Discourse in Magic

This week Jonah is thrilled to connect with the legendary Bill Malone. Whether you watched any of his DVDs or saw him on YouTube as a kid, or don’t know who he is yet, this is going to be an incredible conversation with someone who embodies the very aspect of Discourse in Magic.  Bill Malone is one of those guys in magic who basically has it all covered. In sleight of hand, he is absolutely at the top of his game. As an entertainer, he is hilarious. And he’s the most entertaining force with a pack of cards that you’ve ever seen in your life. And in business, he is known as being one of the top paid magicians. This is somebody who is building incredible relationships and giving you the tools.  The First Job Bill Malone never thought he would ever perform in front of an audience. He was interested in the techniques and the artistry but not the performance at first. But a mentor encouraged him to apply for a job a bar in Chicago called A Little Bit Of Magic and, after originally lying that he didn’t get the job because he assumed nobody would hire a kid with only six months experience, he started performing in front of live audiences.  There he learned on his feet about how long to spend with each audience member, how to perfect his routine, and how to speak to total strangers. Despite scary it was it was sink or swim and if he wanted to swim he had to figure it out quick. Building Relationships Today Bill is one of the highest paid magicians, mostly performing for corporate events for some of the most powerful companies in the world. Of course, that didn’t happen overnight and Bill shares with Jonah the years of bad choices and mistaken strategies he had to navigate before learning how to build trust with clients and grow his business.  He’ll offer you some tools to use the next time you’re performing at a party or a corporate event, what language to use, and how to communicate with people from the business world, who expect a certain level of class of presentation, to maximize the potential that they’ll be asking you to perform at their next event. Malone’s Magic Bar Bill also opens up about running Malone’s Magic Bar, a place that, among other things, was also used as a way for Bill to train and mentor magicians that caught his attention. At Malone’s Magic Bar, Bill is not looking for the flashy poses or the best tricks but for the performer who can connect with the audience on a personal level. The best thing you can perfect is how to relax and just talk to the audience member, to walk up to them and communicate in a way that lets people in.  As Bill talks about Malone’s Magic Bar you’ll learn more about what he’s looking for in magicians, and it should be no surprise to find out that the actual audition was often not the deciding factor but the ten minutes before and after when you would just be talking to each other. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Charlie Fry. He’s real show business.  Lance Pearce. As far as a guy who knows magic, slight of hand, performing, everything, he’s just brilliant.  Finally, Steve Forey What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? I do think there’s a lack of. Presentation. And I think it’s because magic is, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but magic is going back towards “it’s all about the trick”. Watch this trick and effect and that’s it. I don’t agree with that. I still think that the magic is in you. It’s what you do that brings you out.  I see some beautiful magic. When I saw Derek DelGaudio’s In & Of Itself I thought this is the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve always known Derek as being a great sleight of hand magician, and he’s always been a good friend, but what he’s done, he’s just gone to another level. Plugs Bill is pretty hard to find online, he doesn’t get on the internet much except for the rare collaboration, but keep your nose out for a book he’s beginning to put together which is going to collect all his stories into one place.

This week we share with you an episode from the Between Dreams podcast with Chris Ruggiero, who recently featured Jonah as a guest.  Chris and Jonah have a lot in common as both have shifted from primarily being entertainers to now helping with production and advising other creators. Chris is a legend with a history as a professional juggler and an eye like nobody else, producing a really great show.  In this conversation they talk about how Jonah blended his business and magic training and why he chooses the guests he chooses to interview on Discourse in Magic. To find out more about Between Dreams with Chris Ruggiero visit chrisruggiero.com/podcast

