There are some tricks that are just hard to practice. They’re boring to do over and over.
Yet to get good at them, you must do EXACTLY that. Practice over and over.
And of course, resetting and using the bills over and over wears out the bills, which means you have to rebuild the bills, etc. Which removes even more time from practicing.
Well one of my “helpful” ideas for this is to use dummy props.
I’m currently working on a redesign of a trick I did quite a bit about 15 years ago. And this trick requires SPRING BILLS. [ If you’ve read my other posts, you’re well aware of this. ]
Well spring bills are the most annoying things to practice with. Every practice takes about 5 minutes to reset – and that’s just the bills!
This means that the 3 minute routine takes 8 minutes to practice, and most of that time is spent folding up the bills. That’s not practice, that’s torture.
So, what I did was make a dummy stand in for the bills. I took some playing cards and traced the outline of the bills on the cards. Then with a razor knife and a straight edge, I cut out the lines.
[ Yes, it would have been smarter to use scissors, but smarter isn’t always the way I work. ]
Anyhow, after I had a block of cards that gave me the same feel/thickness/dimensions as the folded bills, I taped the block together with blue painters tape.
So I have this odd little block of taped cards that I use to practice with. Because honestly, I could care less if I see the bills open. I just want to rehearse.
Now, a 3 minute trick takes 3:30 to reset.
THIS is reasonable.
I use a similar type of “dummy” when practicing a massive production of sponge balls ala Tom Stone, or when I do a silk fountain.
