Lukeroberts: When I saw your 'Little Miracles' show, one of the aspects I was most impressed with was the patter and stories, which went with your effects. I have personally had a lot of trouble building patter round effects.
One example of a great chat of yours was the silk to cane, when you told us about the magician you saw when you were younger (..and he did something incredible..!).
I would just like some advice; do you build your patter round the effects, or do you start with a story and build an effect round that?
Luke.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Luke

Well, in direct answer to your question, I always build the patter round the effect, rather than the other way round. The reverse way is actually done when I advise on plays and shows - then I'm working a trick into an already existing script. But it's not that way in my own work.

So for my own purposes, the trick always comes first. Then I decide what I can do to make it entertaining. And then (crucial, this) if I can't find the right talk to make it entertaining, I cut it. Always. I have to be ruthless about things like that.

When I started I found patter books helpful. That is a very uncool thing to say - I know a lot of magicians who despise patter books and who are immensely proud of their ability to turn anything into magical gold. Well, good luck to them. I found patter books helpful. There were two somewhat old-fashioned books by Sid Lorraine (they were old-fashioned even then!) called Patter and More Patter which I considered to be little goldmines - I'm not sure if I'd like them now - and which provided whole scripts for existing tricks. I didn't do the same tricks, but I allowed the scripts to inspire me. I stole lines from them and worked them into my stuff, and it worked. I still use one of the lines to this day (and I'm not telling you what it is!)

So these days I do it in more or less the same way, but without the patter books - though I'm still not averse to using them if I'm in a fix. Every time I think of a good line, I write it in a book. (I find I think of most of my lines in the shower.) And when I come to rehearse something new, I look through the book. And sometimes there's something there to kick me off.

I do the trick for myself, talking to the wall, and try and discern the right rhythm. I put in the line or lines that I want to, and see how they work. They will probably add a rhythm of their own, and that rhythm might be right and it might be wrong. I improvise, still talking to the wall. Ideas may start to come, and when I say something I like I write it down. Sometimes, the pattern of the trick may change as a result of this.

After two or three hours, something may have come out of it to the extent that I have a tentative script. When that happens, I sort of half learn it, and try the thing out on an intelligent friend. That changes everything, because the friend will change the rhythm of the thing simply by being there.

And so it grows. I give myself a deadline, and the time comes when I perform the thing for real people for the first time. I always know as soon as I do that whether to pursue a particular piece of material or not. 15% of my stuff is thrown out at this stage.

But assuming I'm lucky, and it's part of the 85% that stays, I then continue to change it until it's right.

It's strange, but I've noticed that it takes me just about exactly 50 public performances every time, whatever the trick. When I've done a thing 35 times, I start to relax with it, and then after 50 shows, it is set and fixed and I know what I'm doing.

And at that stage, I type out the patter exactly, word for word, and file it on my computer.

If people have never seen me work, they'll probably think that that sounds very rigid and script-bound. Well, I hope that isn't the case. Patter should never sound like patter. It should have the rhythms of everyday speech, and should be indistinguishable from it. It should just flow. My point is that 99% of the time, that takes a lot of work.

The thing I've left out, of course, is timing. You can't teach timing, and God knows you can't write about it. The little trick you mentioned, the Silk to Cane got into my one-man show more or less by accident (it's not normally my kind of trick) and only works because the audience is surprised. I say "and then something quite extraordinary happened". But cane appears during the word happened, not after it. I have made it very casual. And that's why it works, and that's why you remember it.

Good luck with creating your patter. And do remember that it will take much longer work out what you say than it ever did to get the trick right in the first place.

Geoffrey

Daleshrimpton: If I may say so, I think that the perfect example of how you fit words to actions, is your multiplying billiard ball opening.

We are of ,a similar build, and I would never thought of doing the fancy stuff , because my teacher and mentor, Laurie Gleeson , hammered home the silly notion that you have to look right physically to be able to perform manipulations. Whilst this point is true, it’s not a hard and fast rule, as you prove.

Dale

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Dale

Well yes, I agree with you. You don't need to look right to perform any particular trick, you just need to be entertaining.

I decided to do the Billiard Balls because it suddenly began to fascinate me, and I knew I couldn't be entertaining with it if I didn't speak. So that was it, really. Took me a long time, though!

Try it, you might like it.

Geoffrey

Daleshrimpton: It get its easier than you think off the shelf once a month, read it, laugh, put the balls away, and slope off to the pub.

