(light music)
- Yo, what's going on, guys?
Very special vlog today.
I'm in New York, hanging out with some friends.
I'm in a book.
(upbeat music)
Not a magic book, but a book about magic.
It's called Magic Is Dead and I'm here with Ian Frisch
who's the author of this book.
I met Ian probably what three years ago almost.
He was writing an article for Wired,
following me around in Black Pool
and whatever happened to the article, I don't know,
but Ian got bit by the magic bug
and delved into the underground of magic,
became a really good friend of mine
and actually also a member of the elusive 52.
Now, if you guys are not familiar with what the 52 is,
it's probably because we're not supposed to talk about it.
That being said, this book kind of reveals
what the 52 is about and the key members of the 52
as well as Ian's journey through magic.
So, it's a really, really interesting read
for magicians and non-magicians alike.
So the reason I just wanted to talk about that right quick
is 'cause we're here filming some sort of publicity
to help the book sell for Ian.
It's being printed with Harper Collins,
which is a big publishing house in New York
that's going to print this book
and it'll be available February 26,
but you can pre-order it.
So, I left a link below if you guys are interested.
Basically the story follows Ian
and his first person narrative through
these three crazy years that he's lived
and he follows me around, Spade, Madison
and a lot of other really interesting people.
If you guys are at all interested
in reading something about magic
that isn't a book that teaches you magic,
but sort of behind the scenes of what we've been living
for the past three years, I don't know if you're interested,
but if you are, I left the link below,
you guys can check it out, it's definitely a good read.
So right now, they're gonna wrap up some filming
and then we're gonna go upstairs
and I'm gonna perform some magic
to some of the staff here at Harper Collins.
Let's go.
I'm about to do a magic trick, you filming?
- [Spade] Yeah.
- Okay.
Thank you, Spade, for holding the camera, by the way.
I'm here with Shawn.
You just saw Ian perform a trick which was pretty cool.
Now, you get to see some good magic, which is really sick.
(laughing)
Shots fired, shots fired.
I got two decks of cards here.
Have one of these, actually shuffle them up if you can.
Now, I'll shuffle my deck as well,
we'll both shuffle our cards.
Perfect.
Take these actually, we'll try something a bit different.
- Alright.
- Take those, and I want you to place them behind
your back, and I want you to cut the deck in half
anywhere you like, bit of dexterity required,
- Yeah.
- You got it?
- Got it.
- Do you wanna cut it again?
- I do, yeah.
- Go for it.
Alright, so take the top card,
I'll take the top card as well,
and without looking at it, the top card.
- Yeah.
- Without looking at it, place it in your pocket.
Alright?
So at this point we both have a card,
we have no idea what the cards are,
but it would be pretty amazing if that card
was the same card.
I'll pull mine out first.
- Okay.
- I've got the four of clubs.
(nervous laugh)
- How random is that?
Magic!
How'd you do that?
- How'd you do that?
- How'd you do it?
You chose the same one I did.
Thanks Shawn.
- Thank you!
(laughs)
- [Ramsay] Oh, what is this?
Fort Knox, who is this?
- Fort Knox.
- [Ramsay] Xavier Spade.
(laughs)
Show me something.
Oh, you showed me something the other day,
that you've been working on.
- Oh ya ya ya,
- [Ramsay] Can you do that?
- Yeah.
- [Ramsay] Do it!
Stop talking.
- Take the six here,
so there you go.
- [Ramsay] Whoa!
Where'd the six go?
Oh, it's on the bottom, I saw it!
- Ha!
Got 'em.
- [Ramsay] Kay guys, like honestly, one tip to help people
improve their pass.
- Relax.
Relax.
- [Ramsay] Relax?
- Yeah, most people tense up too much,
and just you know... come down.
So a lot of times, people do the pass they do this,
and then this super intense moment,
they whip everything around.
- [Ramsay] Yeah, that looks exactly like my pass.
(laughs)
- Yeah, it does.
- [Ramsay] Hey!
- This is a Ramsay pass.
- [Ramsay] It's a Ramsay subtlety.
- Ramsay Subtlety.
- [Ramsay] The Ramsay not so Subtlety.
(laughs)
- Like the Criss Angel pass.
- [Ramsay] I'll take it.
- Ever see the Criss Angel pass?
- [Ramsay] No.
- It's like, okay, here we go, "alright guys, here
"look at the card, watch the card right here,
"okay, and one, go!"
(laughter)
"We did it guys!"
(laughs)
But uh, yeah, just relax.
- [Ramsay] Wait, did you just do it?
- Yeah...
- [Ramsay] Really?
- Yeah, so you know just relax with it.
- [Ramsay] Kay, do it now.
- I'll do it face up so you can see it.
The more you relax, your top hand.
- [Ramsay] What are you doing?
- The more you relax your top hand,
the smoother it becomes, because it's about this,
not about anything that's happening underneath.
- [Ramsay] Go, we'll get right in tight,
so I can see, now go!
Okay, whatever.
- More relaxing.
- [Ramsay] You are Harry, Wizard.
- I'm a potter, Goshman...
- [Ramsay] No, keep going, it's getting better.
(laughs)
It's gonna get funny eventually.
- One day.
- [Ramsay] Yo Spade, you got a project coming out too,
by the way, don't you?
- I do, I do.
- [Ramsay] What can you tell the viewers a little bit
about what the project's gonna be about.
- I'm calling it a Master Class, but really
it's just kind of a little course that brings you from
never holding a deck of cards to medium to advanced
card handling in the beginning and after that I'll probably
be adding some coin stuff and some other things, also.