This week Jonah offers up three tips to help you boost your magic creative output. Tip 1: Challenge Yourself Jonah is, right now with Ben, participating in a challenge they’ve called the Tarbell Challenge. It is a monthly challenge on YouTube from the Tarbell course in magic. Ben and Jonah take a book a month and come up with a trick from the book. They make it their own and then publish it on YouTube. And the reason why the challenge is so helpful is because they each want to beat each other and come up with a better thing than the other. Because of that, they’re both working very hard. And they know that when the time comes and they’re going to be filming, they don’t want their thing to look not as good as the other’s does Tip 2: Have A Deadline. Most of the magic that Jonah has ever created was because of a deadline. Those periods of a deadline, those periods right before you actually have to present or perform really helps. So if you have an event that you can sign yourself up for an open mic, a public show, a private event that you get booked for. If you can do some sort of gathering, you can even make the event by saying, okay, on this day, I’m doing this, I’m inviting 10 people to be a part of it. And you just fabricate yourself a deadline. The truth is, committing to completing a project before a moment in time allows you to complete that project way faster and way better. We want to get more output out by having more deadlines that we need to complete things by. Tip 3: Collaborate Coming up with things alone is fun, but sharing things with others and getting feedback and trying again is a whole different type of fun. When you’re collaborating, you’re playing, and isn’t that the reason why we all got into magic? There’s something really cool about working on magic with multiple people. You’ve likely got friends who would love to help you and bring them questions, bring them problems to help you solve. And it makes it a lot more fun. If you struggle to create magic, but you want to create magic, then stop doing it alone and invite other people to be a part of the procedure. Not only will you make more, but it’s going to be a ton more fun.   Take The Tarbell Challenge! If you’d like to join Ben and Jonah in the Tarbell Challenge check out the Toronto Magic Company’s YouTube channel by clicking here!

This week we share a segment from the Three Questions with Jake Strong Podcast, in which Jonah was recently a guest on.  Jake’s podcast is a simple premise, he asks his guests three questions. That’s it! And in this episode he asked Jonah about the misunderstood aspects of running a magic business, the preparation that goes into interviewing his guests on Discourse in Magic, and his strengths and weaknesses with the Toronto Magic Company. Along with Jonah, Jake has also interviewed Ben Train from the Toronto Magic Company. Be sure to check out more of Three Questions with Jake Strong by visiting threequestionswithjake.podbean.com or subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

This week Jonah sits down with Joe Rindfleisch to talk all about rubber band magic and hoe Joe is at the forefront of developing the language used to teach this style of magic and the classic magic he taps into to influence the new tricks he’s developing. “You got sixty bucks”? Originally Joe wasn’t involved in magic at all, but he did meet with friends to play cards and eventually every night would end with someone doing a card trick. When he finally asked how it was done he was told that “a magic trick is told, when a magic trick is sold” and his friend directed him to a magic shop. Pouring over books, Joe found that trick and learned it’s secrets and a few years later was able to perform that trick for the same friend, with a few select changes he learned from classic magic so he wouldn’t know how it was done. Learning From The Classics Joe has earned a reputation, through teaching courses and selling instruction videos, as one of the world’s biggest developers and inventor of rubber band magic. The secret to that success was a decision to approach rubber band magic just like all the other forms of magic. Almost anything you can do with cards or coins you can do with rubber bands and from that you can create a beginning, middle, and end to the routine and evolve rubber band magic from a quick short trick into a full magic routine as robust as any of the other classics. Joe gets into where he finds his inspiration, how he adapts classic coin and card magic into his rubber band routines, and why he’s so fascinated by the potential of rubber band magic. Developing A New Vernacular Developing a whole new branch of magic means coming up with language to describe it. Because rubber band magic has been so underdeveloped it can make it very difficult to write out instructions because all the basic hand motions and positions have to be written out in long form detail that can be hard to visualize in one’s head. Which is why, if you’re like Jonah and other magicians learning rubber band magic today, you have likely only learned a rubber band trick by jamming with another magician in person or watching video instructions. What Joe is setting out to do is create a new vernacular, a new set of words, to describe what is being done in a rubber band trick. By teaching the basic hand positions and motions first and creating a robust foundation he can then move on to more easily, and efficiently, teach more complex rubber band routines.  Joe shares with Jonah some of this language and helps describe the terms used to describe those fundamental positions you’ll need to learn if you want to grow your rubber band magic knowledge.  Wrap-Up Endless Chain Dr. Cyril Thomas, from France, is a very prolific creator. And Joe loves Marcus Eddie’s magic. He’s just a powerhouse creator. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? Lately Joe has been teaching magic through Penguin Magic School and the enthusiasm of his students is making him enthusiastic. What Joe doesn’t like is the proliferation of content creators teaching and sharing magic without crediting the sources. The best way to learn a Joe Rienfliesh rubber band trick is to learn it from Joe Rienfliesh!  Plugs Joe has his own site at rubberbandmagic.com All of Joe’s downloads can be found exclusive at Penguin Magic And you are invited to message Joe on Facebook Messenger, he’s always open to chat and answer your questions.