Are your Billiard balls solid by the way?
I was told that this is the only way to learn it properly.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Dale

I devised my own routine, based on ideas from all over the place.

Roy Benson said that you should use the largest balls your hands can possibly take (I use solid 2 1/4" Fakini balls) and use your right hand as a "stand" for the balls - producing them from the air with the left, and depositing them in the right (stealing another as you do so). I discovered that this is right for me. It also gets rid of that very common and awful (I think) move whereby the ball is rolled out into the adjacent fingers and apparently appears from nowhere. It just looks like you're using fake
balls to me.

Geoffrey

Daleshrimpton: I use real billiard balls for the odd bits I do with billiard balls.
the weight helps get the things where I want them. Plus if you drop one, it makes the noise that the audience is expecting. A really loud bang. not a tiny thud.

YinHoNg: It wasn't until recently, when I started watching and learning Sam the Bellhop, that I realised just how important the DELIEVERY of patter was. I'm not the most fluent of speakers and do not have that natural flair in telling stories or getting messages across clearly.

What advice can u give on making patter better?

Geoffrey Durham: Hi YinHoNg

Well, I haven't met you or seen your work, so it's well nigh impossible to give you advice, I'm afraid.

The delivery of your chat is absolutely vital. It can be the best, funniest stuff in the world, but if you can't deliver it, it's utterly useless. That's why I talked about timing in the other thread on patter.

What you are doing is expressing your personality. Express it any way you like. Nobody is making you be a patter magician - combine it with synchronised swimming or ballet if you want to - but make sure what you say expresses your personality.

It doesn't matter that you don't have a natural flair for this or that - nobody will know if you don't tell them! Express your magic through what you do have a flair for - starting with the real you.

If you put the trick before your personality, you're done for!

Geoffrey

YinHoNg: Thanks for the reply. Although I was looking more for an answer about the texture and timbre of speaking etc.

I realise that empathising my personality is key, and I always try to. But if you are telling a story, you are telling a story.

I watched Bill Malone and he emphasises words on different parts, and as you have said, he times he words almost to perfection. I love it. It’s almost like symmetry in his speech.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi YinHoNg

I don't mean to be obtuse, but if you are telling a story, it is you who are telling it, and you who matters, and it is pointless telling the story if we don't learn something about you. Otherwise we could employ an actor to tell us the story.

Timbre and texture are vital. What you do as you hit each word, and the ways you emphasise and time the phrases are vital too. I like to hit a medium pitch with my voice, because it helps me express myself.

But that may not be right for you. And I don't want you to be like me. And I don't want you to be like Bill Malone. I really want you to be like you!

Geoffrey

Graham: Mr Durham,

You have stated that you are a Quaker. Do your religious convictions have a bearing on the way that you perform your magic? For instance, Jerry Andrus is unable to miscall a card as it would be a direct lie. Also, Mohammed Ali who loves magic, feels compelled to reveal the method at the end of a trick because of his beliefs (let's hope he doesn't do too much magic then).

I was prompted to ask this as "Try not to lie" was one of the pieces of advice which you gave in a previous posting. This struck a chord with me.

Kind regards,

Graham Nichols.

Geoffrey Durham: Hi Graham

I didn't know that about Jerry Andrus. I'd have liked to ask him about it when I met him a few years ago.

And, no, I wouldn't miscall a card for exactly the same reason. But I adore watching magicians who do (Juan Tamariz is an example) and I don't have a problem with it in principle at all.

It's just that I prefer not to do it.

It is so much easier and neater and straighter and better for me to say "Have a look in that envelope" and show it apparently empty, than to and say "And there's nothing in the envelope" and tell a lie. The two are basically the same thing, and one could be accurately be described as a visual lie - I understand all that. It's just that I prefer to do one than the other.

It's a little difficult to know which comes first with Quakerism. Quakers don't have a creed, and we think that people can only believe what they have experienced, so there isn't a great authority forbidding me to do anything whatsoever. But it probably is true than I like to keep things simple (and so do Quakers) and I have a problem with lying (and so do Quakers) and I generally don't like glitzy, empty showbizzy things (and nor do Quakers). So which came first? I don't really know.

The reason I said in that last reply that I think it's good advice to try not to lie, is simply that I think magicians do themselves no favours by trying to look slick when they're not. It's a problem a lot of us have, because we are basically shy. Better to be yourself.

Geoffrey

Graham: Great advice for life, as well as magic. Many thanks!

Kind regards,

Graham