How Music Transforms Stage Magic #220

They're guys. They do magic. They are the Magic Guys.

Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? Welcome to episode 220 of the Magic Guys.

Look at this, I'm holding a deck for those who are watching that is two decks combined, and I just tried to riffle shuffle it and uh it turns out you really need some hand strength for that but to my left a guy who has many hand strengths is nick k i'm nick k and beneath me and also in this dad we have daddy doug i didn't really kind of feel good it's like a hand strength like what does that mean i was i automatically went there myself finger banging like a champion like that's not how

it works okay imagine if that yeah go on daddy i'm that oh you've even got it a grip strength nice it's a whole it's a whole bunch oh this is the maximum strength i have actually i. Can bench press a cornflake that's well you know what that's what strength means that's what it means the most you know imagine if our secret hand signal became that like what group are you a part of in the magic guys oh this one yeah yeah i'm in the club oh boy that's bad hey hang on a second isn't it

said that like in medical journals that like grip strength is one of the most important things you can have in your older age is that's right it's one of the abilities you start to lose yeah like the ability to like to hang from a bar would be is like one of the most important things to be able to have like yeah apparently your achilles heel like your tendon is one of one of the first things to go so they always recommend you know practicing uh squatting down and you know where you're like

the chinese you know squatting thing they can just do forever we don't have a purpose for it normally but if you actively yeah i forget the name of it but yeah you do those squats, it works those tendons. And then, yeah, I think grip strength. Probably your back or your hips are probably next. Basically, the idea is from my personal training qualifications growing up before I turned into a wizard, your bone mineral density is the thing that will keep your body able to move when you're older.

And that comes from resistance training, like doing weights, even if it's small weights, it's what keeps your bones strong and allows you to actually, you know, keep going forever.

Well, here's a wild idea. We start the magic guys health club and josh you can kick off that as a side business and we can do before and after shots of like doug and i look in the way we do right now which is very good but then we have before and after shots where it's like check out the magic guys health club and obviously you get some packs and look like i don't know chris angel i could see a jacked doug like in a leather open jacket with some abs busting

down some leather pants with cheeks cut out yeah that's what a real camera he just snaps a magic wand no that's a bad thing that's what we do when someone dies at a funeral but guys we are getting off track and as you know that does happen we do this live and always in the live chat we have our friends hello friends tim asking we have adonis good to see you friend gutbuster mike what up charlie good to see you friend and of

course thomas conger wow there's a whole bunch of you guys here thank you all for being here in the chat the motivation for today's topic is an interesting one josh tell us how this sort of came about yeah so you know it's in our discord ghan j g e h a n i'm the same is this the same ghan that we know or is this a different g in the discord are you thinking chi han who's the magician well in in our discord we have ji han.

It's funny because obviously everyone's cryptic in there so we don't really know who's who right but our friend put is it spelled like this j e h e a n and you're probably here live and you're probably laughing that i'm not saying your name right or oh there we go he says it's me which is still Jihan, which still doesn't help, but thank you. He put in like, have you ever done an episode on putting music in your shows? Like, have you talked about like what kind of music to use, where to find it?

You know, is it better to do Magic Silent? What tech do you use? Great questions.

And we've always dabbled in it, but we've never dedicated an episode to it where like, if someone asks you about music.

Putting music in your show we've never had an episode we can just direct people to and so i think this is kind of the epitome for us of the magic guys like scoping out here's all the stuff we think you should know about adding music to your show or at least the things you should consider and that's how we've landed here agreed now before we kick it off just just do we actually do we use music in our shows doug do you use it for your street shows or anything you know

i was going to ask you guys the same question i i have made headway to put music in my street show and i'm very interested in learning from someone who knows more than me today so i'm hoping maybe one of you are more pro than me i know some stuff and i've made you know some headway so i can chat about you know the ballpark but i'm here to learn to at least converse on the subject hell yeah and i mean you've seen many acts with music in it so you'll be able to

give feedback and i mean in vegas that's they got all the bells and whistles there so this is perfect we're going to try and get through as many questions as we can charlie hewish is in the chat i've known charlie for a long time just through the interwebs but charlie also is working on dynamo's live shows which is amazing and he's just left a comment while working on Dynamo's live show, we made sure to always have some sort of music, even if it was a low instrumental track during a monologue.

