(quirky theatrical music)
- What's up, guys? Welcome back.
Today, we got a very special guest,
for you, today, we have
Alex Pandrea.
Alex is the owner of the Blue Crown,
which is a magic company.
Not only that, he's an incredible sleight of hand guy,
and a good friend,
and he's going to teach you guys something today.
Yes, what you saw in the trailer thing
that I just chopped together.
We're in Vegas, and I thought it'd be dope
to feature him on the channel.
Enough talking, let's get into it, right?
Let's get right into it! All right?
Let's get into it!
- Mmmmmmm.
- Oh! Welcome! All right.
Let's get right into it, Chris Ramsay style.
- [Chris] What was that? What was that?
Bro? What are you doing?
- [Alex] He's drunk.
- [Chris] This was a nice filming set up,
and then I pan this way,
and it just looks horribly wrong over here.
This is Alex Pandrea, he does some stuff with cards.
Alex, maybe give them a reason
why they shouldn't skip through this part, right now.
- Well, for all you sleight of hand monkeys out there,
I think this move is really interesting,
for a couple reasons.
I love sleight of hand, but I love to perform even more,
and this is one of the moves that transcends
going from sleight of hand to being able to perform
but I love this because
you can actually learn sleights like this
that are generally harder than you're used to
and that'll make your sleight of hand better, I think.
I do a section in my lecture,
called Five Moves In Five Minutes,
sleights that you've never used,
but why is it important to use it?
Imagine, in America,
we have this really boring sport called baseball, yeah?
And you have a bat, and you put a donut on the bat,
and you see the guy, and I'm like, what the hell?
And then I realize what he was doing.
You make the bat heavier, so then when you take it off,
now the bat's lighter,
you can swing and hit the ball or whatever you do.
It goes the same way with sleight of hand.
Go pick up a deck of cards,
and learn sleights that you would never do
- Guys, by the way, I've not seen how this works,
he showed it to me, I'm like, do you want to teach that?
And he's like, yes, 100%.
I'm going to be learning this
at the same time as he's teaching
and we'll see how my progress goes, that'll be interesting.
- [Alex] For those of you
that want to show off a little bit,
you don't need to spring,
you could do like an elegant little "brrip" kind of thing
and it'll work the same way.
Nonetheless, springing off the thumb is the key here.
Sometimes people spring off the fingers,
springing off the thumb
- [Chris] You don't want to spring like this.
That sound, by the way, is the worst sound in the world.
This:
(sounds like flatulence)
- [Alex] I tend to spring like this off the corners,
so I don't get that sound, like a farting, right?
- [Chris] Right, exactly, that's what I didn't want to say.
You nailed it.
- [Alex] So the first move, as long as you know to
spring the cards, and obviously, it's just here, coming off
the thumb, in a rhythm that is smooth.
- [Chris] Actually, mine comes off the corner.
- [Alex] Yeah, I do it off the corner too,
but for this, off the thumb.
- [Chris] So, for this, you gotta spring it from down here?
- [Alex] Yeah.
- [Chris] Instead of of here, so your thumb is down here.
- [Alex] Your pinky just catches it like that,
and does one of these things.
Holding a break is the second thing,
and now we're gonna learn half of
the Longitudinal Swivel Steal.
In the book, By Forces Unseen
- [Chris] By Ernest Earick.
- [Alex] And it goes something like this.
Pull down, and it goes like that, now I know that might be
a lot to take in just as of yet, but don't worry,
it's super easy, I'm literally just moving my pinky
one inch, right?
So from the break, if you have the break above the card,
you're gonna pull down on it like this and get it at
a little bit of an angle, alright?
If you have the break and you say stop
and you show them the card,
then you're going to lift up and pull out.
- [Chris] Which is probably the easier of the two,
I would think for a lot of
- [Alex] Yeah, whatever turns you on at this point.
I guess it depends just on how you have the card selected
and put back.
So I like to pull it down, and pull out,
but not all the way.
(chuckles)
Oh, God.
From here, the ring finger is connected to the deck,
that's going to make the pivot point,
you're going to stick that finger out,
like you're pocking a little whatever.
- [Chris] By the way, guys, this move right here,
this little swivel with the pinky, is not an easy thing.
It will not come naturally, although he does it really well,
this is not an easy thing and you will get frustrated
and you'll probably pull two or three cards at first.
Try doing it with the other hand,
that's how they're doing it right now.
This is what yours is gonna look like.
There we go, okay.
So don't be discouraged, just keep practicing,
and eventually you'll build up enough muscle memory
to be able to do that.
- [Alex] That's great, right there.
- [Chris] That's not bad, yeah.
- [Alex] You have to think about it like this:
If I start to pull this out, a lot of times,
the two halves will separate.
So I use my right hand as not only cover, for the move,
but also as a little bit of a weight on top of it.
Third finger again, because if you're just pulling out,
this is not going to pivot, the third finger stays here,
and that's what makes it pivot.
