(electronic dance music)
- What's up guys?
Welcome back.
The view here is immaculate.
Check this out...
(mellow techno music)
I'm here for the weekend.
Toronto International Film Festival is going on.
The city is buzzing with celebrities, and new movies,
red carpets, and parties and that type of thing.
And I got invited this year, just like last year,
by a red velvet events, good friends of mine,
who put on one of the sickest parties in Toronto,
The Black Ball.
Tonight at 7 p.m. I am doing a meet up at Brimz in Toronto.
So you guys are going to come and enjoy it with me.
Lets go.
(soothing classical music)
Alright yeah yeah of course. What is your name?
- James. Hey. Yo.
- James, say hi to the blog James.
I am here at Brimz right now we're setting up,
and I actually purposely didn't wear a hat,
because I though I would buy one here and I did.
They hooked it up.
Check it out.
Alright people are starting to arrive.
This is the meet up.
(hip hop music)
(camera clicks)
- [Garrett] Eight of diamonds
- Eight of diamonds?
What's your name?
- [Garrett] Garrett.
- Garrett?
G-A-R-R-E-T-T
- ♪ For the record. ♪
♪ Been a little too nice to ya'll. ♪
♪ Now I gotta up price for ya'll. ♪
♪ Snake eyes or dice for ya'll ♪
♪ Shoulders on ice for ya'll. Frozen. ♪
♪ Ace Six all the hate. ♪
♪ I woke in a bar today. ♪
♪ Got lost in the ballin' age. ♪
♪ I'm flipping the bars ♪
♪ On record, off record ♪
♪ I still count wins when they doubt it. ♪
♪ On record, off record ♪
♪ Let them take advantage of his wallet. ♪
♪ On record, off record deals ♪
♪ Tell em talk to Collin for the quote. ♪
♪ On record, off record I ♪
♪ Still want the act, not the ghost. ♪
- Is that one?
Look at that card, what is it?
Can you show me? What is it?
Show the camera.
Seven of spades right?
- [ Stranger] Right
- [ Chris] The marker that you were holding the whole time,
what does this say here?
What does that say?
- [Stranger] Sharpie
- [Chris] It says sharpie right?
What does that say?
- [Stranger] Sharpie
- [Chris] Sharpie right? Watch.
Look, what does that say now?
- [Stranger] Seven of spades
- [Chris] Seven of spades. Look.
(rap music)
Right now I didn't film anything
after that point in Toronto.
But I wanted to recap and I wanted to tell you guys
about a few things that you saw in this video.
Special thanks to Red Velvet Event,
for Garrett filming this, part of Red MKT, Red market,
you can check them out on Youtube.
So here's the thing when it comes to live performance.
Performing magic doesn't always go the way
you think it will.
And sometimes that's a good thing,
and sometimes that's a bad thing.
I think the mark of, I don't want to say a skilled musician,
but the mark of an experienced musician,
heres the thing if myself or a peer
(sneezes) I'm okay.
Performing magic has its moments.
A lot of times,
especially people getting into magic,
ask me what if a trick goes wrong,
even late people ask me that.
Heres the short answer to that is
that no one knows what you're doing.
No one knows where I'm going with my performance,
therefore, having that in mind,
and adding confidence to that and the repertoire
of everything that I know in the back of my head
I should be able to somehow
turn this flaw or failure into an effect.
And sometimes that effect becomes greater,
sometimes its lesser,
but its a better option than saying I messed up.
Sorry.
And that's one of the reasons I like to do Jazz Magic.
And what Jazz Magic is basically kinda going out there.
I start with a deck of cards and just say name a card
and I take it from there.
So depending on what card they named,
there might be a different scenario,
there actually is a different scenario for almost any card.
Doing it over, and over, and over, and over again
allows me to come up with individual,
unique ways to find their card,
or to predict their card or whatever it may be.
That adding to all the information
that I know about this person that I'm performing for.
So, for instance, if they name a card
and I ask them their name or their birthday,
or the time it is right now,
these are all things that I can use and coordinate with
the magic I'm presenting, this Jazz Magic.
Jazz Magic is my favorite magic,
and one of the best magicians that I know who does this,
one of the best, is Doug Mckenzie.
