Flourish question

[Ben Long]

How long should it take me to perfrom a flourish at speed? Approximately how many hours of practice?

Also, what is the best way to practice a flourish?

[silent]

I would say practice until you have the confidence to perform it infront of people, just like magic, card manipulation takes practice and no one wants to see a crappy performance.

The best way to practice...? After you get what you have to do, I start slow and finish the entire cut or whatever at that speed after I can get a certain speed, speed it up, until you're at the point of where you think its good enough for performance. Remember though if your performing anything for the first time, your hands my get clammy and it is a lot harder to control under pressure.

good luck

[Ben Long]

I would say practice until you have the confidence to perform it infront of people, just like magic, card manipulation takes practice and no one wants to see a crappy performance.

The best way to practice...? After you get what you have to do, I start slow and finish the entire cut or whatever at that speed after I can get a certain speed, speed it up, until you're at the point of where you think its good enough for performance. Remember though if your performing anything for the first time, your hands my get clammy and it is a lot harder to control under pressure.

good luck

Sorry if I was unclear. I haven't actually "performed" and flourishes. I suppose I meant to say "execute."

[silent]

I think it would actually depend on the person, some people have a natural feel for flourishes and cuts. For me I think I would give it a half an hour to an hour before I move on to the next move and come back to that one later. For an example when I learned Sybil it took me a good week until I got it at a speed I wanted it at.

[Ben Long]

But in terms of a practice session...

What I usually do is look at the tutorial several times and then start doing the first few moves with the tutorial until I can do them slowly without looking at the tutorial, from memory. Then I move onto the next set of moves for the flourish.

Is there a better way?

[hawk7]

wow, only a week for sybil. i do sybil for 2 months now and i'm still so slow...
anyway, the only way to practice is just to try over and over and repeat that step. at the moment, i'm practicing roughly about 10 hours a day, but i still suck. i started only about 4 months ago with flourishing/magic, and so far i am very confident, because i think i have achieved quite alot in a short period of time, but magic and flourishing are arts, and just with most arts it takes years, decades or even your whole lifetime to perfect what you're doing. the most important thing is to keep going and have fun with it.
one more thing i have to say is the following: the longer you handle cards, do magic and flourishes, the easier it gets to learn new techniques, because you have a certain feeling for a deck and that's something you can't lose even if you don't touch playing cards for a month or a year. it takes alot of practice to reach that point though.

so now a quick answer to your questions:
best way to practice: start slow until you get comfortable & secure with the movements, then often the speed comes naturally.
how many hours of practice: that's a question that can't be answered. it depends on alot of factors, some of them being: how long have you been flourishing, what kind of moves do you like, how similar are moves you already can do to the new ones, how hard is the flourish, ......

just as an example, i think i can't do pandora at the moment, because i can't do a tornado cut. of course if i learned pandora, i could also do the tornado, but i prefer learning the basics first (i just don't want to learn brian tudors bad habit, because i hate the cut)

[Djmckee]

This Need so be moved to the flourish/cardisry section,

But it all depend on your style, some people think 'good' is fast.

Some Belive Technique over speed.

[ElisG]

Fluency is the more important factor, maintaining the same pace throughout is what counts :).

[Ben Long]

Fluency is the more important factor, maintaining the same pace throughout is what counts :).

Right, so how does one build up fluidity?

[ElisG]

Right, so how does one build up fluidity?

What I do, is start slow, and build up over a period of time until I get it fast enough so it looks effortless, but not so fast a spectator can admire each move.

Fluidity is important in a lot of things, take the invisible palm for instance, without the constant rhythm it just wouldn't be the same.

[Djmckee]

Practise, It the most obvious answer.

Your on these forums posting when you could be practising. :)

[Wilson]

well if u look at dan and dave buck they are truly amazing at flourishing and back in high school they practice for 8 - 10 hours each day so if you want to be as good as them then yeah 8-10 hours

[Avancer]

hard to say an exact ammount, for me it can take weeks to get it speedy, I can learn the flourish in about an hour, but getting it down and perfect like lets say DnD for example can take alot of time...

[The Illusionist]

It depends how determined you are to doing the flourish, if you are really determind it should take you a day or two. But there are some really hard flourishes that even if you are very determined it would take some time to get the hang of it.

-The Illusionist

[silent]

It depends how determined you are to doing the flourish, if you are really determind it should take you a day or two. But there are some really hard flourishes that even if you are very determined it would take some time to get the hang of it.

