Chapter 5, Brutal Legend’s force techniques

Ok, so Brutal Legend doesn't have “Force Techniques”. But it is a awesome game. What does have “Force Techniques” is Chapter 5 of the Card College book. This chapter, Like chapter 3, was a lot of fun. It appeals to me on the same levels as the “False Cut”. Smooth, clean, and all personality. Now that I think about it, both of these chapters rely heavily on misdirection and your personality. And those are both things I need to work on. There's a timing to misdirection that takes practice. Whole chapters are devoted to it in magic books. Please read everything you can on it. But in the end you need your timing to match your personality and that's best achieved by performing the effects you practice. I could perform a Slydini Rubber band routine exactly as he did but it would look and be weird. I would have perfect misdirection cues if I did it his way but it would be lifeless. Like a band doing a cover song. Unless they put themselves in the song and make it their own its never as good as the original. I am going to try something new and try to put up videos and pictures of some of the things I talk about. Like the “Ribbon Spread” I talk about in the next paragraph. I couldn't find a picture but I found a Video of that plus some great shuffling on the Theory 11 web site. This is by a member called NeJ from Buenos Aires.

So for this chapter I start by putting a joker on top of the deck. This will be my “Force Card”. Then I do half the moves for a “Crisscross Force” and pause. Get a drink of water or pet the dog. Then I force the joker card on myself. After I do that a couple times I might force the card on my girlfriend or move onto “The Balducci Force”. I love this force. Its so pretty. Anytime you can work a “Ribbon Spread” into a effect I say do it. This is also something I need to work on. Its done entirely in the spectators hands and each time I've tried it my instructions confused the spectator (my girlfriend). So I practice this a little more than the others mentally telling myself exactly how to do it each time I practice. Next comes the “Goldin Force”. I practice this a few times and I have used it a couple times. I like this almost as much as the “Balducci Force”. Then I go over the “Ten-to-twenty Force”. I only do this once or twice. It needs setup. Until I learn how to Organize the deck without a spectator knowing it I don't plan on using it much. This chapter finishes off with a routine called the “Lie Detector”. Its a sweet effect where the spectator selects a card in the deck. Then they take out any other seven cards and calls out the correct names of six of the cards and lies about one card by saying it is the selected card. The magician finds the name of the selected card by detecting the lie the spectator tells. Its not as confusing as it sounds. Or as confusing as Chapter 6: Transfer Cuts.

Brutal Legend does have a forceful power though. Its a great game that begs to be played. I finished it this last weekend. Now I think I will go get anything I missed and try the multiplayer before I get completely sucked into the amazing Uncharted 2 game.

Chapter 4 Card Controls

This chapter starts out with a great Qoute from Henk Vermeyden "Not everyone can be a star, but all can strive to do their best and constantly improve." Striving to improve is why I started this blog. It lets me sit down when I am not practicing and look at what I need to work on. I looked but I could not find out anything about Henk Vermeyden that was more than a mention on a dvd about classic magicians. So if anyone has any more information I would love to know more. This chapter starts out easy with a "Overhand Shuffle Control" and the "Whoops Control". Then I was stumped by the dreaded "Diagonal Insertion". That just sounds wrong, very wrong. I had to take a extra week to practice the chapter. In the end it paid off and I can consistantly pull a pinky break over or under the chosen card useing the "Diagonal Insertion". I feel dirty whenever I type that. After that you learn a "Peek Control" and a few variations on it. Finaly it caps off with "The One-card Middle Pass". This one is tricky, and its the move from this chapter I spend the most time on. My issue is all in the setup. Thats not to say my execution of the move is good. Thats to say I am working on seting it up in a similar way to the "Slip Cut" from chapter 3. Slowly I am teaching my fingers to start in the right position. As if I was "Dribbling" and not like a "Pass" move. To sum it up let me run through my practice pattern. First I run a "Overhand Shuffle Control" using a joker as a placeholder card. Then I set up "Whoops! Control" and move onto the "Diagonal Insertion" a few times also useing the joker as a placeholder card. For the "Peek Control" I should set up a mirror. But for right now I use my Girlfriend. First I have her pick a couple cards and move them sequential to the top. Then I have her pick another card. This card gets moved to the top and I use a "Color Change" move I am learning from the Theory 11 website to change the top card to her card. Then I usually get sidetracked playing with the "Color Change" for a little bit before I move on. The "One-card Middle Pass" I work on slowly. So I spend a pretty decent amount of time on this. Right now I concentrate on the setup. As soon as I get that comfortable I can start on the "Pass Dribble" part. As usual the chapter ends with two routines. I dont practice "The Shamus Card". Its a awsome effect. I just really hate the "Overhand Shuffle". Instead I usually practice "The Question is ...". Almost evertime I practice a "Card Control" that ends with the card on top I finish with this effect. Next post I talk about forcing cards.

You may have noticed that I havent talked about Chapter 7 this week. Normaly that would be the chapter I would be working on. But see this is a busy week. For video games. With Brutal Legend and Uncharted 2 out, how could I be expected to do anything else? And I have Demon's Souls and the Last half of Dead Space. So I figured I could use a break to step back and look at my practice habbits while melting the faces off of dudes with the power of rock.