- 'Cause that's interesting, 'cause I get so many
questions on the channel about, "I just started my journey
"in magic, where do I go?"
And YouTube can be really confusing because, especially
if you go to, like, my YouTube playlist, there is no order
of Start here, it's just kind of, I throw you in there
randomly, 'cause I'm very unorganized in my life.
Spade apparently, much more organized than I am,
and a lot more knowledge.
So he's gonna be albe to teach you guys from A to Z
if you've never held a deck of cards,
to like, all the essentials.
- Uh hmm, yeah, and you know you'll get history,
where to look other things up but more importantly,
it's just kind of a base line of basic card handling.
- [Ramsay] Do you credit Arpel Wilson?
- Every episode is from Arpel's repertoire.
(laughs)
- [Ramsay] Thanks Spade.
- Thank you.
- [Ramsay] Well who do we have here?
We got a magician.
- Oh hi!
- [Ramsay] How's it going, Wes?
- Good, thanks sir.
- [Ramsay] Nice to see you.
Nice to see you, Nick.
(laughs)
- Well, hello there, welcome back.
We actually split from the book place because
crazy weather, everyone's going home early,
so I couldn't actually perform to the staff,
I performed a little bit, but I didn't want to leave
you guys hanging, so I brought in a special guest.
By the way, this is Ian's place right here,
this is where he wrote this book.
Which is fitting.
I am sitting here with Xavier Spade, guys,
and he's gonna teach you something.
So, I'm very excited to have another tutorial
on this channel, with something for you guys to learn,
so let's get right into it.
I'm gonna read these books, by the way
while you guys do that.
(piano music)
- Today students, welcome to Learnthemagics.org
here we have a compilation of...
- [Ramsay] We don't need those, we have YouTube now.
(laughs)
- Welcome to YouTube.com
I'm gonna show you guys a little control,
and the control is a funky little table cut,
that you can retain one or mutliple cards
in the action of cutting the deck to the table,
and it's super easy, it's super clean,
and it's super casual.
So we're gonna use this mat.
This is what the move is, so let's say the four of diamonds,
you're gonna hold a break, just in a nutshell very quickly,
and then we'll go into detail.
So, as I cut I'm gonna hold back that card,
- [Ramsay] Just that card?
- Or whatever amount of cards you want.
- [Ramsay] It could be a little more?
- Yeah, whatever amount of cards you want,
I'll show you multiple in a few seconds.
And then you just add it back, and you complete the cut.
And that's it, keeps it on top of the deck.
So we'll do it face up, so you hold a break on that card,
you come, cut, retain the card or multiple cards
as you come back, add and then finish the cut.
- [Ramsay] So what are the angles on this?
- Pretty much anything from the front of the hand,
so I'll show you how to cover that,
but first let's get into the finer details.
Usually, when you have a card that you wanna control,
you get a break on it however you want, we'll do mutliples,
we'll do four, right.
So let's say you have four cards on top of the deck
you wanna control, it's easy enough to get a pinky break,
if you don't know how to do that,
there's plenty of videos around for that,
you get a break and as your hand comes over to grab
the deck proper, your ring finger is gonna tip that up.
So now you're gonna insert this into the pinky,
and ring finger area, and you're gonna kinda hold
the deck deep, right, you're gonna hold it kinda deep,
so you don't wanna do this, you want those fingers to go
over the edge of the deck, you see I'm hiding it like that.
And now your thumb can grab everything else,
from the back here.
So now you just come over, you lift, and as you go to cut,
you just let go with your thumb a little bit,
and that will release everything under that pinky clip,
and now your hand's gonna tip back a little bit,
your finger extends and your fingers relax,
so it's like you're letting go of the deck.
- [Ramsay] Right, right, that relaxation's probably
really key to make this fooling.
- Right, so you relax out, and as you come back to grab
the deck, you extend a lttle bit more and you grab.
- [Ramsay] And then you're done.
- And now you're done.
Yeah, so you wanna do it from...
- [Ramsay] You wanna be either like middle to like
the right.
- I would say a little bit off of middle.
- [Ramsay] So right here.
- Right where the knuckles are pointing, over.
- [Ramsay] Got you.
- So you just, you're here, you come over,
you grab the deck, you cut, you come back,
you cut and you're done.
- [Ramsay] It looks so weird with the card face up on top.
- Yeah, it just vanishes.
- [Ramsay] It's hard to understand what's happening.
You're like, wait, did it, no, there it is.
- It's just vanishing for a minute.
So we'll do it with one card here, so the four of diamonds.
So we'll just go here,
that's it.
- [Ramsay] Done.
Woo!
- And that's it.
Quick little table control,
on the Magic is Book dead, on pre-sale!
- Alright guys, go check out my buddy Xavier Spade,
I'll leave his link below,
he teaches a lot of magic on his channel,
a lot more thorough than I am with magic teachings
and more knowledgeable as well,
so definitely go check out his videos.
He's gonna be posting a lot and as I mentioned,
he's got a project coming up that a lot of you guys
have asked me about, beginner's stuff,
so it's not only beginner's stuff obviously,
it's how to refine the stuff that you should learn
in the beginning, and I think a lot of people could use that
because it's kind of like walking on a broken foot,
you wanna correct it before it gets worse.
So thank you to Mr. Xavier Spade,
thank you guys for watching, stay tuned,
dropping some more videos coming soon.
Like, smash all that stuff, subscribe
and we'll see you on the next one.
Peace!
(upbeat music)