The Color Changing Deck Trick
The color changing deck trick is one of the most powerful card effects ever created. But which method is the best, and how do you perform it?
In this video, the Conjuror Community team share one of the BEST color changing deck tricks we’ve ever seen, and show you exactly how to do it.
This video is one of our original Afternoon Astonishment series – a brand new show from Conjuror Community designed to bring you magic when it counts the most.
Watch the video below, or if you’d prefer, you can read the complete transcript of this show below. Enjoy!
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here it is. CC, live afternoon, astonishment edition if you’re watching us right now. I am joined today by Adam grace. Hey everybody. Adam grace here and my friend Alex slammer. Afternoon everybody. Glad to be here. This is an awesome trick. This is going to be so much fun. We are from the CC team and we are doing a little afternoon astonishment. So if you’re watching us on YouTube, we’re making this available to our friends around the world. And you want to find out more about what CC club is all about. Check below the video and you’ll find out all there is to find out because we are jamming magic in the afternoon and evenings and pretty much 24 hours a day here at the TC club. Today we’re going to have a little sesh featuring a routine that I who had been working on 20 plus years. So why don’t we get our cards out, get our cards in hand. We’ll take it away now. And if you’re here, live in the session, feel free to ask the questions in the, in the chat and stick around after after the core training and we’ll take more questions.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Right. Here we go. Ladies and gentlemen, the best color changing deck. All right, cut your video.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Hey everybody, it’s great to see you. I recently went to a magic Catholic where I had to do some magic and I was thinking after it was kind of a retrospective of my life trying to figure out why I like card tricks so damn much. I was really had occasion to think about it and I figured it out a little bit of that. The reason and I think part of it is that cards are like people they each have their own separate personalities. They each have their own different styles, things that make them tick. For example, hearts. Hearts are the lovers. Diamonds are raw. Diamonds are in for the money. Threes, fives and sevens are extremely odd cards. Jack screens and Kings, they’re the royalty. And the royalty is always really high. Anyway. See, we have some royalty here in the audience tonight. Steve, if you would, go ahead. If you would say stop anytime. You can stop there. Up there. Stop. Stop there. I’m making merriness. Let’s try again this time with the, well, someone else, Rolando, Oh, joker here. Say stop Rolando. They’re there. We’ll see the car that you stopped next to. That seems to be the eight of hearts. Now say what you will about the ADA heart. Say what you will about the King. They’re each part of a group. There’s four Kings, there’s four eights. There’s only one card in the deck that there’s only one of, who knows what card that is?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The joker. That’s right. The joker is a bit like the magician in the deck. There’s only one of him. His job is to stand out from the crowd, which is really cool because that means yo. Nice different. So the joker is like the magician because when he comes in contact with the other cards, he has the ability. Yeah,
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
All right. Here’s the thing. He had a bit of a chameleon. He’s designed to be able to fit in with the rest of the cards.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
And do his job of transforming. Now the only problem with this Rolando, and I’m glad you mentioned it, is that now we’re stuck having a joker that’s different from all the other cards. And if you think about it, that’s a bit of a drag. So it’s very convenient at this point. Ah. Oh wait. Should I put it away right through the box? No less. Huh? I made a mistake. There you go. Awesome. That’d be good. Yeah, I shouldn’t have been messing around with the damn one.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
You got a lot of ones on that one buddy. I like, I think they liked your phases.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
The one was great, right through the box or do more wand work. We really should [inaudible] well, we’ve got more to talk about for that later. So here’s the thing. Grab your deck. This is based on a principle, a color change that I put in the paper engine many years ago, around 1998 that was written and been working with it ever since. Put out a DVD on it. Directed by Wayne hatch and a long, long time ago and recently hear it out when we’re getting ready to go to the magic castle and do this thing, how to build it into Vernon’s color changing deck routine. So for the first time I’ve got helped her Skeletor, which has the name of that basic color changing deck effect where the guard turns red, the deck turns blue, right where I go back and forth in one shot and sort of melded it into this complete routine where you get a full color changing deck experience, right?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