It definitely helped to set the mood for each scene. I love that. And thank you for sharing that. And it's like a movie, like you want to have those scores, you know, that cinematic feel, even if not an actual song. So yes, I do use music in my show as well, and we'll get into that right now. Here we go. So some quick questions. We're all going to chat about this. Put your thoughts in the chat as well. Today, we're trying out a feature where we can see the live chat on the screen.

Everyone watching can see it in real time. And question number one, thing to consider, what emotion do I want the audience to feel during this routine? And what music matches that? That's a good question. So when you're doing the performance, guys, it depends what sort of energy levels you want to achieve. I don't really know if there's a reference for it, but one thing you want to keep in mind is that if you want something to be calming, a normal heart rate is at 60 to 70 beats.

I'm going to say 60 for a healthy person, okay? Because I consulted the Magic Guys Health Club and I got that information. And so 60 beats a minute is a healthy place to be. If you want to get a rise out of your audience, something a little bit more energy, you want to find songs that have a beat per minute that is going to sort of coincide with the elevation of excitement you want them to have.

If you ever listen to Rocco Solano, you know, Sleaving Rocco and his thoughts on applying music to his act, he always likes to work around the 80 beats a minute. That's just a means of getting someone from being nice and comfortable in their chair, waiting for a performance to going from that to 80. So just getting them a bit more vibe watching that show.

And then in a mixture of getting your heart rate a little bit above, as well as applauding, all those things generate blood flow and will naturally raise your heartbeat to be something like you're dancing or moving around a lot more. So it's one of the things you want to sort of look at, the correspondence between having. Beats per minute and your heart rate and trying to match those. So keep that in mind when you're trying to get that emotive.

So if you're trying to be calm, maybe you do something real slow, real somber. Okay. So that's one thing I'll answer to that as far as being emotive. There's a second point to that, but by all means, before we move on to the second point, tell us what's up.

No, no, disagreeing. I'm just agreeing with you. You know, there's nothing worse than doing like a really elegant like flower act and you've got like some rock music banging behind like there is definitely a mismatch i love the comment about getting the audience to get physically involved to uh ramp up their heart rate or energy level i'm reflecting on the show i was at last night we went to see miss behave who is from new zealand do you know this person or is this artist in your in your

ballpark at all i only know in vegas for 10 years now doing variety shows so from new zealand and a great show but they opened with a juggler who used jailhouse rock this he had a a nice uh stripe you know theme shirt with the song all the things were to the beat and he had everyone in the audience doing the clapping you know and i think this was a good example of how you starting the show you want the energy high you get a high energy song you match the theme of

the act through that music and that performance had that show rocking right out of the gate yeah amazing and i think so the energy is kind of important as well and there's this is going to be way too like i'll be very short when i say this because of my a musical background because as you guys know, I used to play in a band. So. Rocking the Christmas mug tonight, challenge. This is full of whiskey. Oh, yeah. It's Christmas edition. Once a week, we get the dishes done here.

Yeah. I'm on the Christmas mug. We all do believe that you are secretly Santa, by the way, Doug. There's a lot of smoke coming out of Santa's sleigh. What's happening? I think that Doug's having a jazzer. Okay. The last thing is for reasons. Yeah. The only other thing that I wanted to make mention is that some songs have performed in certain keys. And what that means is songs that are in a, like we have major keys, minor keys, or mixolydian.

There's a whole bunch of keys, but I'll keep it super simple to two things, okay? So a major key, it could be like any sort of key, A, B, C, D, all the notes in music, okay? Certain notes emote certain emotions, okay? Everyone knows that like one of the saddest keys is A minor, okay?

