(upbeat music)
- Yo, what is up guy?
Chris Ramsay here
and welcome back.
Hope you guys are having a lovely day.
I'm having a great day
and especially because
I'm going to share something with you,
my family.
I'm gonna share something with you guys today.
That's right, we're gonna take a look at the cascade
but not just the cascade,
we're gonna take a look at a little variation that I do
and I don't know if this is original or not
because it's just like literally the same as a cascade
but I do a little twist on it
which makes it, I think for me, a little bit more appealing.
Something to add into your cutaway shots
if you're doing like a cardistry video
or if you're showcasing any type of B roll
in your magic video,
this is a cool thing that you can do,
a lot of people just do springs and waterfalls and cascades
and we fans and that stuff, lepaul spreads,
which we even saw in the B roll of the video I just did.
It's fun to have an arsenal of these little extra tricks
that you can add into your stuff.
So what I've put together here
is sort of my work on the reverse cascade.
I hope you guys enjoy this.
It's a really fun thing.
Now, finger strength is a big, big issue when doing this.
Not hand size,
it doesn't matter if your hands are small,
you will be able to do this
but you have to remember that the muscles in your hand
won't work like you want them to.
It's kinda like trying to thumb wars
while your hand is frozen.
It's kind of what it's gonna feel like.
So to get that muscle working,
just keep at it.
Keep bending and flexing the deck
and you'll eventually get there
but let's get into the tutorial
on how we can do that right now.
So for this tutorial,
we'll be using a Hellions.
These playing cards are from Ellusionist.
My buddy Daniel Madison put these together.
I'll leave a link below where you guys can check 'em out.
Not sure they're available yet
but follow that link and you will be notified
when exactly they will become available.
To start off,
we're gonna teach you how to do the cascade.
Cascade is a very, very cool flourish.
It kind of showcases your skill with a deck of cards
and has this long sort of look to it which is really cool,
which is something you want.
A lot of people like springing cards
because it just creates this big sort of image for the eye
so people can get directed towards it.
It's kind of like a nice thing to attract the eye.
So basically, this works with a principle
where you kind of inflate the deck.
Watch what happens here.
Whomp, look at that,
look at that fat deck,
so fat.
The majority of it is gonna be done with these three fingers
but the pinky can help as well
as well as the thumb.
You're going to basically hold it
in this sort of grip here
where all your fingers are touching it,
your thumb included
and you're gonna literally bend the deck like this.
Now, at first, cards are gonna go flying, phew, phew,
which is fine,
you'll get used to that
and you'll pick 'em up
and you'll start over.
- Gotta start over.
- But after awhile,
you can control that
and then as you release tension a little bit
and open up your fingers,
you're gonna start to create this sort of d shape here,
this half moon,
which is how the cards are going to be allowed
to fall from your fingers, from back here,
all the way to the front.
And the way that works is just physics.
I can't really explain it.
It's like when you let go,
if I let go here,
if I let go of the back, nothing happens
but if I let go at the front,
notice how it all kind of stretches out, right?
Let's do it on this side.
Once you've got too hard of a bend,
just switch the deck around.
What I'm going to do now
is I'm gonna start releasing with the index and the thumb.
This hand here is gonna catch.
And the way this hand catches is sort of in this shape.
All the cards are going to be falling onto my pinky.
So that's kind of like
the cards are gonna be falling like this down on the pinky.
So once you have that shape,
you're going to start to let go
a little bit with your index and the tip of your thumb.
So just keep practicing that,
keep practicing the muscle here
where you can push,
let go and inflate and hold that there.
As soon as you're here,
you start letting go
and the cards are gonna start cascading.
Now, cards are falling all over the place.
I don't really care
'cause this is for instructional purposes
and you shouldn't care either
because that's how you learn.
So here again,
it's just beautiful how they one at a time
sort of collapse into your hand.
I really like this flourish a lot.
Just like that.
You can take a smaller maybe half deck if you like to start
or you can literally use two decks
and really train the muscles in your hand
or use a stiff deck.
There are a lot of different decks out there
with different stocks and finishes.
This one is more of like a thin finish
so it's much easier to cascade
whereas these ones over here, the chicken nuggets,
they're actually fatter and heavier
so it takes a lot more muscle.
You're gonna cramp up,
your hands will hurt like all over here,
which is a good thing again
but you're building up that muscle memory.
See how that works?
And that basically
is the cascade.
Alright, so now we're gonna look
at the reverse cascade,
so this here.
Now, if you're familiar with Lee Asher,
you might be familiar with flow.
The flow revelation is a way he would do a similar move
and reveal a card.
I obviously can't do flow.
His version doesn't require you to do this.
So if you want to learn that,
go check that out.
That's by Lee Asher.
But this here is just a sort of variation on the cascade,
this type of thing here.
So it's literally doing the cascade
but turning your hands around sideways
and letting it fall from your thumb
instead of both your thumb and index.
So it creates that rotation.
The mechanics of it are as follows,
you want to have your ring finger on this end of the deck.
So not your pinky.
You want to push everything including your thumb,
your thumb's gonna be a little off center
towards the bottom part here.
And you're gonna do that same thing.
Now you're gonna have this big bubble on one side
and a smaller bubble on the other side.
That's fine.
And then as you come over here,
you're gonna let go with your index
and just kind of let go.
The index aids the cards
in sort of staying aligned.
You can move it out of the way if you want
but basically the thumb and these two fingers
is where it's at.
So you're here,
and you're going to let go of your thumb
when you're in this position.
So slightly tilted, just to let it start falling
and then you open up your hand gently as that falls down.
Now, after awhile,
you can do this from a bigger height.
So this can almost look like a cool
large sort of action flourish
instead of just having it in the hands like so.
Kind of adds a little bit of finesse to it
when you add that rotation,
you get that nice sort of rainbow curve to it.
So keep practicing that.
Make sure you develop those finger muscles
and like I said, start with a half deck
if you want at first.
I think by the end of this tutorial,
I will literally have five cards left
that haven't fallen to the ground.
But this is something you just do over and over again
while you're sitting waiting around.
It just looks cool.
If you have different back designs,
you can also like play with that.
So this back design is kinda cool
but you might find a back design
that more suitably makes it even flowier-ish,
I don't know if that's a word.
These are getting pretty bent and pretty loose right now
so they're not cascading properly.
If I were to switch to the chicken nuggets,
which are a lot thicker,
These ones would probably work a whole lot better
because they don't have that bend in them anymore.
And I could just switch it around,
do it on this side,
just like that.
Kind of looks really cool.
So enjoy that and have fun with it.
Alright, guys, thanks for watching so much.
I hope you enjoy this video
and I hope you enjoyed that little tutorial
of the cool little reverse cascade move.
If you do the cascade already,
this might help you sort of brush up on it
or kind of a new spin on it.
And if you don't,
hopefully this was enough information
for you to get started
and for you to actually learn how to do it.
I would love to hear your feedback
and I would love to know if this helped you at all
or if you guys came up with something similar or different
or if you do this already
or whatever it is.
Let me know below your work on the cascade
and perhaps what you guys would like to see next,
whether it's a flourish or trick or whatever
or just some more vlog stuff,
which I intend on doing.
Just thought I'd take a day out of the weekend
to shoot something for you guys.
It was beautiful
and I couldn't let it pass me by.
So guys, thanks again for watching.
Do leave a like, if you liked this video
or if it helped you out in any way.
It helps me out in a tremendous way
and also leave a comment if you want to start conversation.
We'll see you guys on the next video.
Take care.
Until then, peace.
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