So been doing it over 20 years before this came about and I’m, you know, this is the way I’m going to be doing it from now on. You get everything you get from the Vernon routine, all the good shows, all that good stuff. So what you need and it does end clean. So we’ll, we’ll talk about it and how to do it. So in this case, I have a blue deck and I’m going to show you the way I have it set up to go here. There’s a couple of different options. You have as you’re working on it. In format, I’m actually using a red, blue double backer.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Oh, underneath that I’m taking the blue joker that matches the deck. That’s for the optional change of the joker at the end. Okay. Version we just did. Then you’ve got the two jokers from the deck. So I got the blue one that matches the deck proper and then the red one on top. So that’s it. You got a red joker, a blue joker, a red, blue double backer. I’ve got the blue joker for the ending where the joker changes back, right? And you end clean and the rest of the blue deck and that’s it. That goes inside your red case. And what’s nice about this most recent handling that’s unlike anything I’ve ever released before is you cannot do this as an opener or a closer. So for many, many years, I did this by performing a firm for hours of possible with one deck and switching the deck and immediately going into the color changing routine.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
This allows you to use the Vernon scheme and therefore do it as an opener. So when I say the Vernon scheme, what do I mean? I mean this idea of being able to say, look, w you can select any car, you can stop on the 10 what you want to avoid here is doing this sort of thing, Hindu, you know, you just sort of Hindu apropos of nothing. This starts to look really bad. Okay, let me do that set up again real quick for Dustin. We have a red joker, we have a blue joker. You could use any other card if you wanted, but I sorta like the purity of being able to get rid of the joker at the end and sort of having the rest of the deck, which I’ll show you how to do as well. A red, blue double backer, red side up.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
One more blue joker. That’s, that’s if I want to end with a clean blue joker in the deck and the rest of the blue deck
Speaker 3 (07:48):
Waiting for an all clear from internet land. Okay. So you start, you can make sure everyone sees that in your presentation. Turn the deck over and start to do a Hindu shuffle. And you say, look, you, you can stop me on this one if you like the seven of hearts. Some people say Juan, the cards are like blondes. The card chooses the wizard. You even stop on the three hearts. But the point is to make each one of these a statement, right? So when you do what you say or the nine of clubs, you’re really there to gesture and draw attention to it. And the showing itself is incidental. Okay? Let the audience say stop anytime
Speaker 3 (08:32):
And eventually they do. Okay, that’s it so far. Now you throw these cards on top with a break or you can just slap them down like that. And the easiest thing to do here is just to let a card fall off your thought. Okay? Sometimes I’m feeling a little fancy and I like to stick those though. That packet right there between my second finger and my thumb at the corner, which makes the cards jogged a little like that. And then as I square them up, I just press my pinky and my third finger up there against that bottom card. And as I square the deck here, I push the deck square that leaves that card sticking out. You might experiment that with that as an easier way to get this done. Then all you have to do is take your fingers and grab up and then undercut. And that brings your joker to the top without letting anyone see that that’s happened there. Okay, so you turn that card over, it looks like you just cut to a joker. Now you can riffle down and let the person say stop anywhere.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
This is another conceit of Vernon in order to, Vernon uses just one card to get the, a lot of showing of seemingly different rank cards, right? So this is another application of that. And what you do here is you take the card, I believe in the Vernon routine, letting the people choose between the part above it and below it. As part of it, I, I’ve sort of decided it’s just time. I don’t want to spend on it, right? I want to place this card down. Now I like to get this break here. Now by pressing with my first finger up against the corner, letting that flare away and getting a break. You shouldn’t let that stress you. If you don’t want to do that, you can simply bring the cards back, take the deck from above, pushing that cart over, and just let one card fall off and get a thumb break above it. Pretty simple and pull that out. Now as I’m saying, there’s only one card in the entire deck that doesn’t come in a group. We’re sort of looking at the joker for the first time. Now what I like to do here is I like to place the deck one top. So that’s square, that’s a, there is a double below to break and I like to move the entire deck forward and niche andS and drop it. So that’s what’s happening. Now I openly and cleanly turn the deck over,
Speaker 3 (11:07):
But I’ve already got my preparation for what will be a double that I don’t really want anyone to have any a suspicion of, right? So I pick up that double card. I pretend with my thumb to be pushing it over. As I move that double off and I clamp it to the deck and I retake it at the upper right corner with my second finger underneath my first finger underneath, widely separated, so they’re touching the edges and the surfaces and the thumb in the center. Now that’s the same card you just saw. Of course, it’s a duplicate. I riffled down like this and if you do it like this, there’s no danger of flashing any blue cards
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And you stick it out like so. Now look at this grip here. This is actually really easy color change. It’s one of my favorite color changes. It’s called the revolution color change. I think I put it in print around the year 2000 the thumb and the second finger hold the front of the deck and the card at the same time. Can everyone see that they’re holding both the card and the deck? My first finger is pressed up very lightly. That’s just keeping those cards together in case they want to split apart. You have, you know, standard U S PCC cards. They will sometimes split apart. You just, I used to make a joke in the lecture that sometimes you know the, the card say a butter, you know [inaudible] you know, so what you do is you just press up a little bit and you keep them together like that and now you’re ready to go. So here’s what’s nice about the color change is based on the Andrews color change. It’s really very easy to do. Let me just demonstrate the color change you’re about to see. This card changes into a blue card