Ben and Jonah are back to get you excited about taking UnConventional.fun beyond the final frontier, that’s right, they’re going to space!  Of course we mean virtually, as UnConventional.fun is the premier virtual magic convention and the next one is happening on August 28th and 29th and tickets are still available at UnConventional.fun! In Space No One Can Hear You Sleep The first UnConventional.fun was hosted in a virtual hotel lobby and the 2nd and 3rd events sent attendees to the amusement park adventure zone that was Magic Land but the fourth event Ben and Jonah really wanted to take the gloves off and embrace all the outrageousness that a virtual magic convention can embrace and taken the entire event into outer space.  And since it’s happening in space, this means that there are no time zones and no sunsets and no night time or daytime so unlike previous UnConventional.fun events which would end after a certain hour each day this time around, when the convention starts, the events won’t stop until the end of the second day.  Don’t worry if you end up sleeping through your favourite lecture though, the entire event is being recorded and everyone who attends will be given videos of the lectures and panels that take place over the two day convention.  A Star Studded Event With over twenty-two confirmed guests, including magical luminaries such as Dani DaOrtiz, Garrett Thomas, Daniel Garcia, and Harapan Ong, you’ll be attending a two day event with some of the best magicians on the planet.   And all the lectures, panels, and shows will be yours to keep after the event so you can watch and rewatch your favourite moments over and over again.    Prepare For Launch The space station is ready to receive you and all you have to do now is head to UnConventional.fun and buy your tickets 

This week Jonah connects with legendary “underground” magician Howard Hamburg. Howard has never been a full time professional magician but at eighty-three years he is a long-standing member of The Magic Castle and considers some of the greatest magicians of our time to be among his closest friends.  Howard shares with us his recollections of the heydays of the Magic Castle, how he “got his name” from Dai Vernon, and his advice for today’s magicians.  “Well, do you need to see anything more”? Today you might find Howard sitting in Dai Vernon’s old seat at the Magic Castle, and it was The Professor himself who convinced Howard to audition for membership to the Magic Castle in the first place. Howard shares with us his early days with magic, how he learned his first card trick in the backroom of a billiards hall, and how he won over the committee at the Magic Castle to earn his membership.  “An Era Where Things Turned” Sitting at Dai Vernon’s table at the Magic Castle gave Howard a front row seat to the heyday of American magic of the 60’s and 70’s and during that time many of the greatest magic legends were just his friends that he spent his time with. Howard shares with us some of his favourite stories of the magic greats pulling pranks on each other and joking around among the halls of the Magic Castle as well as some of his own antics. As Howard puts it, he was the second biggest troublemaker at the Magic Castle (The Professor was the biggest). “Think Like A Spectator” Howard Hamburg has seen the world of Magic change over the years and from his front seat perspective on magic history his biggest advice for today’s magicians is to think like a spectator, not like a magician. Howard says, “If they stop thinking like a magician and start thinking like what the spectator is seeing then they will find themselves doing better magic”. Wrap-Up Endless Chain I’d love to really think this out and get back to you. There’s so many guys out there that are just wonderful, really. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? I liked the creativity that I see, the wonderful creative initiative of wonderful things out there right now. I’m talking about techniques and subtleties. I think there’s more of that coming back. Instead of just the trick, I think, people are seeing that there are things that are in between the lines of that structure, that little subtleties make the effect, the effect doesn’t make the subtleties. I don’t like the internet or YouTube and I think it’s very harmful to magic.  Take home point Stop thinking like a magician and start thinking more along the lines of a spectator. Also, pick up a book once in a while. Plugs Howard Hamburg still operates underground. When the world re-opens after the pandemic you might get lucky and catch him sitting at Dai Vernon’s seat at the Magic Castle and if you listen to the end of this episode Howard will share with you his personal e-mail that you can reach him at, but to preserve his well earned mystery, and to hide it from bots that might scan this text, we won’t be printing it here.

