Practice Sessions: Getting the Most From Your Practice Minutes

John Petrucci, the phemon guitarist from Dream Theater, talks about it being a bad idea to approach practicing guitar without a practice plan. Obviously, this applies to guitar but the principles are the same.

Petrucci categorizes practice routines into 4-5 categories; legato, sweep picking, string skipping, etc. He starts with 10 minutes of stretching and then he picks one or two exercise from each catagory and spends 15-30 minutes on each category. His theory is that with a practice regimen such as this, you make better use of your practice time, you don't wander in many directions with little real improvement and you continue to work on a broader range of skills.

I think we could come up with a similar approach in practicing magic. I don't think you could come with a single set of categories for everyone but I think you could come up with a modular practice regimen.

Warm-ups Categories

• Stretching your arms, hands and fingers
• Florishes
• Shuffles

Skill Categories

Skills would be a list of the most common sleights and sequences for a particular school of magic such as cards (DL, TL, palm, back palm, shuffles, controls, passes, color changes, etc) or cups/balls (basic palms, vanishes, opening sequences, middle sequences, ending rhythms, wand spins, etc).

• Card sleights
• Coin sleights
• Cups and Balls sleights/sequences
• Thimble sleights
• Billiard Ball sleights
• Ring/string sleights
• Sponge ball sleights

Routine Categories

Routines would include single tricks and multiple sequenced routines.

• Card tricks and routines
• Coin tricks and routines
• Cups and balls - full routines
• Thimble routines - tricks and routines
• Billiard Ball routines
• Ring/String routines
• Rubberband tricks
• Sponge ball routines

Practice/Rehearsal Categories

• Mirror practice
• Video practice
• Routining (putting full routines together in a sequence, making routines your own)
• Rehearsal practice (full dress rehersal performing a set of routines)

Document your skill categories and your routines. These would be living, dynamic documents in that you could add new skill and routine categories over time. In each category you would add new sleights and tricks over time. So you find a new routines or sleights that you want to learn, add them to the list so that you have a method/plan to add the new skill to your practice sessions.

So a 90 minute practice session might look like this:

• 15 minutes of streching, shuffling, mental preparation
• 15 minutes card sleights (today I pick the Strike DL, classic pass, turnover pass, and back palm productions)
• 15 minutes card routines (I pick 1 or two tricks involving the sleights I worked on in the card sleights session)
• 15 minutes on Cups and Balls (wand vanishes, click move, final loads)
• 15 minutes on my Cups and Balls routine
• 15 minutes in front of the video camera

There you have it. A regimen that is flexible, customizable and focused.

The Magic Show 2007

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of participating in our IBM Ring 327 charity event. It is amazing that this small, local chapter has so many talented magicians. The show benefited the Helping Hands ministry which provides emergency assistance to families needing help with rent, utility payments and other support services. The two family-oriented shows drew at least 200 enthusiastic magic fans.

Lee Novak performed a portion of his stage routine. This is the second time I've seen Lee's show and he has put together some astonding stage illusions as well as some card and billiard manipulations. The audience loudly gasped at his dove productions and vanishes - especially the transformation of 3 doves into a live rabbit.

Tim Stolba also mystified the audience with a newspaper prediction and several great routines from his act. I also watched Tim perform a couple great close-up routines before the show to several delighted children.

Ricky Rowray, a deaf magician from Cedar Rapids, performed his hilarious style of comedy magic. It is amazing to see him delight and connect with the crowd without saying a thing! Ricky is soon to compete at a deaf magicians competition in California. I think he'll do quite well.

The entire show was expertly glued together by the Master of Ceremonies, Dr. Don Nelson. He performed a brilliant torn and restored newspaper. He also performed one of my favorite effects of the night with his shrinking and expanding head illusion.

Bob Beardsly and his daughter performed both together and individually. Bob wowed the audience with a chair levitation. His daughter (sorry I have forgotten her name) is an extremely talented performer for such a young age. The highlight for me was their execution of the Gypsy Rope Escape.

I didn't get to see a couple of the performers as I was busy resetting (or forgetting to reset) my walk around set. Although I only saw a couple of his tricks, Chris Arthur was wowing the spectators with some mind numbing close-up work including a seemingly impossible linking rubberbands routine.

As a new member, I didn't feel qualified to perform stage routines but I did have a great opportunity to perform some strolling magic. I had a chance to try out a new presentation of my Ambitious Card Routine where I had a child draw a puppy on the card. Instead of a magic flick of the wrist to bring the card to the top, I had the spectator call the puppy home. This was a variation of David Regal's presentation with different moves including Max Maven's Classic Tackler move for the ending sequence. This turned out to be a crowd pleaser and the kids got a nice souvenier to remind them of their magical night.