as a one-off trick (a rarity - there are stronger single tricks) is to extend the hand that supposedly contains the coin and ask the spectator to tap it. I stand fairly close to them as I ask them to do this. They are forced to look at my hand as they tap it.

In the meantime, my other hand has already naturally dropped to my side,coin in fingertip rest position, arm and shoulder relaxed. (Tension in the hand/arm that really holds the coin is a dead giveaway.) As they reach to tap my hand that supposedly holds the coin, I ditch the coin in my pocket with as little motion as possible.

I then reveal the vanish.

***********************

I then followed up with another post:

Oh, and the management continues...I forgot to mention that before revealing the
vanish, the hand that just ditched the coin moves away from the pocket - I make
a gesture or pick something up - depends on the choreography. If you stay near
your pocket it puts heat on the pocket.

I don't think our would-be conjurer had seen such examples of management before. He thanked me profusely and, in an email, asked for more advice.

There may yet be hope.

Well, it sounded good in theory...

Magic theory. Not an exact science. Yet get a few (serious) magicians together and they'll hash and rehash the reasons behind the success or failure of various ventures, deconstruct endless routines, and spout bon mots from their favorite authors.

So where does theory meet practice? Do I discard theory altogether? Is Henning Nelms hopelessly out of date? Does Tommy Wonder's advice only work for him?

It comes down to this: magic is applied psychology. And psychology is neither a hard science nor an exact science. It's constantly being refined as we better understand ourselves and as the dynamics of human interactions change.

So it means that magic theory, like any theory, must be tested. If we really want to get our ducks in a row we ought to change our language. Things fairly well tested are theories. Relativity. Evolution (oops, going to catch some flak for that...). Spectators tend to focus on things that move rather than things that sit still, in the absence of other stimuli.

Those things not yet satisfactorily borne out by practice are postulates, not yet theories. Red cards are better than blue (or vice versa). One should never (or always) write one's own magic script. You shouldn't do card tricks for kids.

Why worry about magic theory at all? Because it can save a lot of time - otherwise each routine, each move, each line has to be developed in vacuo, with nothing to inform as to it's value other than empirical testing. That would be fun, wouldn't it - having to do market research on every facet of a routine before it became audience-ready? Also, understanding your personal theoretical underpinnings will help you develop as a magician. You'll know your foundation and will have that foundation to build against.