(relaxed electronic music) (fingers snap) - Yo, yo, yo guys, what's going on? Alex Pandrea here,
welcome back to my channel and welcome back to another video. In this video, we're gonna
go over the double lift and more specifically, how
to make the double lift not look like (bleep), all right. On this channel, I try
to give you the basics and give you ways to do it so that they improve the
technique that you know or basically, if you're
learning them from the start, learn it correctly so then you don't have to re-learn it later. The double lift is one of the
most powerful moves in magic. We all know this and it's
the most overused move. I mean you could do this,
literally do a double lift, put it in their hands, snap your fingers and you get the craziest reaction. But what I hate is to watch
people do the double lift, either incorrectly or
just straight up bad. So in this video, we're
gonna go over different types of double lifts, ones that
I've used in the past, and my double lift is always changing. But more importantly, we're
gonna go over the get readies of these double lifts and the get readies or the pinky breaks or
whatever you wanna call 'em, because if that part is awkward, then the whole move is gonna look awkward and probably you're gonna
be called out on it. So let's get into how
to get the get readies, different types of ways
to get those get readies, and get ready to do that double
lift and then different ways to turn over the card
and you could go ahead and combine a get ready
with your own turnover and kinda make it your own, so
let's get into it right now. All right, let's just jump right into it. Now, doing a double lift,
there's two ways to do it, one with a break, one without a break and there's different ways to get a break, so let's go over different
ways to get your break. Okay, the very standard way to get a break and this, I don't recommend this, but probably everybody does this in the beginning, is
to push over two cards and then come back and get your break. Now, I'm not gonna say
that this is wrong to do, it just, when the
spectators are looking here or if you're talking and you do this, then that could call
attention to your hands and you might not wanna do this. Now, granted, this is an okay method to get a break under maybe one card or even two cards if you're gonna do it, if you tilt your hand, okay, so if you're actually coming here and doing something, moving something, there,
I just got my break and, because it's hidden,
right, so keep that in mind. So yeah, just push over two cards with the thumb and then bring them back, square everything up and
get that pinky underneath and that is the first way to get a break, not the best, but it
can be used sometimes. The second way to do it is by riffling up the back of the deck. Now this, again, is something
that I have used in the past. Remember, all of these
are sort of my evolution of the double lift, so
I've used these in the past and I'm sure you guys use them as well, but I'll show you a
few ways to get around, how to make 'em look a little bit better. If you're going to riffle up from the back to get your breaks,
you're riffling, riffling, and then you stop at two cards to get your break, what
you're gonna wanna do to do that is to cover it up
by riffling the front as well. So it would look like
this, I have no break here, I riffle the back, I get my break, I riffle the front and then
I just wait, all right, and I don't go into the move straightaway. So the get readies,
always, you wanna try do it before you go into the move right away. So that is the second way to get a break, you riffle, riffle, riffle,
get your break under two, but then you don't wanna just stop there and you don't wanna do your
double lift right away. You wanna get your break, riffle, riffle, get your break, and then also clean it up, or sort of make it invisible by riffling up the top
as you talk, all right. So in an action, it'll
be like this, like this, and now you wait, and
then you go into the move. All right, moving on, the third way to get a double lift
is to do a pinky count for two cards and then
get that break that way. Now this is a little bit
harder but it is invisible from the front, especially
if you tilt up a little bit like this and then you'll
get your pinky break by counting two cards with the pinky. Now at first, this is almost impossible if you don't know the subtleties for it because I was trying to learn this for the longest time and
I just couldn't do it, so what you wanna do is
sort of take your pinky, press down on it, and bevel
the cards this way, okay. So once the cards are beveled
this way, it's much easier to count one, two, three, four, five, etc. And get your break, as
many cards as you want. But in this case, we're only
gonna bevel a little bit, so that we could get two
and then just come here, so to make this look
invisible is you're here, you kinda talk and you tilt back and you go one, two, and
then you get your break and you're ready to go into the move. Okay, this next one is the
Larry Jennings snap double and it's the get ready
that comes from the break of doing a thumb count and
then going into a snap double by snapping the cards this way. Now this I learned from
the late, great Daryl, who this was his double lift of choice and I used to do it for the longest time. And the way that you do this is by getting a thumb break first,
so you're gonna thumb count, one, two, now from here
I'm going to put pressure with the thumb, creating
a bow in here, the top. Just enough for my
first finger, all right, my first finger to go inside,
not all the way inside, just a little bit here,
and now my thumb is going to readjust from here to
here, popping that card out on this side, on the
right side of the deck. Okay, so, boom, boom, here, and then pop. Now from here, this whole side is exposed so you're gonna right away
go into the double lift, any double lift that we're gonna talk to in the next section, okay. So that is the Larry Jennings
snap double, here, here. All right, boom, boom. All right and in speed,
it should look like this. You're talking, you're talking,