Speaker 2 (12:52):
[Inaudible]
Speaker 3 (12:52):
And ends pretty damn clean. Now the, even though this was the basic application and the color change, I never actually had this in the routine. This is the first version of the routine that actually makes space for that exact change alone to happen in it. Okay?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
So here’s what’s happening. I placed my hand trying not to have to stretch your hand out too much. Try and keep it as loose as you can. Makes the thing look more magical. You place the hand over the double card so that the edge of the card does not show through your fingers. So when you’re looking at it from behind like you might be doing right now, you’re going to think, Oh, that looks great, but that might be what it looks like from the front. So you want to move it forward so it looks like it’s too far forward so that the edge is below the gaps in your fingers. Okay? Now what you do is you press up with your first finger, you press down against it with your hand and you move outward until you feel that outer upper card clear the deck. You press where your fish for first finger and you press down just a little bit with your right hand and that means the back edge raises up. So it goes over top of the left fingers. As you slide back that car, it has no friction because the card is just resting on top of the fingers.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
[Inaudible]
Speaker 3 (14:19):
And so this was what was really great about this is that at this point, all I have to do is strip out the card. So if I move my right hand to the left so that my right second finger goes all the way across to the left side of the card and twirls and out around. You don’t have to think about the card in your hand at all. It looks really quite natural. You do a Palm up. Absolutely. Yeah. And one more thing here, and I’m sorry for those of you who have questions, place for questions
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Is in the little Q and a box in the middle. Not on the chat, because if it goes on the chat, it’s gonna fly by. So if you have questions for you, new folks, put it down in the Q and a box.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re going to heckle heckle in the chat questions go in the Q and a. So let me, I’ll show it one more time. I’ll demonstrate it so you can look for what you’re looking at. Here we are, there’s the red card, it changes to blue and that’s it. Okay. Now I’m going to show you again. I’ll do it now. Totally reversed from this direction. And this is what it actually looks like all the way through.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Wow, that’s gorgeous.
I hope you’re enjoying this discussion of our favorite color changing deck trick. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments!
Speaker 3 (15:58):
And that’s the original color change that I like. Like I say at first put print and print around 1999 I think 2000 tops. Okay. In more detail in the paper engine and a full routine in the paper engine. Okay. So now this is fun. You’ve got this out. If you want, you can show that card here. I’ve decided at this point it’s, there’s not much reason to do it. Let me just see, is there a good reason Alex, check those questions and see if they’re useful to answer now because they’re about the core change.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Now, one question says it looks like a modified or nice change. And what was it called again? What’s it called? What’s it called?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
No. Yeah, it’s called the, it’s called the a, it’s not, it’s called the revolution. So just to give you a little background on it, Jerry Andrews had a color change, which used to fascinate us when we were kids. Okay. Now, Jerry Anders had giant hands this big and he used bridge sized cars and he certainly never did this seated. And I don’t even do this Dane change anymore because that’s why I invented mine. But he came off like this and then he came back like that. And what he was doing was this. So you’re thinking of the Erdnase change, right? The second transformation, which generally speaking my issues with these as they tend to have
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Sort of a windup on them, right? The Andrews cozy. Yeah. The Anders change has this great first moment, which is what you just saw. It’s very similar except with the Andrews change. It’s insane. You have to get it decided back in the deck with no break and you have to have it not look like you’re up to anything. Now, I will admit, when I was a kid I was pretty good at it. Right. But it still, it was never the kind of thing you want to rely on for all the marbles. So the idea here was really great. Sorry if I do say so myself. The idea here was to do the great part, which was the change and get rid entirely of the hard part. This part’s actually really easy. I think you’ll discover it’s pretty easy, but now
Speaker 3 (18:06):
You get rid of the hard part entirely. You don’t have to stick the car back in the deck. Okay. That’s the core change. So in this case, now we’re ready to go into the routine. So if you think about it from the audience’s perspective, we’ve had two cards selected in a really fair way. We’ve taken the joker, which was clean, cleanly displayed that joker, right? And we’ve waved our hand over it and changed it into a blue back card. It looks like the same card, no reason the data. Now we touch a card and it changes to blue. Now we touch another card and it changes to blue. Technically you could have had a few more cards selected and change them all as well. It really just depends on what your preferred rhythm is. Right. And just so everyone knows, those were already blue to begin with, right?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
