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Joeni New user Germany 73 Posts |
Though I am an avid and usually fast reader, somehow I am a bit intimidated by the Tarbell Course. I go along others easier (Mark Wilson, Royal Road, and so on), and sometimes use Tarbell as kind of a reference work to look up other illustrations and tips to the same sleights and tricks told in the other courses. So now I wonder how other ones have approached Tarbell and if it is worth the effort to really learn every single trick and sleight in it, as the author himself proposes.
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Topper2 Regular user 126 Posts |
I've read the Tarbell books and the Tarbell lessons (in one big volume) all the way through on several occasions throughout the years. My approach was to start at page 1 and go page by page right to the end, but in no way did I attempt to learn all the tricks as most of them weren't worth knowing, as written, in my opinion (other than for background information). So really I concentrated more on extracting all the information (sleights and bits of business etc) that I considered useful and relevant to what I wanted to do, and treated the rest as interesting to know about but not worth wasting a lot of time on.
There's a fantastic amount of information in Tarbell but it is nearly a hundred years old and the approach to things is rather different today. I would say that reading Tarbell is a very desirable exercise for anyone seeking to enlarge their knowledge base but if it's tricks and routines you want then Tarbell is not the best place to find them. To give you an example, when I first got into magic I wasn't greatly interested in card magic as such but I loved classic manipulative magic such as multiplying billiard balls and linking rings etc. I found the information in Lewis Ganson's Routined Manipulations many times more useful than the relevant sections in Tarbell and when I finally decided I needed to learn some decent impromptu ordinary deck card tricks I went through the entire contents of Tarbell from beginning to end and failed to find a single suitable card trick that I felt was strong enough for today's audiences; by contrast Garcia and Schindler's Magic with Cards was a wonderful resource for someone starting out in cards. When it comes to actual tricks Mark Wilson's course is much to be preferred to Tarbell, but there is just so much interesting material in Tarbell that it is still well worth careful study, it is just that you should approach it as a source of knowledge helpful in expanding your overall understanding of magic rather than as a particular pool of useable routines and tricks to be consumed verbatim. |
Harry Lorayne 1926 - 2023 New York City 8558 Posts |
Topper2 - I do hope you're not talking about Tarbell #7.
[email]harrylorayne@earthlink.net[/email]
http://www.harrylorayne.com http://www.harryloraynemagic.com |
Topper2 Regular user 126 Posts |
Tarbell 7 never existed when I first bought the course, in fact I've never thought of it as being a Tarbell book at all since Tarbell didn't write it and none of the material is by Tarbell. The only reason Tarbell 7 was issued as a Tarbell book was as a marketing ploy to garner more sales, and in that it succeeded. A fairer title for the book might have been something like "Magic Today by Harry Lorayne" and if it had of been called that I wouldn't have bought it and I'm sure plenty of others wouldn't either!
Don't get me wrong, I know that many people consider No.7 the most relevant of the Tarbell books and of far more interest today than any of the other volumes in the series, however the fact remains it did not form part of the Tarbell Lessons and has nothing to do with the Tarbell Course as such. |
Harry Lorayne 1926 - 2023 New York City 8558 Posts |
It may not have been an actual part of the ORIGINAL Tarbell course, but it was important at the time to Lou Tannen who talked me into writing it and who published it. It was also important to people like Dai Vernon, John Scarne, Bill Simon, Francis Carlyle, Ed Balducci, Roy Benson, and so many more. I remember people saying that the index I included at the back of Tarbell #7 was worth the price of the book. (That was more difficult and time consuming for me that the writing of the actual book - and the gathering of material for same.)
[email]harrylorayne@earthlink.net[/email]
http://www.harrylorayne.com http://www.harryloraynemagic.com |
Topper2 Regular user 126 Posts |
As to the index in Vol 7, yes of course that very useful indeed; but Vol 7 itself is to me a book of tricks (admittedly a good book of tricks) rather than a continuation of the detailing of magical principles that comprised the first six volumes of the teaching course.
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Joeni New user Germany 73 Posts |
Good thoughts, Topper2! I'll have a closer look at Tarbell and will read it in the way you suggested. Thanks!
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sirbrad Inner circle PA 2096 Posts |
I started with book one and just went in order, same with the great single book by Magic Makers which is a copy of the original lessons. Also pretty cool that they finally took my advice and made videos of "every trick in the book" with Dan Harlan doing a great job teaching them. I posted a thread on here years ago requesting that they should do such a project, and everyone laughed and said it would not be possible. Well turns out it was possible and now exists. A great visual companion to the books.
I saved as a kid back in the 80's for the Tarbell Course which was a godsend, and "the bible of magic" being the most complete and comprehensive set on magic as a whole ever made until even this day. Back then it was $400 at a magic shop, which was a lot of money back then, probably about $4,000 today. But it was well worth it and still is today. Many magicians made their living from that course solely, including myself for many years and I still use a lot of stuff from those books. Anyone who says you cannot do the majority of material from these books today is nonsense, as almost every trick that comes out is in Tarbell or is some variation of what is already in Tarbell. That is like saying no magic works today unless you do tricks with an i-Phone, something I still do not even own nor do I plan to. Sure you can "modernize" them to fit today's generation but it is not necessary either. If you are creative and imaginative you can make almost anything work, even "bad tricks" which you can make better as I have done countless times. But even if you don't use everything in the books, or like every trick that is fine; you can still learn something from them that may help you later on. Or make your own variations and versions of the trick etc. In fact I do a lot of "classic magic" shows and "Vaudeville" type stage shows which are now acts in themselves, and many people want those types of acts, top hats, tails, rabbits and all and they even request them especially the older crowd as that is what magic looked like to them as a kid, and traditionally still is what magic should look like today as well; as it has looked for thousands of years. It has survived that long for a reason, it works. Not everyone wants to see some "Blaine wannabe" walking down a street with a deck of cards in street clothes. In fact most don't want to see that at all as they are in a hurry to get to wherever they need to be. You could even say that type of style is "vintage" now as that was 23 years ago. But the magic itself still works today, and always has and always will. Presentation and style is a personal preference. "The Amateur Magician's Handbook" and "Greater Magic" were the best single books on magic as a whole, followed by "Mark Wilson's Complete Course" all kinda like "Tarbell Light" versions, and are great as well. I still get a lot of mileage from these books, including "The Magic Book" by Harry Lorayne, "Scarne on Card Tricks", "Scarne on Magic Tricks", and so many others which followed that I listed in my other posts. Since I already read all the books in order many times today I now look at random pages, or look up stuff I want to do or add back into my act etc. At some point though I plan on going through them all in order again just for fun, and for the sake of nostalgia. You never fail to learn something new when doing so, and sometimes see stuff differently now than you did 20 years ago as your mind and experience develops. So I still use material from them, and variations of the material 40 years later. As Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger have said, "if you want to learn new magic read old books, if you want to learn old magic read new books."
The great trouble with magicians is the fact that they believe when they have bought a certain trick or piece of apparatus, and know the method or procedure, that they are full-fledged mystifiers. -- Harry Houdini
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