Not everyone knows that because I don't know that. okay well everyone who's listened to me know now knows that like most of that songs are in a minor okay almost every emo punk rock song is in c sharp minor just so you're aware almost every one of them okay so like each song has an emotion to it so if you're going to be constructing your own music in by either like doing it yourself through some sort of emd type setup like electronic music sort of thing just

keep that stuff in mind some songs will be in certain keys that will remote that as well as the beats per minute so it's those two things that i wanted to make mention to answer that question i hope some value i love that we're getting science here with theory like this is high level stuff yeah i like it and we have a lot of questions here so you know we'll try to answer most of this sort of aspects here for you guys or we'll

have a part two okay number two is the music enhancing the magic or is it fighting for attention doug have you seen this in any shows where it's like the music kind of taking the limelight away from maybe the magic.

In Vegas you know I've seen shows that rely too heavily like when you talk about using music on the street and such I've seen several performers that maybe wouldn't be good street performers if they couldn't crank their volume up so high and that maybe some I wouldn't say it's detrimental to the act but it's not very artistic or you know forward thinking to put on you know the final countdown per se you know before your show or during a performance something like that so,

i don't know about hindering it but maybe you know if used poorly yeah i guess maybe the question is like are people clapping away and singing the lyrics to the song that's playing and like getting distracted from the actual act you're doing like i don't feel like this is really a big question but it is in here and so it is yeah something to consider is the music you're using too good.

Well i'm reflecting now is norm nielsen i don't know that a lot of modern magicians even know who he is do you guys know norm nielsen are you talking about nielsen bottle norm nielsen yeah nielsen bottle norm nielsen you know what act he did no don't say like his act was completely music themed his zombie was a violin where the violin played itself he floated a piano that did a 360 while he was floating and playing it he had a miser's dream that had

a xylophone that he would drop the coins in it would do things like that so okay this is a classic act i would encourage anyone not familiar with norm nielsen to try and find some footage of this wonderful old school music style act using music with the magic complete well and i think you don't know who norm nielsen is damn we know who he is he makes bottles that vanish in bags we get it but.

What i'm getting it is that i have a feeling that's not what he wants to be remembered for i feel like he's putting out the wrong products like this all sounds freaking incredible and it's the first time i'm hearing it was one of the featured performers if you went to a magic convention you'd love to see norm nielsen on the bill for sure that'd have been amazing Oh, yeah, we're going back in eighties, nineties. He was a little older then. So, you know.

I guess before you were even born, he was on his way out. So, okay, no demerits this time, but you better freaking remember that Norm Nielsen did a music act. You got to know where you came from, know where you're going, kids. That's what's up. Listen to Daddy Doug. True story.

Well, I totally agree with that. And I think that if I may just speak on what you mentioned a moment ago about how music can compete for something, I think that when you're doing things to portray a message and emotion anything that gets in front of that or distorts that is a bad thing so if we're going to apply that to music in my opinion i think that and this is something that was apparent to me yesterday i saw a great act by the name of mr marmalade and he was performing away and

he had always low level ambient music there was probably just a little bit higher than it should have been, or he failed to microphone himself when he got on stage and thus when he was speaking it was competing so we had this very cool vibe that was setting the tone i could really set the tone of being this like cool cool jazzy kind of like you know just like this is a very nice chill place it felt like i was sitting in a cigar bar enjoying a scotch the music set the tone real nice,

but then he's trying to portray information to me using his words that are now competing, against the volume of the ambient music. So if you're going to be trying to portray a message or do something, you want to communicate that, whether it be through your body language or your words. If you're going to have music be an issue with that, keep that in mind. So that's something important to think about that will go on further as well with tech.

It's that every room and speaker and system you plug into is going to be different. Speakers will be positioned differently. Always test your music volumes because that can happen, right? Or if you don't communicate properly with the tech, what can happen is they'll recognize the music slow and they'll artificially crank it up for you thinking they're helping. And all of a sudden... Your volume speaking is the same as the music and it's, and it's terrible.

And likewise, the other way can happen where a song is really loud because it's like the big pump up moment. And then they bring it down because they think, oh, it's too loud for everyone to like for him to speak or whatever. So volume is like such a crucial part in it. And one of the texts we'll go through, like the remote that I have on me when I'm doing my show does allow me to adjust my volume for when things like that happen too.