- [Doug] If I take your fingers, look,
and put them together like this until we get a connection.
You're getting a call from here look.
Answer it, let's get with the connection,
make sure your connected listen.
- [Man On Right] Yo!
- [Doug] You're connected, don't disconnect.
You're still connected, yes?
Watch. If I take your fingers off on three watch.
I'm going to pull them apart like this.
- [Woman] Oh my god.
(crowd muttering in shock)
- I spent this past weekend with Doug,
and he's one of the few people who is able
to take any situation and
to turn it into a magic trick somehow.
Any piece of information you give him,
he will make an affect out of it.
Which is really, really interesting,
and really inspiring to watch as a magician.
I think its important to talk about
that type of magic because in those moments,
and let me tell you I've had those moments
time and time again.
Miracles will happen.
Fortune favors the bold.
Fortune favors those who take risks.
So in this one clip when she's like...
I asked her to take the cards behind her back,
cut them anywhere, take the top card,
hold it against her chest.
Now at this point I already know
what card she's holding against her chest.
I won't get into how I know that, but I already know this.
Instead of revealing the card,
or looking into her eyes and trying to guess it,
I'm going to have her tell me the card,
or I'm going to have him tell me the card,
because now I know this information.
I know what this card is.
Now I'm going to try and psychologically force
one of these people into naming that card.
So in this case her card was the two of hearts,
and I simply said red or black? She said red.
I said hearts or diamonds? She said hearts.
I said one or two? She said two.
And viola, the two of hearts.
Now I know what you're thinking, well Chris,
What if she would've said black?
What if she would've said one?
Rest assured that I have an out
for every one of those things.
And this is not something I thought of before,
this is something I just kind of came up,
because the situation came up.
I knew exactly what I would do if at any point
they were to stray from what I was trying to force on them.
I'm just going to leave it at that.
One of the strongest components about performing live magic,
like close up magic, is the magicians ability to adapt
to a situation, and specifically to adapt to a situation
gone possibly, potentially wrong.
Those are the marks of an experienced magician.
Most magicians would cave in
under that pressure, or give up.
which is why experienced performing adds so much more
to the experience of magic for the spectator.
Because the spectator wants to believe
that you can do these things.
They want to embark in that fictional journey,
that little fictional bubble
that you've created around them.
They want to play a part of that.
If you give up or anything else then that bubble burst
and you just kind of become someone
who is trying to redeem themselves with another trick,
and they go oh, that one was really good, thank you.
You know what I mean?
Its really important for you to
actually go out there, perform, and mess up.
Messing up is probably the best thing
that's ever happened to me in performance,
because through those mess ups,
I've created a number of outs
and a number of different effects that have come from that.
You know, you take that old plot
of the magician failing at his trick,
and then the redemption of him coming back
and in real situations that happens,
and so those things tend to create really good magic effect.
I don't know where I'm going with this,
I kind of just wanted to touch on Jazz Magic,
and touch on a magicians ability
to play with the circumstance
with whatever information is given to him
at the time of the performance or beforehand.
Keep in mind that the spectator
does not know what you are doing,
with confidence in yourself,
and with the experience of performing time and time again
you will be able to get out of those situations
pretty easily.
At first it might be difficult,
but the more you perform,
and the more you get yourself out there,
the easier its going to become to turn that situation
into something incredible.
And that's where a lot of real miracles happen.
Once in a while they will name a card
that's sitting on the top of the deck,
and that's just unexplainable,
there's no slight of hand, and that for the spectator,
rules out everything that they might know about magic.
So take those chances and you will be rewarded,
you might not always be rewarded,
but you'll definitely be more rewarded
than if you didn't take a chance at all.
Luck equals preparation meets opportunity,
that's all it is.
That's it guys, thanks for watching this video,
I hope you enjoyed some of that
cut together performance stuff.
This video was pretty random,
but I wanted to just get it out there,
and talk about that a little bit.
I hope you found this interesting,
and if you did let me know in the comments below,
like this video, subscribe if you guys are new here,
and you enjoyed this content,
and we'll see ya'll in the next video.
(upbeat electronic music)