you get your thumb count and as you do it, you go
straight into it, very nice. So the last way to get a
break is to not get a break. So what I mean by this
is to get a double lift by pushing over two cards exactly and you're doing a double pushover, rather than getting a
break first then doing it. I have a whole tutorial
on this double lift. It's linked down below
if you wanna check it out and it goes over exactly the subtleties of pushing over two cards as one and doing the double lift from there. But we're not gonna talk
about that so much in this because there's a whole
very long video on that. Okay, let's talk about actually turning these cards over, now
that you've figured out your favorite type of break to get. Now we're gonna go over them
from, I guess a beginner level to a more sort of advanced level, but of course, these are my opinions on what I think looks
better and more natural and more less, more less, less suspicious. So the first way of doing
it and this is the way that I started was to literally
get your break somehow, okay, and again, we
talked about the breaks, get whatever break we're gonna get and from here, you're gonna
turn over the card like this. Now this, in itself looks,
I guess very amateur-y-ish, amateur-y-ish, but nonetheless it works. Now to make this one look good, it really gonna depend
on how you're going to, what you're doing after the fact, okay. So if you're just showing
the card like this and then it's changing, not very good, two movements, they're
not matching each other. If you're placing it down on the table or whatever you can, make it look good by getting the break, showing
the card just for a second and now as you come back
down, you can push it over and re-grip in this position. That's how I think that
double lift can look good but again, this is a double lift, used a lot of the times in packet tricks, when you have a packet trick
and you just wanna show, like, the top card or whatever, it goes off just fine,
so that's the first one. Now this could be also done by grabbing it in the same position and
turning it over like this. All right, now this, I
believe, is what Shin Lim does for his double lift, all right. Again, this could look very smooth, depending on how you do it. If you don't wanna be very tight with your hands, you
don't want to be rigid. You wanna be flowy, smooth, so even if you do this one, right, you're open, even if you do this one, you're smooth with the hands, okay. So you're here and just
practice this a few times by just taking it, turning it over, keeping that break,
turning it over, all right and it could look pretty
nice but not my favorite. Okay, this next one is probably the first sort of real double lift that I learned because when you're little, you do this and then you do this and I didn't really, I didn't use that when I
was properly performing. The first double lift that I used when I was properly performing
was something like this, okay, and this was probably
back 20 years ago at this point but I really like this and I learned it from Magick Balay, this is
the double lift that he does and what you do from here
is after you get your break, okay, you come with the
thumb and you're gonna turn the card over this way. So from here, get the double lift, your thumb is going to
go inside of the break and two fingers, the two, first finger and middle finger are coming in on top. You're gonna bow the card downward, turn your hand from face down to face up and that turns over the card like that and I'm keeping all the
fingers here as breaks, okay. You can do it so that it's just the pinky, but I remember, like,
I just used to get it really sort of high so that
all the fingers are now there so now I can come ahead
and turn it back over. So here, here, show the card,
and then turn it back over. All right. Now the next one is moving
on into a more natural type of double lift, as you
would think a natural thing would be is to turn it over like this, like a book, pages of a book, okay. So the way that we're gonna do that is we're gonna get our break, however way that we do get a break, and now we're gonna go
inside with the fingers, all right, inside with the fingers and start to turn over the card. Now, a lot of people, when they do this, they try to turn over it
like this and they're scared to sort of glide along the deck. All right, don't be worried about that, as long as you've got a good grip here, bowing the cards upward,
just a little bit, you could come around and now
you could turn over the card. Now, a lot of people, they also do this and they try to go and
get that break again and that's what makes it look awkward. It's like that, all right. So I mean, my biggest
tip is to not get a break when turning over the cards because in any case, maybe
the angle is not right, but if you must get it, a break, this is the best way to do it. So you're gonna go
ahead, turn the card over and now you're not gonna
go flush, all right, because if you go flush
you might lose that break. If you put your pinky in, that
could look weird, all right. So what I like to do is
just go a little bit up, out-jogged, okay, a little
bit out-jogged like that. So what that's gonna do is
you're gonna be allowed now to have a way to get inside
and turn that double back over. The easiest way to do that
is to press down like that. All right, so press down,
and now you can reach in and grab that double and
turn it back over, okay. So from here, turn it over like a book, come a little bit forward with it, push down with the first finger and push back, maybe now you get a break, but I wouldn't even bother,
I would just push down, go back in with the fingers
and turn it back over. Now this is the ending of the snap double, so like I talked about before, you do the snap double, it comes outwards, then I snap it back up, get that here, maybe you can snap it
here and now turn it over, so that is the ending of the snap double. All right, now, to make
it look more natural, to turn it over like a
book, this was the divert and double lift, so you get your break and now you're going
to pick up a little bit with the two, with your right hand, the two cards, enough to get