You know, even when you've controlled the volume and tested it and things like that, stuff can still happen. When people are in a room sucking up their sound, it also is so different to when you're rehearsing to an empty room before it. So these are just little things to be prepared about. Question number five. If no one has any other notes for that. I mean, we could talk about this all day, but here we go. We're gonna.

Wait i have a question what do you use to adjust your volume during the show or is that we getting there no i thought we'd get there eventually 100 we'll get there i mean we can get there now if we want to i mean i mean yeah let's get there we're there we're there already hell yeah all right let me just see yeah all right so the question that i was going to bring up was how will i cue the music will it be manual remotely or with a tech because it's one thing to

say i'm going to put music in my show, but you've got to actually do it. So there, you know, we'll touch on the different methods that you could approach doing it. The easiest one being, well, I'll just talk about what I use. I think we all, do you use an audio ape as well, Nick, before I go into that? I don't. So we all have a different, yeah, great, great.

I've used different stuff in the past, but I got to the point where I was just so fed up with either tech not being reliable enough or- 100%.

Text kind of screwing up things i when i when i am doing a larger scale stuff and actually doing that sort of thing i do tech runs with the tech and i'll go over the way i do it which i've mentioned in on previous episodes but as far as using like audio apps and stuff there's all these different ones there's like the go button which is a very popular one yeah so maybe i'll just run through like just the stuff i use for my show and then nick run us through how you use

it because it's going to be good like different approaches for different people right yeah so yeah so i i've talked about many times, but since it's in the music episode, so I'm using the AudioApe. So the version I have, it comes in, what's cool is you buy it and it comes in its own little case.

And when you get that case and you open it up, you've got all the stuff in there. So this is what you. Needed to be plugged into an iPhone. But I believe the version that's just come out now is a full sustained unit that's all within itself. So I think it has a memory card that goes into your computer.

You put all the music on it that you want, put it into this system, back into the little AudioApe system, and that lets you cue and switch things and you build it within that, I think I should look into that more, but currently the one I have, you get this unit. So basically like, and it's not even the unit that's queuing the music. I'm using what Nick just brought up an app called go button. So it's in the top left-hand corner of my little old iPhone six or whatever this is.

And there's a little app here, go button. Oh no, it's over here.

Anyway and in here lets you have different shows so i have in here my corporate show i have a copy which is just a different length show i did a corporate show in makai so i just i made a custom show and i just called it that but this app is separate to audio wave so you can actually just buy this app on your iphone and you can cue music on here like if your phone is sitting on the lectern or on your table on stage and they've plugged a jack into your phone.

Or i guess bluetooth it to a speaker if you're doing a smaller show somewhere and you're happy to just walk up and press these button this this giant q button that runs the next track you can do all of this with no extra tech and just do it from your phone i know some people will set a delay on each action. So rather than just hitting go and the next thing playing, you can have it hit go and then it'll wait 10 seconds.

So you can hit go and then you've got enough time to get to your prop, get ready to start the thing, and then it starts. All of this stuff is very possible. So for me, Go Button has been super helpful. But in saying that my music is pretty basic throughout my shows, there are certain moments that I particularly hit it for effect. But you know, the most important thing is my show could be done without any music if I had to.

And sometimes every now and then you just can't predict what will happen or not be supplied and you do end up doing that. But Go Button has been amazing.

So Go Button is what I plug into this actual remote unit and with audio ape it's essentially a remote control so you plug in your little transmitter that gets that gets plugged into with a with a cable that gets plugged into a power bank so it's self-powering and then into your phone a little light shows up saying that everything is connected and then you've got your little remote here and essentially all of this is just so that when you press this button boom it activates

the next cue on your go button, and go button is is its own fun thing you should get it and just play with it but essentially like you you put in your music tracks and you tell it what you want it to do like when you hit the next. Button do you want it to play the next song or do you want it to fade out the previous song and then wait five seconds and then ease in the next song.

