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• AL SCHNEIDER MAGIC BOOK HOW TO

Schneider is not just a describer of things magical,he is a real teacher, and there is a great difference. This includes the Schneider Classic Vanish,probably the best utility vanish extant for ending with a coin in Classic Palm, which is why it has become a standard sleight among experts for more than 30 years. This is different, as he points out, from mime, or even what we normally regard as theatrical acting (although in my estimation it may relate to a kind of "method acting," in that we are best off not even thinking about the concealed coin, but rather are actually focused on our own temporary reality of the imagined or "intended" coin in the left hand where it was apparently placed).įollowing the book's opening theory section (consisting of five chapters), the second section describes fundamental and original sleights with coins, and cups and balls. How you create this conviction, this belief in the performer's intended reality, is the focus of Mr. Without absolute conviction in this false reality, the effect and revelation of the ensuing vanish will have little or no impact. In order to achieve a magical effect, the audience must genuinely believe that you have, for example, placed a coin in your left hand, when in fact you have secretly retained it in the right via a false transfer. This is true even though the audience knows that you are not really doing magic."

"Intention of Reality" is less easily reduced to a simple explanation, but it has to do with the fact that, in Mr.Schneider's words, "During a magic performance, the audience is not aware that some real thing they are observing is not actually real.

Schneider rightly points out later in the book that leaving out this element not only damages most magic, but specifically in the case of his brainchild,"Matrix," serves as one of the distinct differences between his performance of the plot and how the trick appears in the hands of most other magicians.

This is a theatrically potent and, I would suggest, essential element of effective magic performance, and Mr. "Intention of Magic" has to do with providing the magic moment, the act of performing the magic, and defining the moment in which it occurs. Schneider uses an idiosyncratic but extremely useful way once they are under-stood i.e., "apply intention of magic," or "look at the intended com" are terms which I adopted more than 30 years ago and have used and taught students ever since. On the theory side, the book begins with probably the two most significant theoretical concepts drawn from "Six Properties of Deception," namely the "Intention of Reality" and the "Intention of magic." These terms, which Mr. Only a handful of pages from two of these books (and none from the Zombie text) reappear in the pages of this massive new volume, even though Al Schneider Magic weighs in at more than three pounds.

AL SCHNEIDER MAGIC BOOK HOW TO

I have long been a big fan of both these books, long out of print, along with Al Schneider on Zombie (1981), a thorough text on how to perform Zombie in no kidding close-up conditions. This was followed in 1980 by a related piece, "Six Qualities of the Performance," which appeared in Al Schneider on Close-up. Perhaps the most significant of these pieces was entitled "Six Properties of Deception," which first appeared in Al Schneider on Coins in 1975. Schneider's accomplishments is the contribution of a number of useful tools within the theoretical literature of magic.

But in the 40 years or so since Mr.Schneider and his legendary and influential routine burst onto the magic scene, he has done much more than that,and it is high time that magicians gained access to a substantial collected volume of his work, both old and new.Īmong the much-more-than-"Matrix" that has comprised Mr. If Al Schneider had done nothing more in his magical career than invent the trick known as "Matrix," he would have achieved far more than most of us, in that his trick will likely be known to magicians until the end of civilization. Reviewed by Jamy Ian Swiss (originally published in Genii September, 2011)