This week Jonah connects with Helder Guimarães, a prolific magician known for bending the expectations of what a magic show is capable of. In this episode they’ll discuss how to balance the artistic and the logical sides of your performances, why Helder requests that those who purchase his material not perform them on TV or online, and how he directed his love of performance and creation towards the past year of pandemic-era virtual performances. A Live Show Like No Other If you were lucky enough to get a ticket to one of Helder’s shows you might have found yourself outside a convenience store with your ticket in hand and a confused store clerk assuring you that there is no show at this address but he can at least offer you a memory. And as he led you into the photo booth and the secret door opened up to a hidden room where Helder was waiting to perform a one hour set with you you might realize that this person likes to upend your expectations about what is possible with a magic show.   Helder opens up about the work that went into his immersive production of Borrowed Time and what it took to assemble the right team that brought it all together.  Embracing The Mystery of Theatre Helder magic career really took off after his FISM win in 2006. But that win almost never happened because the panel of judges truly believed he had cheated, rather than simply fooled them, by using a stooge in his act. His performance was just too impossible and the judges couldn’t figure out how he pulled it off without cheating. Jonah and Helder talk about that act and break down some of Helder’s thoughts on the importance of disguising the method. Going Virtual   A global pandemic shutting down all live performances on the planet wasn’t going to slow down Helder either. He shares with Jonah his process of putting together another truly unique show with The Geffen Playhouse, called The Present, in which members of the virtual audience are sent objects that they use during the show so that the magic is literally in their hands. Helder shares what it was like to produce a show in lockdown and finally break out a concept he had been considering for a long time but never had the right environment to test it out in. Wrap-Up Endless Chain Bill Goodwin is an amazing person, amazing friend with a lot of knowledge of a great era in magic. He met all those great card guys. What do you like about modern magic? What do you not like? One of the things that it’s both positive and negative is that I do believe that magic is not yet developed as a performing art as it can be. I think there is a lack of depth in what magic is still today. But that’s a positive thing at the same time, because it allows us to be able to explore that. There is a lot of things we can do to create new magical experiences and to create new ways of audiences to feel impossible moments and at that point it becomes something positive. One of the things I like about magic right now is the possibility of seeing diversity much more than when I started. When I started, the only things you could see or read were the videos that these big names produced or the books or the people around you or you had to travel and you’re still always going to be limited. Now you can talk with friends in Japan and then they can share things that happened there. That’s amazing, that the idea that that diversity exists and it’s more attainable, that is something really powerful. Used correctly, I think it can be of great advantage for everyone. One negative thing would be the lack of criteria of publishing magic these days. I think a lot of things get to the press or to videos or to whatever medium they are using to sell before people really think through what they are putting out. It’s almost like people have ideas and two months later they publish it. And I feel that magic has much more to gain with each people keeping their secrets a little bit more. Nourishing them. And when it comes to the right moment that they will feel it to then publish because that will have a little bit more of that depth as well.  Take home point Something that took me a long time to learn and that I do believe it’s the essence of magic. From the creative point of view. And the way I like to think about magic is of self-expression, that’s what we are creating. I would say that being honest is the best thing they can do in every single thing. Be honest when working on it, be honest when sharing it, be honest when receiving criticism, be honest with yourself, be your own self critic. The worst comments should be yours after a performance. Plugs For magicians, Secret Language is still available and if you visit secretmagic.com there will be a password hint. It’s very easy for people who know a little bit about magic and once in you can get a lot of Helder’s releases through the website. For everyone else interested in Helder’s performances you can follow him on instagram @instahelder or visit thisishelder.com

Ben Train returns to harass Jonah for another update from the Toronto Magic Company.  This week they discuss the winding down of virtual shows, what their first live show post-pandemic was like, how they’re planning for the future of in-person shows, how they’re consulting for other businesses, and how much fun they’re having the new teleprompter they purchased!  Are Virtual Events Dying Down? The story seems to be the same for every magician, virtual shows are winding down. Even for the Toronto Magic Company, Jonah and Ben have noticed a dramatic decline in bookings for virtual shows. Does this mean the end of virtual magic? Is this a harbinger of the return of regular in-person shows? Jonah and Ben discuss the exciting possibilities and remind each other what they’ve loved and learn from a year of virtual performances. First Live Show Back Ben and Jonah are also just back from their first live in-person show since the start of the pandemic, and it was a bachelorette party. The guys share their thoughts on what it was like to be back to in person shows and how different it feels from before. They also open up about their plans for the eventual return of in-person shows in the near future and how they’re both learning what sort of events they want to accept and which events they’ll be more comfortable turning down. Consulting and Youtube Content On top of the return to in-person events, Jonah and Ben have also been consulting on a bunch of different projects including TV shows, VR, music videos, and even helping to design a wedding proposal! Over the past couple of years, Jonah and Ben have worked to help solve magic problems with magicians and now they’re excited to begin working with movies or television shows to help their projects and really extend their problem solving abilities. Stay tuned to find out more about the projects they’re involved with!   And the return of in-person events doesn’t mean that things will be slowing down for Jonah and Ben on their online platforms. The Toronto Magic Company continues to produce new content on their Youtube channel and need your feedback to know what you like. They’ve tried vlogging but also scripted shows and sketches and, as you might expect, Jonah and Ben have differing opinions about what sort of content they should focus on in the future. So make sure you weigh in and leave a comment at youtube.com/torontomagiccompany