And from below is just that.
Here, you'll do it from below so you can see
(whistles)
Like that.
Of course your hand is conveniently in the right place
- [Chris] Ooh, look at that!
- [Alex] Look at that.
This is the position where you're really going
to start the control, so the set up is about there.
Dribble, then place the card back, or you show the card,
whatever, I dribble on top again, with a nice little move,
I like to do that,
I pick up at the break,
and as I'm sort of squaring up, I pull.
Step #1, push out.
Step #2, hand is here, and now,
angles are important on this,
I want to tilt it up, just enough so that
my right middle finger nail points to the spectators eyes.
If I would do this, it's the spectator
right between their forehead,
and you know you have the right angle.
So you might have to tilt up just a bit, like that.
At this point, what's great about this is that
it's going to go from the middle to the top
with just a squeeze of the thumb, look,
I'm just squeezing the thumb.
- [Chris] Oh, interesting.
- [Alex] In a Side Steal, I hated Side Steals all the time
'cause you always see this, uh, uh.
- [Chris] Right, the hand
- [Alex] Right, so in just a regular Side Steal,
standard Side Steal, you have to come away with the card,
by palming it, right?
And then come back with the card, right,
and that's two moves,
and it can cause attention to the hand.
- [Chris] Let's take a break and have a sip of beer.
(glasses clink)
- Cheers.
- [Alex] Now we are in this position right here,
now we have to
- [Chris] This position is basically,
you're going to palm it, from here to your thumb,
so you're here.
- [Alex] And you're not even pulling away at this point,
you don't need to, you want to keep these fingers
tight on the deck,
so that all you gotta do is squeeze the thumb,
just squeeze like that, and it'll pop out
and then regrip.
So that's why you want to tilt up also,
so you can get this, 'cause this is where it would flash.
That's the most flash that you would get.
It's be here, I got two at that point, squeeze,
and then re-pick up.
- [Chris] And then?
- [Alex] And then, from here, you're done.
You just literally have to spring the card.
- [Chris] While the card is all lopsided?
- [Alex] Yeah, at first, you're gonna think,
oh, it's way off, right, but as you finish the spring,
just keep going with it
- [Chris] You just close your hand.
- [Alex] And it'll lock into place, so keep going with it.
- [Chris] Can you come around here, from the back?
- [Alex] If it's face up, it's here, here, squeeze,
and push down.
- [Chris] Here, squeeze, oh, it's so hard for me to spring
with my thumb here, 'cause I'm so used to this.
- [Alex] Yeah, and like I said,
I don't spring usually like this at all,
so again, it was hard for me also,
because I spring the same way you do, off the corners,
to begin with, but here, spring, and that last part,
it's almost like this, in slow motion, at the end.
- [Chris] Almost, so close!
- [Alex] If you don't like to spring,
this is a cool way to do it,
it's here, here, and then just put it on the table.
- [Chris] So here, pull, and then just
- [Alex] Keep going, there you go.
And you get that swivel.
- [Chris] Right, you get the swivel at the end.
- [Alex] Yeah, so I think that's pretty interesting,
a nice little tip just so you can see ways to do it
'cause you always want to think
of different ways to do it.
I'll show you this from the back, as a little bonus,
for watching the end of this video,
You're here, you do the same way, but instead of springing,
now you're going to come up,
pivot on the middle finger of the left hand,
and now show the top card not being it,
really showing the second card, coming down like this,
and then
- Woooooo! That's a little too good to be teaching,
I'll be honest, so you know what,
he's not going to run over that again,
if you want to watch that again,
you're gonna have to rewind it,
because that was a little too good.
That was a nice little surprise.
- Yeah, man, so I think it's interesting,
so like I said, if you use it or not,
it really doesn't make a difference at this point.
The most important thing is
learning things outside your comfort zone,
and really getting to that level
where you can know how cards move.
- And also to know that one thing is,
when I discovered a really hard sleight
and I just gave it time and practice and eventually got it,
something triggered in me, like, wow,
none of these sleights are impossible anymore,
it's just literally lots of time.
All right, man, well thanks for showing us that.
It's interesting because we just shot an interview with Alex
Alex has been grabbing people,
Alex has been doing it right, okay?
I've been at this convention, I haven't filmed anything,
like a degenerate, but Alex, smart guy,
starting his YouTube channel,
has filmed so many interviews
with literally the world's best magicians
sitting right here where we're sitting
before I got here, by the way.
It's really cool,
so you got a lot of cool content coming up
and I can't wait to see that.
- I think it's important for people to meet the community.
- Check out Alex on his Instagram,
I'll leave the link below, you can check that out.
If he's got his YouTube up and running
by the time this video is up,
also check that out,
give him a subscribe to thank him for this video.
Thanks, dude.
- Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it.
- Cheers. - Cheers, man.
(glasses clink)
All right.
That was good?
- Fantastic. Thanks, bro.
(groovy music)