The entire deck was blue. Everything that was being selected was blue. Right. Alex, if you remind me to discuss the panic thing with people, that’s a good example of how you would maximize that. Okay, so now, and let me, let me show you what I really like to do here. Is this, so we watch this blue card because really you’re ahead of everybody and it’s a nice thing. So you want to stay ahead of everybody, right? Because you’re using these duplicate cards. There’s a really nice thing there where it doesn’t really ever have to look like you’re doing a double lift like ever. So it’s nice not to give that advantage away. Okay. So look at what’s happening. I leave this blue card, I leave it out, jogged and I picked this card up here and it changes the back changes. I like to put it on the left here, the back changes again, like so I like to, as I’m doing that, I like to
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Get that break [inaudible]
Speaker 3 (20:08):
So the card’s been op jogged, but then as I’m sort of making this change here, right? That’s when I sort of bring the card back and get the break. Cause I don’t want anyone, there is no change. Now if I do that, everything stays the same. It’s like the card never feels like you came back squared up and did a double lift. Okay, so now I stick it back into the deck again just to do the change one more time. And now this is what the core color changing deck routine looked like.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
Nope.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Car changes to red.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And you do just a little black push off and they all change. So it’s a really important lovely thing, right? Because you actually have three separate magic beats there and it’s really easy to think accidentally that there’s two, but it’s really three. The card changes, then they see that change and then there’s a two, three, four. I wonder and then they all change. So watch it one more time
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And you get it all.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Now at this point you can be done. Okay. The entire deck is blue. There’s a red card here and you have here one joker here. You’ve got a red, blue double backer here. And in our version, because we were going to change this joker, just like Vernon does in his routine, we’ve actually got a joker left to match it right here. I’ll show you another way to do it in a second. All you do is this. You can in fact take that say and say, you know what? We’re not even gonna have that. I don’t even want to work with a deck with a joker. Just pick them up, stick them in your pocket and you’re done. You’re totally clean and you can move forward. And that’s a pretty groovy thing. Okay, not bad. Or you can do what I did today, which was this. You take this car and you say, wow, this is all great. Everything’s absolutely wonderful. The only problem we have in the entire world is I have a blue deck and I have a red joker, and nobody in the world wants to be a red joker in a blue deck.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
And now that’s blue too. And now you’re clean, right? You’re there and you’re totally ready to go. That’s like how one of the ways to do that. So all that’s happening here, if you want to do that, and I’m gonna, I’ll share a couple of alternate methods for you here after this is all that’s happening is, is that as you are getting this wonderful applause moment, you square up and you get a break under two cards while you’re square. Now all you have to do, it’s snap your fingers and then do that triple lift and that’s what they’re going to say.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Now depending on what you’re going to do there, you can stop there or what I’m doing is I’m at re re relying on the response to that to square those up immediately, top Palm them
Speaker 3 (23:32):
And then you can just leave that there and have the people shuffle and then move on, which you’d want to do if you were going to continue to work anyway. Also keep in mind if you’re closing with this, there’s no need. You need to have those cards examined like there’s an awful lot of tricks where you can have the cards examined, but it doesn’t actually punctuate your routine more effectively to say, but you can also check out the props. That’s kind of like something we got from the magic store, which works well when you’re trying to sell something to a person. Right. But not, it can really put a damper on a great trick if you know, at the end of David Copperfield’s wonderful trick you went, you guys, if you want, you guys can examine everything. I really am not, I don’t feel guilty at all. Yeah. You wouldn’t want to do that. In a moment, I’m going to show you just one more way that I like to get that last change. Yeah. Out.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Maybe go into the idea of using panic in conjunction with this to get those those extra changes.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Okay. Let’s see. Is this other question more related to I will, I will.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
How would you ditch the joker? That is pond.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Yeah. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve reached into my pocket, pull out the box. Actually, actually while they’re shuffling, I just sort of relax and put my hands in my pockets. Like a normal person. There’s no heat following me there. It’s a funny question. Who asked that question?
Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh, sure. Well, John’s a newer member I believe. Yeah. I wanted to tell you Joshua, I think you should experiment with using the wand in that routine. Unless you’re not doing that for aesthetic reasons, I think it would be a really interesting valuable thing to experiment. Okay, so that being said, okay, so Alex was just talking about I have a trick called panic of vanishing deck routine where you have the deck, you take the four Kings, you place them in your pocket, you vanish the deck and you’ve got nothing left. But the four Keynes, has anyone seen that trick? Okay. What I often will do, and this is what we did in Italy, Adam, is I will sometimes simply take the four Kings in my hand and reach into that pocket with them to show the deck and the deck is, it might be, it just was, it’s like you’re gathering the debt rest of the deck is in your pocket.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
If you do that, it’s a really simple matter to drop those Kings and then just pick up this deck instead. Now as you’re there applauding you just take the four Kings off the face and drop them on the table face up and go right into this trick. Now the joker changes the first card, the joker changes the second card. You snap your finger, wave the joke over the four Kings. Now the four Kings changed to blue. Now you go into the big ending sequence and you just bam, bam, bam, bam, you add another four effects and sort of escalating ramp up of tempo and rhythm and it’s a really nice thing. And that’s something I will often sort of do informal environments. Okay, so let me show you one more, a couple more thing. One more thing to think about. That’s also an interesting way that you could go with this and then we’ll seed the ground. So one of the things that you can do here is instead of taking that last joker and placing it on top, right, you can take that joker and you can place it face up a few cards down from there like that.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
So [inaudible]
Speaker 3 (26:57):
Here’s how that would work. I’m going to just try to show up. Get up to this point in the routine. So stop. Great. We’ll take this. Oh look joker. Huh? Happenstance. I’ll just riffle down here. You say stop and, Oh, look at that. Any card at all? Oh good. The six of clubs. What are called Winky Dick. Let’s see how it works. I’ll take that Joe Gross. Stick it in the pan. I wave my hand over that joker and it’ll change to blue. Well Houser’s [inaudible]
Speaker 2 (27:32):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Changes.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
One more
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Changes. Joker. Qing Qing Qing. Qing look at this. They changed. They changed the change to change. Yay. How astonishing is that? That’s because the pack, now we change that card to read the entire deck. Changes to blue now. And this is, this is a, now we have a problem. Cause now I’m living my life with a red joker and a blue deck and I have to, Oh, don’t flash that. That’s kind of a drag. You don’t want to actually be running through your life as a red joker and a blue deck. It’s sad. It’s a sad way to live. I wouldn’t want to if I wouldn’t even wish that on my worst enemies. It’s a hard way to live, a worst way to die.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Of course, if you have magic, you don’t have to worry about that. You can go about and live your life normally. Okay, so all you’re doing there is when you get don’t flash that card like that or if you have that joker of just a few guards face down from the top. The reason you want it just a few is because otherwise you have to really moderate your spread at the beginning and you really just wanted that to be a little push. And then a lot of cards, right? If it’s too far down, you have to start to do like a a big block and it’s not bad. So what you do is at this point you simply take that joke or you pick up all three and then you stick them in there and you diagonal Palm shift and really you’re just making a joke. You’re saying you don’t want to actually live that way. It’s a terrible way to live. Now, all three cards are out of the deck in your hand, right? It looks to anyone watching. Sometimes I cut the deck to center it. Depending on how far up in the deck I put it, it looks to anyone watching, like that’s the exact same card is very much how it looks and feels in the Vernon routine. Right.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And now you can just leave it that way and let the people shuffle, take a break and then move on.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And that’s it.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Gotcha. Well it’s already alright. Awesome dude. Yeah, let’s give him some ones. Yeah. Nice. Nice teach. It’s a good trick. It was fun to learn it with you. I remember the reactions at the magic castle from people who saw your closeup show. I believe you were, were you closing your set with that trick, Aaron? Everything, I think I was opening it opening. I just remember people were talking about it. So you know, I can attest to the power of that construction and those slides is very devious. Look what I have here in the background. This is this is like the mirror. You know how when you look in two mirrors, you look in the mirror in front of you and it shows the mirror that tunnel effect. Well this is us on YouTube, right? It’s really weird, right? Must be explaining.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
We were literally like the entire universe is home and we’re literally surging the capacity of the internet in every way. And I was wondering for a moment if you were slowing things down so that people could really see the detail of the change, if that was just, you know, that, you know, these aren’t office space pipes are running. No, the smoke started coming out of my computer at one point. I was like, woof, hold on. If I can do all this overload. Overload. Yeah. So okay, so look, you’re like everyone, did everyone go through with the cards in hand?