your middle finger in there. All right, so this is gonna
be sort of the setup now. Now this should all be done while talking and now the attention should be on it. Middle finger's inside, thumb is here and it's gonna look like the thumb pushes off the card, all right, it's gonna look like the thumb pushes off the card but what's gonna really happen is you're pinching it
between the middle finger and the thumb and that
creates the illusion that you're pushing it off
with a thumb, all right. And now from here, you can
go into the exact same one as before or from here, you can do double, come back over, grab that
break again, somehow, or don't even worry about
it because I always tend to think, when you do do
this, you get a natural curve of the cards anyway so you can lift off and get a break and now do it again. Push over with the thumb, pinch it, turn it over, and that
could look more natural. Okay, so here, here, show the card, show the card, that way. Now if you wanna get a
little bit more fancy with this turnover, a lot of the times, I like to add in a twist, all right. So, for no reason at
all, other than the fact that you wanna show off a little bit, you can do the exact
same thing, come here, push over, twist, turn it over, okay. Twist and turn it over
and a lot of the times, you don't even have to do the push over 'cause you can just grab the cards, pick 'em up as one,
turn 'em over like this and flip 'em back around, all right. So that's just fancier way to
do the kind of book turnover. Okay, now moving on to
something that I used to do probably five years ago, I'd say, before I started doing
the push off double lift, is doing it in such a
way where you're here and you show the card like this openly and you place the card down
and put it into their hand. So the way that this works is that, again, you get your break
however way that you want. Lower left-hand corner,
you're gonna pivot it in the crotch of the thumb, all right. And that's what's gonna create a way to take that card and turn it around. All right, now there's
a few ways to do this. So again, break, you're
going to place your thumb on the lower corner, right-hand corner and your ring finger, right here, is gonna go on this corner, all right. First fingers on top and
I'm going to come around, snap, and place it here,
out-jogged or side-jogged rather so that you don't have to
worry about getting a break. And now turn it back over this way. The second way to do that
is to come around here and just come around with
it instead of snapping, you pick up and you turn over, okay. So from here, you're just gonna
pivot it, just a little bit and now turn it over and
again, still out-jogging it and like that and the
third way of doing it is a Stuart Gordon double
lift by getting a break and it looks like this and again, it'll, they all have
the same sort of action. So the way that you're gonna do that is the same exact motion but
instead of pivoting, all right, you're gonna just straight
pick up from there and this time, more so with
the middle finger over here and you're going to
bevel or rather do this with the card and start turning it over in the hand, so from here to here, almost like if you saw that last video, we're gonna get into the microphone grip. But that's exactly, basically
what you're gonna do. From here, start turning the cards over, and you're gonna use this part of the hand to align the cards so
that they don't split. Here, here, okay. And now from here, you can grab it in the same way to turn
it back over, all right. Here, turn over, and there. One thing that I did wanna talk about before we finish this video
is the turnover itself and how to not be as rigid. The one tip that I can give you is when you do the double
lift, you'll realize that they don't separate
as much as they should or as you think they would. So for the most part, if you can come here and then maybe before turning it over, just give it a little bit of a bend, then you can come very
freely with your fingers and just be open and just
toss that card out like this. You don't have to make it a thing so that you come here and then
you place it very carefully so that they don't split. Come here, do this, grab it, open up, and it goes to say with like everything, if you put too much
attention on something, then they will put attention too on it. When I do a double
lift, I talk, I do this, I turn it over, I look down, I
go, is it the four of hearts? No, of course not, so watch the four and it's very nonchalant,
natural, I think natural looking and you could have a
much better double lift by doing it that way. Okay guys, so before we end this video, one important thing
that I wanna talk about is the idea of naturalness
when doing any sort of move, whether it be this one
or any other sleight that in our eyes, as magicians, as sleight of hand artists, we wanna try to make it look natural
and there's a difference between looking natural in the eyes of magicians and to spectators. Now that first double
lift that I showed you, that might look natural to us, right. It might look amateur-y-ish
but the simple fact is that we don't know how
the audience perceives what looks natural or not. For us, a fancy double lift or
one that we think looks cool might not look natural to them and that might look suspicious, all right. So it might be even better, depending on who you're performing for,
to choose your double lift depending on the audience. So if you are a beginner
and those first ones are the easiest ones for you to do, then by all means do it,
but just keep in mind the subtleties behind making the easy ones or the more amateur ones look good, like we talked about. So as long as you know that, I think your double lift will improve. So that's it guys, that's the video. Thank you so much for sticking around and watching my tutorials. More tutorials on my channel,
so if you are new here, go ahead, hit that subscribe button, hit the like button if
you learned something and we will see you in
the next video, peace. (relaxed jazzy music) ♪ I got, I got my style ♪ ♪ I got, I got my style ♪ ♪ And it's all right ♪
