Fractures

Back when I used to practice diligently to perfect my magical skills, I worked very hard to make difficult mechanations seem effortless. In fact, in most cases, for sleight-of-hand to be successful, it must be invisible. This requires many,many hours of practice, but more than that, it requires analysis of what I've come to think of as fractures. these are the parts of a performance piece--any performance piece--that isn't working smoothly, or where the effort shows.

What you find with magicians is they tend to blink, wince, stutter, or perform a gesture out-of-synch with the rest of their movements. This is, of course, to magicians who haven't practiced diligently enough to remove the fractures. They, in some way, telegraph that something just happened. While an audience can't usually tell what exactly occurred, they know the performer hit a bump in the road, a mine in the field, a log in the water. Audience members with less-than-mature emotional development will usually announce out loud they saw you do something, too.

The reason fractures occur is because the performer has to stop performing for that split-second and start thinking about what he's doing. Thrown out of the intuitive flow of performance, the shift from right-brain stream of consciousness to left-brain analysis generates a visible jolt.

The secret to eliminating fractures in sleight-of hand is simple: practice, practice, and practice some more, until you can skate past the difficult section without stopping to think. I will tell you many burgeoning performers give up long before they get to the point of mastering some of the truly difficult maneuvers of the conjuring arts. Over time you develope your own toolkit of practice techniques. One of mine was to leave decks of cards in random location throughout the house. Whenever I came across one, I'd practice whatever routine I was working on. This surprised my brain into learning the routine under fire. The drawback to a practice session, is that it creates habitution. You become used to the conditions of the session. You have to shock your brain into performing the material under different conditions.

I've found exactly the same phenomenon occurs when learning piano music. There are parts of any piece which are much harder than others, so while you're learning the musical number, you come across these "bumps" and slow down. The great thing about music is you can hear the fractures while you play. Some magicians blank out the fractures in their performances, or actually integrate them into the performance. That's right--rehearsed fumbling. I've seen it many times. This is why every performer needs critique from a qualified observer. Please note the word qualified.

What I'm doing right now, right at this point in time, even as we sit here and share the sequalia from our post-traumatic stress disorders, is polishing out the fractures in the two pieces of music on which I'm working. Oh, I'm so close. I toodle along so happily until I hit one of these fractures, then my fingers send a distress signal to my brain: "Help, where do we go next; and when's lunch?" and then the smooth flow of music disintegrates into cacophony.

Now that you're back from Googling the word cacophony, understand this: I love learning difficult skillsets. If I didn't I would have given up sleight of hand magic at age twelve. Or quit piano about ten months ago when it dawned on me that this was the most difficult thing I've ever attempted. You see, I want to play these pieces so badly. As my fingers get closer to the sounds in my mind, it makes me happier.