Or like when I finish my show and the big, you know, thank you music comes on, the big boom, loud music, my activation button, when I press it, it drops the volume down to 10%. So the music's still going, but I can now talk over it and thank everyone for coming. My name's Josh Nubito. And then I hit it again and it brings the volume back up to 100% and then I run off. These little touches are super helpful and it's all,

in the palm of your hands with this. So the last thing- To be clear, you devote a separate older phone for this purpose, right? Yes, you don't have to. And I do have go button on my actual everyday phone for when I don't have this with me. And I think it's a, like, so I do have it in both, but yes, I have an old phone because we all have old phones and we don't know what to do with them. So I dedicated this one to being my show music phone.

And it's a smaller one so it's super easy to to travel with and it's not connected to internet or bluetooth or anything like that so it's never getting updates and slowing down or like there's just nothing to mess it up other than just using it for this and the last thing i'll say is the remote that this comes with it has a big button which is just what allows you to hit the next queue.

It also has a volume button so i will on my phone and the volume is connected to the volume on your phone so if i was to go up or down it would change the volume on my phone so a little tip is i keep the volume two bars down from full so that when i set the volume with the tech i still have two bars of control on here if i need to pump it up i can i can go up in volume, or most importantly if my little ambient background tracks are too loud I can bring it down myself and if you hold down

this big button it'll just pause the music so it won't hit the next cue or change it or anything like that it will just pause where you're at which can be very helpful as well and then there are you can set up these forward and backward buttons to do different things I don't rely on these. Like if I miss a cue, I just...

Tough titties and I just, and I make up for it. I don't try to go backwards because then for me, it can get a bit messy, but the, yeah, the remote, I personally sit it on my inner jacket pocket in my suit so that as I'm just reaching it, I can press the button as I go in and grab out the next prop I'm using. Some people put it on their belt, in their pocket. You can like put it in your pocket and put like a, an extra bead on top of the button. So it's easy to feel where it is in your pocket.

All up, I think this AudioApe cost $1,000 Australian, which is probably like $600 or $700 US. I think their new unit is around $1,000 American maybe, but this is so good, the range you can use from so far away. However, sometimes there will just be interference like on cruise ships that make it need to be a little bit closer to you when you're firing it.

So like the big thing with this in the day, when it came out was like, you can have this plugged in all the way back at the, at the tech desk, a cruise ship or whatever. And it can't, but every now and then interference will get in the way. And then it doesn't work. I went to India thinking that at the back of this room of 500 people, I could have my little audio apes set up at the tech desk. And it just wouldn't, it wouldn't fire. So they actually went and got this giant.

It was so funny. They looked at the unit. They were like, oh yeah, I know what that is. And instead of this little antenna, they brought back one that was like this big. And then it worked. But the tip is, even though it has a big range, you always want to have it in your show rider. You always want to make sure that they set up an auxiliary input on the stage so that you're always within direct physical range of the unit. And so with this, you can go anywhere.

Personally, I like to be able to cue it myself just to not rely on anyone. Um, and yeah, for me, this is, this is amazing. I get people coming up to me after the show going, who was doing your music like and queuing it so quickly. I'm like, I did it myself. And so not that that should be your goal for people to compliment your music queuing, but for a one man band, it served me well. Yeah. For that level of production value. That's a great idea,

man. There's a question here from Tim Askin, who's asking, does the button have a timer? So in what aspect do you mean does it have a timer? Like you can set a timer for when the next cue goes off, for sure. Like you can have, it's called pre-wait. So it has a pre-wait option. So you can program it to when you hit the button, it'll wait whatever amount of time, and then it will hit the next track. Or you can have a track.

Yeah, 100%. Or fade. You can have a track that's constantly looping, but you can cue it to play another track on top of it after a certain amount of time. So then you have two things going. You can make it not affect one looping track while it plays other things. So for example, you might have a background track but you also have like a whip cracking sound go off or some kind of gag sound. You can have both of them run at once. With this little... Yeah.

