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“The Top Change”

There‘s some good ideas in here, but while I think there‘s merit in looking at the various choreographies out there to set up the top-change, I think it‘s also worthwhile to consider the  possibility that the move can be adequately covered by natural gestures, if somebody has a good

concept of timing and misdirection. This is one of the reasons why it really helps to have a  background in something other than cards if you want to be a well-rounded magician —  the

lessons that one can learn in a simple coin vanish can apply here. If you consider Dai Vernon‘s choreography for practicing the top-change (the famous little bit of business where he

accidentally knocks over a balanced card box whereupon he plans to set the card), there are some striking parallels to the vanishing of a coin with a wand.

Just some general thoughts…

* You don‘t want them to suspect the top-change. Here is where timing is important. When I open my Ambitious Card Routine, I always do the first phase with a pass, followed b y a top- change to set up the next phase. The thinking here is simple — when you‘re doing a multiple-  phase routine, you don‘t always need them to know that it‘s going to be a multiple-phase routine.

That moment, after you‘ve done the first phase, if you‘ve got the body-language of somebody who‘s relaxing after having completed his trick, you can coax them into relaxing as well. This is a good time. This is where it‘s hard to say whether or not the suggested choreographies in this  part of the chapter in Royal Road are any good, but that‘s alright, because in an upcoming

section there‘s a very good instance that we‘ll talk about then. One thing that‘s worth noting is that body language can help establish a good time for you —  you want to look relaxed, as though you‘re done, rather than tense, as though something‘s coming up. Having the postur e of

somebody who‘s relaxed also gives you a good reason to have your arms in a rest position about a fist-width in front of your belly- button, a spot that Tyler Erickson calls the ―sweet spot‖, which is a great place to do a lot of secret moves, if you‘ve got the right timing.

* Preferably, they‘re not looking at the top-change. Here‘s where misdirection comes in hand y. I‘m going to talk about two kinds of misdirection — the first is where they‘re looking away from a spot of danger, and the second is wher e they‘re looking towards a spot of interest (whilst

simultaneously looking away from a spot of danger). I‘ll elaborate on those two points in a

moment, but first, one can‘t really talk about misdirection without considering Tomm y Wonder‘s work on the subject. Wonder did a really good job in outlining the concept of the Mind Movie, where you basically present the trick (choreograph y and gestures and conditions and all) without any thought as to method, and then, after you figure out how you want it to look, you figure out ways to plug in a method that fits it. Presumably, if you‘re going to wield real magic, you‘ll gesture towards the appropriate points of interest throughout, and if d esign the effects in this manner, sometimes you‘ll find that in your choreography there will emerge shadow areas where

there will be no audience attention, and these are places where you can conceal sleights. It‘s a complicated concept, and you‘ll have to look into Tommy Wonder‘s work to see specific

examples of this (his Cups and Balls routine, Magic Fa rm, and Elizabeth IV contain some great examples of his ideas of focusing and controlling their attention so that things are lost in the shadow areas, and his Everywhere and Nowhere construction is worth looking at to see ho w this sort of thing applies specifically to the top chan ge).

If you‘ve got something in your routine that allows you to control attention towards a point of interest, then you might find that it‘ll be easier to misdirect away from the top change. That said, it‘s still possible to misdirect away from the top-change effectively when there‘s no real magic- related point of interest, and still get away with it. J ohn Carney, in his Carney on Ramse y DVD and in Carneycopia, talks about the mechanics of the simple wand-based vanish of a coin, and the idea is that you basically ask them something or remark upon something, get them to look you in the eyes, and then execute the move at that moment (there‘s a lot more to it than just that, the resources previously mentioned give you a better idea of how the timing and choreography work together, but the underlying concept is what‘s important). This can be somewhat risky, in that regular people are conscious of the idea of being misdirected away from things. As such, you need to massage those moments so that they don‘t feel like they were misdirected away from something important, and that might mean making sure that the state of affairs after the moment of misdirection appears to be identical to the moment just before it. One reason that the shuttle  pass of similar objects is such a devious strategy, arguably much better than a mere false transfer,

is that you can use bold misdirection at the point of the exchange, but the openness of the object  before and after the transfer can make it difficult to suspect a switch took place. With the top-

change, you‘ve got something a bit similar going on, in that before they look away they‘ll see a card away from the deck, and after they look back they‘ll see a card at about the same spot, and if their attention was sufficiently harnessed they‘ll not notice that the two came close, and this can make the switch difficult to detect.

