As we go through this course you're going to hear a lot of names, most of them were very important people responsible for enlightening and influencing my journey through magic. 

Write those names down, so later you can go to the source. Every time someone says something, they probably learned it somewhere else, so go to the source. The source contains the most important information you can gather. I've taken my time and effort to collect the most important information I think is relevant for you in learning and rehearsing a complete Act of magic. Most people think it's all about the tricks but think of it like this. 

You have a guitar and you see the strings on the guitar and you know that when you move your fingers across the strings they make sound, and you also know that if you put your other fingers placed correctly on those strings on the arm of the guitar it's going to sound different every time you run your other fingers through the strings. 

And you know what music is, you've heard the music you know how it sounds, you know there are some types of music you like and some you don't like. Where am I trying to go with this? If you know how something works it doesn't mean that you can make it work. Get it?  Knowing the guitar makes noises when you run your fingers through the strings doesn't give you knowledge or abilities to play your favorite song. 

Similarly, simply knowing how a magic trick works is not enough to actually perform the magic trick. That's why, in theory, it’s apparently simple, but in the practical sense you have to rehearse so that everything fits in its place. I would say that knowing how the trick works is 10% of everything you need to know. The rest is a good performance. From now on, think of yourself as an actor. You have to be convincing.

Okay, are you ready?

These are the most fundamental things, at least in my opinion, that you need to learn to be an able magician. The first one, misdirection, is one of the most important ones you'll develop along your journey as a magician. 

So, here they all are: Misdirection, holding out, false takes, false transfers and switches, loading, productions, and vanishes, penetrations, watching your angles, and elaborating practice routines. Each of these items is equally important and very often depend on each other. Let's go through them one by one to talk about the details. First and most importantly we're going to talk about misdirection.