Anyone have any URLs or advice for someone getting started in Card Flourishes/ Card Manipulation ?
Probably the best place to start is the Jeff McBride series of DVDs. There is ‘Jeff McBride: The Art of Card Manipulation’, volumes 1-3, and ‘Jeff McBride’s World Class Manipulation’, volumes 1-3. You can get them from the producer, L&L Publishing (easy Google search). Alternatively, if you contact any reasonably good magic dealer, they may have them in stock or can order them for you. I don’t know where you live, but if it’s the UK then I’d suggest contacting Keith Bennett, because he’s a good magic dealer who gives good advice on purchases and also the best possible prices.
I recommend McBride’s DVDs because McBride himself, in addition to being a top-flight performer, is also a really good and experienced teacher of magic, and the DVDs are of high quality. They may seem pricey if you’re not accustomed to the typical prices of magic DVDs, but I think they are actually very good value for money for the information they contain.
If you want to pursue your enquiry, can I recommend you look at a website called The Magic Cafe, where there are specialist forums (fora?) devoted to cards and manipulation.
One piece of advice - skip the flourishes, and work on the manipulation. Practice, practice, practice. And then work on a good delivery of the “patter” that tells the story and provides much of the redirection. In my opinion, a well delivered trick works better than fancy card moves - you actually don’t want people to think about how you can control the cards in your hands.
However, for either card flourishes or card manipulation you can do a Google search and pull up lots of sites with info. I also recommend getting a DVD - actually seeing someone do the moves and then explaining to you how to accomplish it in detail will save you much frustration and headache. I’ve spent many hours craning my head sideways at some diagram trying to figure out just where to place my little finger, only to have everything go terribly wrong…
A pretty decent DVD is “Born to Perform Card Magic” by Oz Pearlman. Some of the volume sets will probably give you more detail and more practice, but this one is a good one-shot that gives you lots of information on one DVD. Once you learn a small handfull of forces/ controls, you can come up with your own tricks to perform.
I second the Jeff McBride “Art of Card Manipulation” DVD/Tape series. They pretty much cover everything you are looking to learn.
Another online resource is The Magic Cafe. This is the premier online discussion board for magicians. Registration is free and it not only has discussions on card flourishes and manipulation, but just about every other type of magic you can imagine as well.