Speaker 6 (31:14):
Yeah, I would love to see something. How, if you ever have hangups when you’re doing that, that color change, when that card glides over the left fingers. Can you show me a closeup of that and show me if there’s any way that it could bind? Because I’m, I’ve been lucky so far, but I’m just wondering if you know, if there’s any trickiness that I need to be aware of working with that change there
Speaker 1 (31:39):
In the core version of the color change. You know, the original first version from the paper engine, right is a, is a reverse card routine. Right. see if I can remember what ends up happening. This is the effect the audiences, can everyone see? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Right. So the car turns the face up and then the deck turns face down. Right? And so the original color changing deck was a variation of that, which is why the, when we released it years ago and a DVD, it was called the revolution and Helter Skelter. Right. And a nice little Beatles theme. So when you’re first practicing the color change, it’s a lot of fun. And so using that core color change as just one card changes and nothing else happens, this routine is the first occurrence of that actual color within the structure of one of these routines ever.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
Right. As soon as I developed this color change, I immediately put it into that face up, face down and then the deck face up, face down. And, and so this was the first version of the routine. This recently where there was a nice way to build that escalation into it. Right? so when you’re practicing it, that’s a great way to practice it cause you’re just practicing the core color change. You have the double in the deck. I’m going to give everyone a few notes here. Make sure to keep your thumb there were the cards. Meet the double and your second finger where the cards meet the devil. And you can hold things rather firmly together unless the cards are in. And even if the cards are in pretty terrible shape, if you press up there, you can normally have everything work in pretty good shape.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Now let’s take a look at this. That’s the moment we’re talking about. So the key to making sure, first of all that you don’t have any trouble is you come way forward and then tilt forward. But that’s what it looks like to the audience. So it doesn’t look like anything’s happening, but your way forward. Right. And you can curl those fingers over the back of the deck a little bit and the cards slides over the fingernails. Oh, it’s on the fingernails, not the fingertips. Okay. And this is something that Erdnase well, like it can be on the fingertips, but if they’re hanging up, go to the nails and you overcome the friction. Yeah, exactly. And I equate it as you can see, I can do this all night long and there’s nothing to see and it’s very, very smooth. And when you come over, you’re going to sh strike the card out. Now, I don’t know if we got into this in the description, but that card can sometimes fall backwards a bit or it can fall forwards a bed, right? There’s, there’s definitely the possibility for the card to be a online [inaudible].
Speaker 1 (34:41):
If that happens as you’re coming, bring your hand over, just wipe the rest of the deck forward with it. And the whole deck will be there. Nice. Right? And if the card’s back a little, it’s the cards back a little. You can actually just push the card forward as you’re moving forward. So it’s self-correcting. Right? That’s what I’m noticing that that card is pretty far out jogged when you’re actually doing the change. Do you ever have it just halfway or do you try, you try to keep it far, far out just for getting a leverage, right. It’s not even the leverage. It’s the, it’s the color. I mean look, if I’m doing this, I’m getting less change. So the higher effect is based on having the whole card change as much as possible, which is why these grip points are so important. Right. Because I got to hold it steady and that’s why I holding that finger there is important cause you don’t want those to split.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
So the only time I would push it a little further in is if the cards are in such terrible shape and worked right, that that no amount of help is going to keep them square and then I’m going to have a little bit more of the men so I can get right into it before there’s being a trouble. I’m trying to do it now that you asked, see, see what I did with my thumb there as you think, yeah, I use my thumb in those instances. So say I’ve got this, I can see right from where I am that I am not in the right position. Right. Okay. Now I’ll bring the camera back to me and then all I do is this. Okay. Okay. And so it’s totally self-correcting and if, if it’s the other way [inaudible] you just moved the rest of the deck forward to meet it. No one will ever see it.
Speaker 6 (36:34):
So William is asking a couple of questions here. First question is how sensitive, how sensitive are the angles on this when you’re, when you’re doing the actual change?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I myself have never found them to be sensitive. I don’t do it. If I’m gonna do it, like closeup closeup, like first of all, if it’s any kind of formal situation, it’s a GoTo, right? But if not, I’ll just literally say, stand where you are. I want everyone to see this and we’ll take one step back and it’s totally covered. The only bad angle is really where you are. Right. One of the things about doing this trick is that if you see it, it’s right, right. You’ll think, Oh, I can see that. So you’ll move it so you can’t see the card and then the audience can, that’s when it comes through the windows. You want to make sure that the people can’t actually see. Yeah. But from here, unless you’re, you know, backed by my elbow. Right. See, there you are. You can see it if you’re literally here where I’m looking, but from there I can cover it and I got it over there too. So you really just take one step back. So stand there. I just want you to be able to see you take one step back and do it and you’ll be totally fine. Right.