This week Jonah shares with you six tools that will make working with your team easier as you expand your magic business.   #1: Slack Slack documents your conversations. How many times have you communicated with a freelancer in an email thread that goes on and on and on and on, or have you shared information and you have to go and dig through it. Slack makes that communication a little bit easier, a little bit more searchable, and is a nice place to communicate with your team that is outside of email, outside of Facebook, outside of everything. With Slack, if you have multiple team members, then they all may have conversations with you and you may have conversations with other individuals, and they may have conversations with each other. For Jonath, that’s been a real lifesaver. Slack has a nice place to put everything to organize your work communications. #2: Asana With Asana, you can have a project within a project. You can have tasks and within those tasks you can have sub tasks. You can even have recurring tasks. You’ve got a place to track everything, and it really makes it simple because now you don’t have to dig through email or slack or anything else like that. You can set goals, you can set deadlines, you can do tons inside of Asana. Jonah uses it completely entirely for free, and it really is a game changer and it gets you out of a long thread to give tasks and into a really easy place to write out tasks, communicate about tasks, add people, and manage people on task. So if there’s one person doing something, you send it to them. If there’s multiple people and it’s all visible, it’s really effective. Jonah found this probably doubled or tripled the amount of work that he was able to do with his team, just because it was clear and organized and not very hard to learn. #3: Loom Loom is a screen or camera recorder that takes that file and immediately puts it in a folder on the web and gives you a link that you can share. It takes so long to record a video on your camera, upload it to a drive, and then send that drive link to someone. Same thing when you send some sort of screen recording, some sort of tutorial that also takes a long time, you have to save to your computer. And it’s usually a ginormous file. Loom makes the whole process of recording yourself, recording your computer or recording yourself and your computer at the same time really, really easy.  #4: Google Drive Google Drive is really important. Once you’re using a team that is going to be sharing files back and forth, you don’t want to just send a file that’s going to disappear. You want the space, and it’s really important to potentially pay Dropbox or Google Drive to get that couple hundred gigs or maybe terabytes of cloud storage to be able to put your photos or videos or projects or anything else like that. If you have to go and upload from your hard drive, photos or videos, every time you have a new project, it’s going to slow you down working with your team. If you’re working with your team, if you’re writing things together, if you’re creating videos together, creating documents together, graphics together, anything, then you probably want to invest in some sort of cloud storage. #5: Zoom Zoom! Zoom is important to have meetings. And, as time goes on, we are going to have teams that are more and more global and it’s nice to be able to share your screen and also see each other and all that good stuff. You know Zoom, you just experienced a pandemic. So you know all about Zoom, but it really is that important. If you don’t use Zoom, you can use Skype or another platform that you like to use but Zoom did a really good job and Jonah pays for it because he does virtual shows and it’s pretty good for his team. Jonah even pays for the recordings because it’s great to have the recordings of things that you teach to your team and you may want to use it later. #6: LastPass You need some sort of password manager and password sharer. Instead of you giving your team members your password to log into your Zoom account to grab a recording, you share with them the LastPass link. They click that link and it fills in the form and they don’t even see what the password is. So they’re able to use any usernames and passwords that you have and log in from wherever they are. It’s so easy for LastPass. And at a low price point it’s very reasonable to manage all of Jonah’s passwords to make it easy to share with team members. Upgrade Your Business Jonah would love to know what software you use with your team. Was there one that he forgot here that you use? Do you think one of the ones that you use is a better version of something that we have here? And if you are growing your team and want help growing your magic business then send an email to info@discourseandmagic.com with the subject “Upgrade” and Jonah will get you some info about upgrading your magic business. And that might mean working with a team member and adding some software to make managing that team easy.