* If they are looking at the top-change, preferably there‘s cover. Now, you‘re in real danger if they‘re looking at your hands at the point of the top-change. Some magicians have tried

executing a top-change while flicking the card against the deck, but to me that‘s giving up on trying to make the technique as invisible and indetectable as possible, similar to doing a riffle during a pass. Other ideas include trying to turn the body all the wa y to the right so that

everybody is getting the back of your hand. This can look a bit too much like you‘re shielding  people from the action —  my personal preference is to try to turn to the right-most spectator

(having a theatrical reason to do so helps), so that I‘m getting cover for the sleight with

everybody else in the audience, and then work like the Dickens to make sure he‘s misdirected away from my hands. Still others have worked on trying to camouflage it within other actions, such as gesturing one way with one hand as you address somebody on one side, bringing the hands together as you turn towards the other way, top-changing, and then gesturing the other

way with the other hand as you address somebody on that side. If you‘ve got really good attention control, you might be able to get away with this. Me, personally, I like the covered route, which isn‘t quite the way that Hugard and Braue recommend. You‘ll want to experiment. * Ideally, they shouldn‘t know how a top-change could have helped you in the first place. This means making sure that the top-change itself isn‘t the only key to the mystery. Let‘s say you‘re doing a straight-forward trick where you‘re exchanging a wrong card for a right one —  show the wrong card, top-change, and then show it‘s changed. If you get away with the top-change itself this won‘t be bad, but you can make the mystery deeper b y making it seem impossible that you could have known what the right card was (again, letting them remember that they shuffled the deck after the card was returned can help with this). It‘s worth pointing out that a top-change is an intuitive method —  after all, what more straight-forward way is there to turn on e card into another card? — and as such you‘ll be doing yourself a favour if you make it seem like there‘s more to the mystery than just a top-change.

* Using good technique. If you do all the above correctly, you might find that you don‘t need the  best technique to get away with the move. I‘m pretty sure I don‘t have the best technique (I use

something pretty close to what‘s in Royal Road), but in judicious use of the above ancillary techniques I get away with it. If you‘re going to aim higher than that, though, you might want to look into David Williamson‘s Top Change. It‘s more difficult, but it looks great, an d is just that much harder to know that a move just occurred, as his method really helps eliminate the

 perception of excessive finger-action. That said, I do think that if you‘ve got a good

choreography built into a good routine, the method taught in Royal Road should do you fine, if you take into account all the good minor tips in there. Some have looked into using the Biddle Grip for the top-change, which could work, but I think that because the Biddle Grip isn‘t quite as natural-looking as the grip in Royal Road (or something similar), you might want to have a good reason for why you‘re holding the card that way (once more, consider Tommy Wonder‘s

approach, where the grip is motivated somewhat by the display he gives the card right  beforehand).

* Having an out. Thankfully, there‘s an easy one. If you even smell a bit of suspicion that somebody caught your top-change, replace the card on top of the deck and double-lift. This might not work in every instance, in which case you‘ll need a different strategy.

For additional thoughts on all this, you might want to look into Gary Kurtz‘s Leading With Your Head, which is a treatise on misdirection in general.

“The Changing Card”

The real key to appreciating this trick is to understand the timing that‘s built into it. It‘s quite good. The idea is that you want to top-change immediately after they‘ve seen the wrong card, but  before you‘re made aware that it‘s the wrong card. What you want to have is that moment where

wrong card. Get that, and you‘ve got a good moment on your hands. The idea is that, if they are convinced that you‘re only just discovering your screw up, that means that Darwin Ortiz‘s Critical Interval (definition: the time period bounded by the moments whe re the spectator

 believes the trick starts and ends) starts now, and as talked about previously, it really helps if you don‘t have to do a move during the Critical Interval.