Chapter 3: False cut nirvana

Chapter 3 covers "False Cuts". This chapter made up for the last chapter. Honestly, I love using false cuts. Even when I don't need to I find myself using them. They are everything I love about magic. Smooth, clean, open, and done right in front of your audience. Starting with a "Optical False Cut" and moving through to the "Slip Cut from Dealing Position" you practice each move and wonder how you could pull these off. They are all so open and the moves are completely exposed. Audacious is the best word I can use to describe these moves. Every one looks so normal. Even the ones that look fancy don't look as weird as the "Overhand Shuffle". Each night I go over these a few times. Moving from a "Optical Cut" to a "Simple False Cut". Then a "False Swing Cut" to the "Triple False Cut". After doing that order a few times I practice the "Slip Cut" a couple times. The one thing in this chapter that I do have trouble with is the noise of the "Slip Cut". So that gets special attention. My issue is where I put my thumb. Set correctly the cut is silent, set incorrectly there is a audible snap as you perform the move. So I slow down and watch my fingers closely. After I get my fingers to land perfectly I can start practicing it without watching my hands. At the end of each chapter is two routines. I love "Hat Trick". So that's the one I have been practicing. It always amazes. Even when I am not at my best the "Hat Trick" never fails. It has worked so good I haven't even tried the second routine. Looking over the book as I write this I can see that may have been a mistake. Next post "Card Controls"!

Practice review 2 electric boogaloo

OK. Back to my review.

Chapter two was more annoying than hard. My basic overhand shuffle is not as clean as it could be. But that stems from my dislike of this shuffle. As I said before, It does Not look like a normal shuffle. My goal is to master a deck of cards for both Magic and Cardistry so I press on. I usually start this by running the whole deck card by card a couple times. I tend to watch my hands so my goal has been to get better at running the cards. I watch tv and count out the cards as I run them. Then I move onto Control of the top cards. Droping the jokers on the top of the deck I over hand shuffle them right back to the top. Then I overhand shuffle them to the bottom and procede to shuffle them back to the bottom of the deck. In each case My goal is to clean up the shuffle and shrink the injog that marks the controlled cards. I do have to admit I love the way Roberto Giobbi handles control of a single bottom card. It is smoth and easy. I run the top card to the bottom then keep it there through another shuffle. This chapter has two routines with the overhand shuffle. I dont like the shuffle though, so I practice the second routine. It is called "the spectator cuts to the aces" and its done fine enough without useing the overhand shuffle to set it up. Thats another thing I dislike. Having to set up or arrange the cards into a certain order to pull off something magical. The effect is smooth though so its worth practicing. The effect is just like you imagine. You hand a spectator the deck of cards. Have them cut it in half. Then have them cut each half in half. Then you turn over each top card and show them they have cut to each ace. Then I move onto chapter three. I will cover that in my next post.

Off the topic of magic and on the topic of games. The holiday seasons picking up steam this year. Even with a lot of games being pushed back to early 2010. This week we purchased Demon's Souls after my brother told me about it. So far its pretty sweet. Next week is pretty solid also. My girlfriend preordered Brutal Legend and I will be picking up Uncharted 2.

Practice review.

Chapter 6 is "Transfer Cuts". It has been a pretty smooth week for practice. Even though I skipped two nights of practice, I still feel like I have got the basics of the cuts down.

Maybe skipped is a bad choice of words. I left work pretty late Tuesday and went to dinner with my brother and his girlfriend Wednesday. After I worked on the transfer cuts Monday I felt pretty confident about them. So I gave extra time to work and family. Now onto the practice sessions.

I don't always feel like I have enough time for each chapter so I run everything once and come back to the moves that give me trouble. Here is a breakdown of my practice by chapter.

Chapter 1 of "Roberto Giobbi's Card College Volume 1". Almost everything starts in the dealing position. So I check my hand position once or twice as I run through the straddle position, back to dealing, then to elevated dealing position a few times. Then as I cut the deck and move the deck around in end grip I note where my fingers hit as I hold the deck in dealing position during the cut and after tabling the cards then picking them up. When I first restarted this book I was pushing the deck into my palm and my thumb was to far forward on the deck. I mentioned this back on August 27th. And each week it gets better. Still though I keep my eye on it. And I wish every chapter had the flow of this chapter. Each basic move leads into other basic moves pretty smooth in this chapter. Square ups, deck cuts, then we move onto spreading the cards. This is one I put a little extra effort into. The way its described you can see the smooth escalator like movement of the cards from left to right. Getting that look takes time though. Over the last few weeks I've been concentrating on making the movements even. So the cards are not messy as they slide from left to right. This really helps when you'r out jogging or in jogging the cards. So I've been working on a nice smooth flow, in the near future I will be working on increasing the distance between my hands. I can get about six inches between my hands and it looks sweet. Like the cards magically float from one hand to the other. But they get really messy by the time the hit my right hand. So working on clean and smooth comes first. Then I can work on distance. I run through and out jog the aces as I spread the cards and then I dribble the cards a few times. Once again this is a move I spend extra time on. It just looks so cool when well done and people love watching it almost as much as they like the magic routines. So I put extra effort into it. Then I deal cards onto a large piece of fabric. My goal is to consistently get each card to land exactly where I want it. So I deal a three high and five to seven card wide grid. After I get the grid I start over trying to deal cards on the cards I have already dealt. Then I do it again dealing the cards face up this time. I run through a couple swing cuts and start forming breaks. After I go through the breaks I practice the step a few times. My goal here is to have a nice small angle to the cards so you would need to be looking for the break to even know it's there. I quickly riffle the end of the deck a few times and move onto the ribbon spread. I spread the cards left to right and right to left over and over again. Here my goal is to have a nice consistent spread. The suit and number of each card should be visible whether I spread them left to right or in reverse. I do this until I start to think I am taking to much time on it. Then I move onto chapter two. I will talk about chapter two in my next post. I have overtime to do so its off to bed for me.

Before I go, I have got to point this out. Theory 11 has a great free video on the color change check it out.


Terry