Another question from Dragotier. do you do this in your normal show or do you use music in your special events yeah so i all corporate shows i use the music it personally i guess it helps gets people attention it feels like there's a bit more production but in my theater of magic shows we use zero music for that we just keep it old school drawing room style magic just we just command the room with our voice no music we don't rely on tech there but yeah every corporate show,

like i've got my own music planned in here for when i run on like run on music so run on music run off music. My background sounds, the sounds for when I'm going into the audience to find people. So there's always something happening, whether I'm doing magic or there's music playing because I'm going in the audience to find someone or whatever.

And often if I'm emceeing an event, it's so helpful because I'll cue this up so that I can have my own run on music for introducing the CEO or for background music to just fade in once I've finished my formal welcome. And they're going to serve entrees. Like if the AV hasn't planned to play music or whatever, I can just hit this thing and there's like an hour-long electric jazz, like background music thing that I can play at any time. So even for emceeing, it can be helpful too.

Gehan is asking, where do you find the music with regards to the royalty-free? Does it need to be royalty-free if you're doing it in a show? No, corporate shows.

You can be mainstream as you want. uh but i think it brings sorry to cut that up i'll just give you more context melbourne magic festival is coming up a lot of the magicians in town are preparing for that and we have to do a lot of paperwork in preparation for that you know just it's just the way the way things are done in oz but ultimately using royalty royalty free stuff is a way of combat in that the only one that i'm sort of aware of would be something like

epidemic sound i believe that gives you privilege in public space but uh i think so yeah epidemic sounds envato and there's another one called art list as well these are all royalty-free sites i use a service called story blocks that's another one it's kind of an all-inclusive yeah it's got video elements along with audio that's royalty-free.

Storyblocks is great. I've been using it forever for B-roll footage, and I've only just recently switched to Envato because it's cheaper and it seems to have everything I need and sound effects for sound design editing as well. But look, yeah, if anyone has any other questions about AudioApe, please message me or put it in the Discord or email me, send in a speakpipe, whatever you like.

I feel like I've covered most things about it. I know I've gone on a lot, but I feel like this might be a bit people come back to in regards to this style of thing. Now, you don't have to spend $1,000, right? You can, which Nick will go into, have the music with you, have the tech there who's going to be there anyway and instruct them how to use it.

When I stage-handed for Raymond Crow, he did a corporate gig in Australia and his show, as you know, is very music heavy because he's a very visual act and he just had an iPad and he plugged it in and he taught the AV guys when to hit the next cue and what to press if something goes wrong. And, you know, he spent like half an hour sort of choreographing the show with the tech. And I've seen, so I've seen that live in person. I've seen that work really well.

So yeah, I'm keen to hear what Nick does, how he operates it, if he uses it, how much you might use music. Do you always use music? This is the stuff that people want to know. Well, here's the thing. It's very scalable. So if I'm doing something, like if I'm doing a run of shows at a festival, I like to go all out and I get something which is from the same family as the go button, but it's called QLab.

And QLab is like the really high end stuff. It's quite expensive to have in a sense to purchase and own, or you can just license it for like the month that you want to use it. You know, so you can just have pay for that privilege, do your run of shows, put it aside for a few months. So because of that scalability, I enjoy that, having that really wonderful entity. QLab is something you want to use if you're going to be using a mixture of visual stuff on screen and music.

So that's the upper, upper end. The middle ground, I think Josh has covered perfectly. And then there's the laurel end, which I'll share with you guys now. So between Go Button and AudioApe, it's a great place to be. When I was doing street shows, I used to use this thing called Control Freak. Freak spelt like frequency. And it was just a remote that I plugged into the bottom of my phone. Which then I was able to use it as a remote.

And I would just queue up some tracks to help build my audience. And I would do a couple of funny cues where I would have audience members dance real sexy as they helped out on stage. I'm like, I need a beautiful assistant. And then you get some Ebisec guy to do something sexy as they place the ball down on top of the cup from my cup and ball, Zach, or something like that.