-The Illusionist


Exactly, I don't think theres a set time that you should practice it. Since we are all different, some may accelerate faster than others. What you want to do is practice the flourish until you're satisfied, not always is faster better. Take for example a simple flourish: a split fan, yes you can do it fast and it looks cool but if you do it slow it looks as if the fans forming out of no where which i think looks better

[Vinnie C.]

well if u look at dan and dave buck they are truly amazing at flourishing and back in high school they practice for 8 - 10 hours each day so if you want to be as good as them then yeah 8-10 hours

Although I would also recommend doing all of your schoolwork. ;)

-Vince

[Simpol]

Practice as much as how you would do with magic tricks.
not do be off topic(i don't wanna make or flood the forums)

anyone know any good recommendations of Dvd or books for Cardistry?

so far i have

xtreme beginner(currently working on)
Trilogy (kinda advice for me)
the system(looks kinda hard for me)
Weapons of a card shark (i don't know why i bought that vid)
and the book of flourishing (I'm not sure what edition)

[Blindside462]

Practice as much as how you would do with magic tricks.
not do be off topic(i don't wanna make or flood the forums)

anyone know any good recommendations of Dvd or books for Cardistry?

so far i have

xtreme beginner(currently working on)
Trilogy (kinda advice for me)
the system(looks kinda hard for me)
Weapons of a card shark (i don't know why i bought that vid)
and the book of flourishing (I'm not sure what edition)

Ps> sorry for the double post

Don't touch anything else except Xtreme Beginners until you mastered everything on it! It's really not that much but just master Xtreme Beginners.

Then go on to

The 3rd DISK on "The Trilogy" master everything

then you can go on to switching off to

Disk 1 and 2 on the trilogy, depending on if you want to do flourishing card magic or just plain flourishes. master everything

Then go on to The System because you will probably have the basics on flourishing.

When I say master everything...master everything, try to make sure you can do the move with ease. (It's funny because I spent a lot of time on the TG deck flip because I was flipping the deck the wrong way! lol it's supposed to flip to the left!)

[Sharog]

Flourishes goes way back, if u like Palming type of flourishes u should check out Jeff Mcbride's stuff, his backpalm fan routine is still one of the coolest to look at imo

[Vinnie C.]

Learn and become good at what you like in Xtreme Beginnerz.

Then learn and become good at what you like in the Encyclopedia of Playing Card Flourishes.

Then learn and become good at what you like in The System.

Then learn and become good at what you like in The Trilogy.

That is my recommendation for you if you want to learn flourishes.

-Vince

[Mike_Sedai]

Well said Vince

Advice I myself took and am currently plodding through. I am still working on XB, having fun with it, and I have also peeked at a couple of the moves in The System. Most are too advanced for me at this point, but, The WERM is something that I got down pretty quickly, and it's easy to do. If you start to practice something and it just seems like it is too damn hard, it is probably too advanced, so set it aside for a bit and work on the easier stuff until it's second nature...

[Vinnie C.]

Thanks, Mike.

I should actually add to my post:

During the entire time you are learning, from all of these products, and even before you learn from them and after you learn from them, always be creating. Always be creative. Do things in your style. And always make sure to BE CREATIVE. :D

-Vince

[trashmanf]

This is something I was thinking about to answer a question I was wondering about longevity in flourishing. It seems like, going through old posts on DeckNique, that there were tons of members that joined up briefly, were very excited, and then sort of dropped off the forums entirely.

I think if you start flourishing by seeing a really awesome move, for example J5, and then you just decide to learn this "power move" and you do, then that might define your style for you, and it might be harder to break out of that and develop your own original material.

if you start out with something original, you will never really "master" that move because you can always make it better, or add on variations! so i think that will make you last longer in cardistry.

and Mike, try the WERM fakie (starting in right hand instead of left) it'll spark some funny brain activity and stave off alzheimers! hehe

[elementalconjurer]

the sybill cut is not that hard. i learned it in about 4 days. now i can perform it pretty fast with lots of variations. (mecka, bad habit. 5 faces. skater ect.). ust keep doin git until you are good enough to do it to people

[UnholyGodn]

It really depends on the move, and your experience. For example learning the Sybil cut only took me a few hours to learn (not really fast of course) because I already knew the Impossible Stack from Xtreme Beginners which took me around a week to get down. That's probably the longest its ever taken me to get a move down (Doing it from start to finish without dropping cards), as you get used to holding cards weird ways it becomes more like putting blocks together than learning a whole move every time. I've picked up all the system cuts so far in a day or two, except Madonna, why do I have to be so bad at Bad Habit...

Anyway, other good advice is to sleep on a move, some things just come as your hands get better adjusted to manipulation cards. One handed fans, couldn't do for the life of me. Picked up the cards one day, bam, one handed fan. The same happened with the LePaul Spread and just today with the One Handed Shuffle (The damn things would never weave no matter what I tried) so sometimes leaving a move thats impossible then coming back a week or two later after doing some other things you might find things easier.

As others have said, it's not a competition, it takes time to get as good as all the people you see around. It's kind of off putting seeing their awesome skills and you think "wow, I can't even sybil properly" but they were exactly the same when they started out I'm sure, a lot of hard work and dedication got them where they are, you'll need it too.