Mr Hurley wrote:performer wrote:Get books first but they should be BEGINNER'S books. I STILL read beginner's books avidly. It is there that the best material often lies.
All right, from what it looks like: Card College 1-5, Expert Card Technique, and Royal Road to Card Magic. Am I missing anything?
I would respectfully suggest starting with Card College 1, really study and learn it, and save the rest until later. I've found that sometimes having too many resources at once just means the student masters none of them. It's way to easy to get distracted and as a result, progress is slowed. Also, IMHO, ECT isn't a particularly good beginner's book. (YMMV).
In terms of your question about disembodied sleights. What I meant was, if you just practice sleights out of context of the actions and presentation of routines, it's easy to pick up a lot of bad habits that expose the existence of the sleight.
Sleights should be secret methods, not overt displays of skill. If you just practice a sleight over and over without learning how to get into the move naturally in an actual routine, you become prone to "framing" the move (i.e. tipping the audience off that a secret move is about to be done.) Watching some magicians, you can always tell they are about to do a sleight because they project tension. The sleight is not hidden in motivated motions within a routine. (It's somewhat like watching divers in the Olympics just before their dive.) It's also possible to tip the move during and after it is done unless it is followed by natural actions and presentation. While the audience may not see exactly what the sleight entails, just knowing that something fishy has taken place is just as detrimental the effect of magic. To paraphrase my namesake, the audience should not suspect, let alone detect, sleight of hand--which is a very difficult thing to do.
That's why I advocate learning sleights as you need to do routines that you wish to perform. Then, practice them within the context of routines. The strength of Card College and Royal Road is that they teach sleights in the context of really good routines.
Remember: card sleights are just tools to accomplish effects. The audience should ideally not be aware of them if you wish to create the true sensation of magic. I'd much rather have: "He didn't do anything!" than "Boy, you sure have fast hands!"
These are just my personal opinions--others who prefer a different style of magic may certainly reasonably disagree.