As for the rest of the trick, I don‘t know if you‘ll get five good seconds of laughter the way the authors describe, but you will get a good trick out of it. I‘ve been using this basic construction to good effect, with some minor changes, for a routine that‘s pretty much 4 minutes of byplay coupled with maybe 10 seconds of method (the top-change itself, needless to say, only takes a fraction of that). I absolutely encourage you to try to find a way to present this type of trick. Not only will it help you get this move down, but it‘s a good exercise in showmanship. Two things… First, I think this sort of trick is strengthened immeasurably if the card is lost. R egardless of how clean it is, most people are going to come to the intuitive solution that you somehow invisibly switched the cards. As such, all things being equal, the switch will be more powerful if they‘re convinced you couldn‘t have known which card to switch in for the wrong one. Second, I think there‘s merit in trying to use subtleties to convince somebod y that the card you‘re holding after the switch is the same card you showed them beforehand —  something like miscalling the card can help. Even basic acting, showing that you‘re surprised you got the wrong card, won‘t hurt.

“Top

Change Byplay”

I could see this working out as fun, but really, the trick in its current form lacks a climax. Personally, I‘d want to do something like having the card that you discard prove to be of

importance. Two ideas… First, a card is selected, returned and lost, and then you tell them that if they snap their fingers before taking a card, they‘ll find it themselves, and then start forcing the Joker on them repeatedly. Finally, you toss the Joker[?] on their lap (making sure that they hold onto it so as to stop the shenanigans) and then force the Joker again, and when they check their lap, they find that it‘s their original selection. Second, two spectators each select cards. The first spectator finds their own card, and then the second spectator keeps finding the first spectator‘s card over and over. Toss out the first spectator‘s card, and then repeat, only to have the first spectator‘s card show up again, and the second card on their lap has changed into their card. (That second one could conceivably be altered to be something similar to Tommy Wonder‘s Deja Reverse, one of my personal favourite card tricks of all time.)

Bottom Change

On this one, I‘m pretty much ignorant. The authors claim that it‘s both easier and in its perfect form indetectable, and yet still maintain that the top change is preferable. I don‘t quite follow the logic there, but whatever. It seems to me that there‘s a bit more finger -action going on with this one than the original top-change, but if you follow the angled blocking approach I talk about earlier, it might not be noticed.

Top and Bottom Changes

Good general advice here. The mirror comment reads funny to me, but maybe they‘re right. Dunno. Everything else is worth reading.

General Thoughts on this Chapter

I like this chapter alot. Despite the fact that onl y one trick is really taught, and a brief one at that, the stuff in here is good and useful. Again, I absolutely recommend trying to come up with a single trick where all you‘re doing is taking an indifferent card and changing it into the correct card. If you‘ve been plowing through this book, you‘re probably up to your neck in card-

manipulating techniques, so you‘ll want to switch gears and instead start thinking theatrically. If a card is selected, and you produce the wrong card, you‘ve got conflict. Conflict is a really effective way to engage your audience, so much so that it‘s easy to overuse the whole magician- in-trouble motif (Tommy Wonder‘s got some great thoughts on that as well). How are you going to produce the wrong card? Does it come out of the deck in an interesting manner? How are you going to change the card into the right card? Do you have a magic ritual for that? Maybe you‘ve got an assistant helping you out. Have they ever done magic before? Comedy potential. Do you need to teach them the magic ritual for finding the card? Again, comedy potential. Do you need to teach them the magic ritual for changing that card into the right card? Still more comedy  potential. And, of course, at the end of the trick you can lead the applause for them.

This sort of stuff might read flat, but it‘s this sort of routine that really allows you to ex press who you are as a character, while still giving them a decent trick.

Otherwise, I think I‘ve already explained everything I was taught and/or studied on the subject. Definitely take into account the various contexts for doing the top-change described earlier, and don‘t be afraid of this move. Learn to do it smoothly, and know that the out will save you if you need it to.