Are there any good sites that have trick explained...maybe in a forum or something?

There are, but most magicians call that "unethical". That means don't do it...

Well why not? if you can "buy" a trick...whats the difference?

"unethical" becuz someone isn't getting paid?

just wondering

Poor shredhead is going to get "shredded"
lol


Shane

OK, here's what makes it unethical. We, as magicians, are obligated to do everything in our power to present as good an image of magic as possible. Everytime an audience experiences a poor magic performance, it reflects badly on all of us. Now some degree of this is to be expected, however, contributing to an increase in this factor, by allowing those who will not devote themselves to all it takes to make a good performance, is simply irresponsible on our part. As such, we prefer that people exert some moderate ammount of effort, showing honest intent towards the art, before they should learn the effects. Such efforts might include purchasing the effects (which I would never recomend) or works of literature (which I would always recomend, joining a club, obtaining a mentor, etc. This is how we are able to be as certain as possible that the people who learn how effects are done, will treat our art with the respect it is due. The system is not perfect, but it's the least we can do.

Well said JackScratch. Shredhead I can tell you that you will not make many friends by asking questions like this. You will hear everything from find out for yourself to we don't give out our secrets and lots of other replys. There is no easy or real cheap way to learn magic. Find a magic club and join,go to a magic shop and introduce yourself and get to know people there and come here and try and learn from the many people here that are very willing to help. They are willing to help but they are not goin gto just tellyou how something is done. You have to understand that there are a lot of people that come here thinking that we are just going to give out secrets. Most of us here work very hard to get to where we are today in our magic journey. We learned through trail and error,by reading as many books as we could get our hands on and buying magic and learn it. I do hope you will continue to come here and post and learn becuase there are a great bunch of people here to learn from.

Steven

Great posts. some good advice there. I just hope that you take it and start your journey in magic as you should.
I see that you are new to the Café but just take a few minutes and read the rules.
anyway , good luck to you

-Matt

Coinvanish.com gives a lot of help to beginners who want to learn coin magic I can't think of others right now, but there are many.


Wil

Supporting those sites is like revealing your effects to your audience. A lot of people that have access to those sites are not interested in learning and entertaining but just to satisfy their curiosity.

Yeah that all makes sense...but seriously...how many non-magic folk are out there looking for secrets revealed...i just thought it would be cool to have a site like that...we coudl all share things like that with other magicians


just to clear this up...when I perform I never tell anyone how I do my tricks...just so ya know

The reason we don't have sites that expose the secrets of magic is because then the creators of an exposed effect wouldn't receive due credit, or payment for their effect. If that happened, no new effects would be sold because the creator would know that they would make very little money by releasing it to the "public"

Sunnydolan is both correct and incorrect. There is a mountain of public domain work out there. You could have 50 sites with no overlaping material. Yes, on many exposure sites there are copyrighted works being stolen, legaly because IP isn't covered by those laws. The real problem is that information is like a virus. If you don't keep it contained it spreads like crazy. We try not to post effects anywhere on the net because there are many people who don't know how not to expose. They do it when the perform, they do it when the open their mouth at the wrong time, or even by looking at the wrong spot at the wrong time. The approach we take to secrecy can be viewed as cold and even harsh, but it works as well as anything else that has even been suggested.

There have been some horrible things done to magic. Poor performances, effect mthods screamed out in mid performance, you name it. There is a very very dark side to the kind of genorousity you are talking about. And all of that says nothing about people hard work going unrewarded because copyright laws say I can take the effect you created, discribe it in my own words, and publish it.

Well said as always Drew, well maybe not alway s but most of the time..well maybe not..oh forget it..hehehe No really everyone should listen to JackScratch because he has some really good things to say and is on the money most of the time like here.
You could also address the exposure thing by asking yourself,"If I just spent 12 months coming up with this great effect and I wasnt to market it, do I want people stealing it?" New people starting out want so badly to learn everything they can and that is not a bad thing. But you will learn there are the appropriate ways to go about it. I have learned things from others annd from books and I have more respect for myself as a performer as well as having the respect for the people that helped me learn an effect. I am way past the stage of,"wow how is that done", well to an extent that is. I still look at some effects and say. "how the heck do he/she do that?" But rememeber we need to help eachother out in our art form and that does not always mean just telling them how it works. We need to earn the opportunity to learn this art that we so dearly love. Just because someone says they want to be a magician does not automaticly give us the right to know how it is all done. Hope that all made sense.

Happy Magic
Steven

I don't mean to interupt here, but what was I incorrect about??

It all comes down to the basics. Why don't stores give away their products for free?

Answer that, and you've got a good answer to your question.

Mitchell

Sorry, could have worded that better. "True, but that is only part of it." Better?

I'm not a proffesional magician, and I doubt I will become one, but one of the things I like so much about magicians is that they all keep their secrets to themselves, it might be irritating, but it is still fascinating, and good. I you want to learn how to do a trick, but don't want to learn it so badly that you would buy a magic book to learn it, then you're not woth it. You should stamp in a bit of effort.

Shredhead, I hear there's a website called Wikipedia that might have what you're looking for.

Lool, I hope that petition will put an end to exposure on that site.

-Matt

I'm confused here. Isn't shredhead's question just about sites like the About.com Magic and Illusion site, where lots of simple tricks are explained, especially for the benefit of beginners? Or the Ultimate Magic site? Or even Magic Café's "Secret Sessions," where free tricks are explained, though only for those who have paid their dues by posting here 50 times? There are many sites like these on the Web -- are you all objecting to those? I don't understand.