Speaker 6 (37:59):
Okay. And then William has another question here and I just wanna I think there just might have been a couple of little things here. See if we can decode this. On the clearance, if the angled card is more on the finger, is it more on the finger or when you tilt it forward or on the card underneath? Hmm. I’m not sure. Maybe maybe rephrase that question again, William. There’s a couple of just rephrase that question. Throw it in there again. But here’s another question that came in in the chat was do you have any tips on minimizing the click when that card comes? When that w
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah, of course. For starters, so funny. You want to hear the click when you’re first learning the change, cause that’s how they will know that you’ve got clearance. Okay. Okay. As you practice, you’re only pressing down enough to be feeling the finger up from underneath. And so you’re pressing down at first and you’re going to hear that click, right? But after you sort of get the hang of it, you don’t need to hear it. You, you minimize the downward pressure. So it’s just pressing forward and then there’s nothing to here and it’s silent. Eventually you’ll simply hear it, you’ll feel it but not hear it. You know, it sounds like you can feel it go top, but you won’t actually hear anything. Now in terms of this question here, I’m definitely gonna tell forward and then back so that I clear those fingers once I, once I go over that first finger.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Got it. And that first finger is almost helping to keep that card in place underneath. It’s definitely pressing against the first card and that’s going up. And then you’ll notice that you’re much closer than you guess. I mean I’m there already. Yeah, right. Let me just yeah, so when I’m here it may look precarious, but it’s not really cause I’m out. I’m up and back like it’s of all the things in difficult magic and stupid magic I’ve tried, this is actually one of the easier color changes there are because unlike the Andrews change, it’s not hard to figure out where the card’s going to go at the end. And unlike all of the other sort of two action color changes it doesn’t have that. You just do it. The effect is over and it’s clean. So it’s actually got the easiest parts of a color change without the hardest parts.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
Am I using the finger to clear or the card itself? I think the target itself, right? Yes. It’s the card that comes up the fingers holding that other card and this is balanced against it. Right. And then you just try and strive to have that be even when you go. And it’s amazing how much that first finger, the friction of it pushing up a little bit really just makes that car just sort of freeze in space there. It doesn’t move. Yeah. And it’s actually really secure. Now let me show you cats who are watching today. Another version of this that I didn’t work out for years later. Okay. And I’ll, maybe I’ll, I don’t know which, I should probably do it in two different stages. Okay. Yes, William. Okay. So let’s say that I have Alex take out the card. Alex, look at that card, show it to everyone, make sure they all know what it is.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
That’s important. Alex, would you be impressed if I could tell you the name of your car? No, maybe not so much. Okay, watch carefully. The card’s going to turn base up and the deck turns face down. So that the original handling as appears in the paper engine of the revolution. So, and, and not surprisingly, the original trick was a trick that was designed to be done with the half pass, right? So I’m going to take you through structure really quick. Members will find a longer discussion to the half pass into paper engine and [inaudible] the club training all over the place, pathways to mastery, stuff like that. We’ll put links, I’m sure at the bottom of them video somewhere, but we do have time for me to run you through the structure and then show you a way to do it without a half pass.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
So I spread the cards, the cards are face up. Alex, you take that card, you look at it, you show it to everybody now while you’re showing it to everybody, that’s when I’m doing my half pass under those two cards. Right? Which of course no one sees. And those two cards are made to have two black Queens there. Yes. And over time I learned that they don’t have to be, but when you’re learning, it’s gonna make you feel better because you’re going to take this car back face up from you and you’re going to say, Hey, and you’re looking at it and they’re looking at you, you’re looking at it, look at it and go, Hey, would you be oppressed if I could tell you the name of your car and they’re you idiot. But they’re not going to notice that that car changed. Right, right.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
So, Hey, would you be impressed if I could tell you the name of your card and I add that double? I add that card on right. I grab at the corners of the upper left corner in the lower right corner with my thumb and second finger and I lift. Would you be impressed if I could tell you the name of the car? They say no. As we exhale, I tilt my finger around and I revolve those over. No, and I’ve just reversed that card. So now the selections face up. Now from there, I stick the card in the pack and I just go to do the change. The selection turns face up, they see that card turns face down and then all the cards turn face down. So good, awesome sequence, man. I love it. White heavenly. And now I’m going to share with you all the way to do that. Look, obviously I love using passes. Obviously I’ve spent a lot of my life using half passes and one of the most valuable things I’ve learned from them is how much less we need them than you think we do for a lot of things. So probably five, six years after the paper engine came out, I developed another approach to this drink, which I’ll share with you that you can start using right away. And that’s pretty simple. I’d have Alex take that card, look at it, show it to everybody.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Did you show it to him? I did. All right. And watch carefully. Are we okay by the way? Good. Okay. So would you be impressed if I could tell you the name of your cart? No, no, of course not.
Speaker 7 (44:52):
[Inaudible].
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Wait, you didn’t do the half pass? That’s right. Now I don’t know if it looked right because I didn’t have my blocking thought about at all. I just decided to do it in the spur of the moment and everything looked fine. It’s fine. Okay, so here’s what you do. Friends. This is really nice and easy and this is what I recommend that you do. Okay? Take your two mates and place them second from the top and third, push off one card, push off two more cards and hold them separate. Now continue to spread the cards so that a card can be selected. This is one of those things that you don’t think about. You have to manage carefully when you’re doing it home on the computer because in real life you have people doing the action that creates the cover. So in real life you would take that card out. I would say, look at it, show it to everybody. I will look and I turn to the side just for a moment cause I’m not going to look and I turn those face up and I stick them in between. I’m not even out of you for a moment, right? It’s, it’s, it’s so deceptive because remember you’re showing the cart around. So I turned my back and I’m trying to sort of expose it. I’ll say the audience is there to say, look at it, show it to everybody. I won’t look great. I turned back around and I’m here. This is the difference between [inaudible] the original trick. It starts with the deck face up in the deck, stays face up here. All I do is this. I say, you’ve got a card. Great. Now watch carefully.
Speaker 7 (46:20):
Okay,
Speaker 1 (46:21):
Turn the cards over. Everything seems perfectly fair. I take the card, I look at it. I say, would you be impressed if I could tell you the name of your card? No. And there you go. You take that card, you stick it in the middle, you wave your hand over the card, it turns face up. That card turns face down. The entire deck turns face down and you just have one reversed card at the bottom of the deck. So when I’m spreading through the entire deck, I just literally put my first finger on the edge of the bottom card and hold it together so I can get this giant spread where you would never see anything. Boy, that is a great alternative, especially if you’re learning the half pass until you get it up to speed. That is a wonderful way to do that. That is so good.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Or if you never even want to do that, then everyone want to do that fast. Right? And I’ll just tell everybody, you know, obviously you can do a reverse at the end. You can do anything you want to deal with these cards. But as I’ve said in lectures for years, cause remember you have a face up card at the bottom or at the top and another face down card at the very bottom or another face up card at the very bottom trick is over everyone. Applause, right? All you do is you have someone shuffle the cards, they shuffle the cards, right? You take back the cards, you say, I’ll have someone pick a card. Good work there. You know, it’s all right.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
It’s very easy to imagine in the fog of war and shuffling that the cards were flipped around by purchase. Give them a look like Oh, nice work and it’s very easy. So don’t even worry about, you know, I guess the method I used to use was something like this, right? I would be here, I would get a break there. I would cut those into the break and then do a reverse. Whoa. But skip it. Not necessary, right? Just shuffle the cars. Go, Ooh, I think I got a few phase up, you know, great solution. Notice how the whole thing is structural. Notice how those have been a half pass. It’s fun. I would use it because it, I had to learn at first, very direct, but I would not let that be any kind of a stopping point for this trick at all. That other method is every bit as effective and easy to learn.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Great. Great. Great, great. That’s, that’s awesome man. We got way more than we bargained for there. We thought we were just getting a color changing deck and all of a sudden we have this inversion routine that we can do wonderful, which is really quite effective. You know, it’s really quite efficient little thing, you know, it’s a, it’s a wonderful thing. I hope everyone enjoys it. I hope we get to see you do it soon. And again you know, if you’re watching us on YouTube, but this is what we do at Chondra community. We jam and this month we’re doing a lot of afternoon meetings for our members, a lot of sessions, a Wednesday night meetings all the time. There’s going to be a meeting starting right now. In fact Adam, would you go ahead and place the link in chat for rather meeting that Michael Sproul is going to be hosting for members a jam session if be starting right now. What’d you pop that in there? I didn’t, I didn’t grab it. And and that’s it. Thank you so much for watching and make sure to subscribe, like, and share. We appreciate all the things that you’re doing to come together with your fellow magicians this month and every month. Yeah. And we’ll see you tomorrow again on conjure community. If you’d like to join us here at our magic club, see the link down in the description. Thanks everybody. Okay. Okay.
I hope you’re found this conversation about the color changing deck trick useful. Remember, if you have any questions, leave them in the comments!