You know so remotes of that nature they're great they're a physical entity plug them in and they work great if you do want something that you can sort of jazz with there was a product that i use called soundboard it's just a literal soundboard in which you use all the keys of your keyboard like it's represented on your mac okay and you just drop soundtracks into it and you can edit the tracks in there to start at a certain point and so if you're doing a type of variety show

that's really handy because you can just like push like number one like act number one number two number three number four as they walk on walk off music and stuff and then you hit like enter to fade and enter to so there's all these ways you can use that and that's that's really simple really handy what i also loved about it is that like in on on z i would always and i would have do this as well i i program a a record scratch like you know like and that's

really handy because sometimes you just want the track to end and so when i would have people tech for me i would go just press one two three four as i bring people on and off and then i would say when i point up. Turn the volume up if i do this turn the volume down but keep your eyes on me all the time and if i do this and i put my hand across my neck like cut the head off this means kill the tracks so When I do this, a wizardry.

So when I do this, that means hit the record scratch button, which just kills the track. And so this is a really fun thing. So when you get on stage, just do this and the track ends, like with the record scratch, gets a laugh and it's just a nice way to sort of make it again. If you can't hide it, highlight it. So soundboard is great. And the last thing I'll mention is if you are going to try and achieve QLab level stuff with audio cues and so forth, I use Keynote.

Or if you're a non-Mac user, you can just use PowerPoint.

Because you can do all your audio cues from there what's also really great about that is that when you go into show mode there is a spot underneath what people see on screen and what you can actually see on your screen and so you can have your script for for whatever your presentation is going to be in that right that's the way it's engineered i don't use it in that way what i do instead of putting a script in there, I put notes for the tech.

And so the tech is totally aware of when he needs to press the button. So they can have a look at that and say, when the, when I say this, go to the next slide. When I say this, so you can actually use that. So using Keynote is a really good thing to do.

And what's great about it is that if you do have screens on stage, you can actually have them plug the hdmi cable out of your computer which can then put up your company logo meaning like nick k professional mind blower you can have it be taken down so when they go the next slide that slide then fades out and just goes to a black screen so it's not distracting anybody.

And so there's all these ways you can use that just using that and it's the cheapest most effective way and i think that you can also do the do the music with keynote you can include the audio files in there and just play those and say a black screen if you wanted per se correct correct.

Yeah like i feel like i get to work on that and the video element integration is strong yeah so i do that because and the reason i do that is this when there is a conference, But keynotes and PowerPoints guarantee you it's the one thing that if a professional tech or at least an experienced tech has dealt with more than they've dealt with anything. Because I guarantee you, oh, I do 50 of these a year. And I'm like, I bet you do. But here's QLab. What's that?

Oh, right. But if I just wanted to use something that they were going to be familiar with, not be freaked out about.

And if they freak out you just go back a couple of steps on the arrows of your keyboard and then go back into it everything's going to be fine and they go oh thank goodness and i kind of put holding slides in between things they can't really muff it up and i just have everything they need there and i think that that should work just fine yeah and remotes super easy as well remotes for powerpoint presentations crazy easy so you know they always have a clicker

there as well like for a conference that you can use at a pinch and and q lab to give an exam a real world example of everyone who's never heard of q lab that first the height the highest high-tech version that's what all theater shows generally run all their lighting and sound and music design from so the showman production that i'm in like the illusionist for example the illusionist touring live show will program the whole show all the cues and hits and everything within

q lab and they'll have a tech that that's their single job because it'll have notes on when to hit the next cue and everything like that and so that's like super.

High it's like the equivalent of like what video editing software should you use if you're making a movie it's like if you're running a big theater show people use q labs and you can also use it for the single use stuff as well but like that's like the technology we're talking about so if you're ever like planning a theater show and you're like how do you.

Coalesce everything together so people know when to hit the lights and hit the music and hit the it's something i was at bizarro's escape room and he's got like the q lab megaverse in there he's queuing sound video elements special effects he's got these circuit boards in the wall and multiple ones of them for multiple escape rooms getting the behind the scenes look at what he's doing with this technology in the space was mind-blowing.

Yeah, that Q-Lab is intense. There's another question here from Dragotier. It says, do you have a dedicated tech, or do you just use whoever's provided at the venue? I think both are good ideas if you have a tech guy, like that's pretty fun. If there's a lot of stuff going on, I will, I mean, I can only add that I'll bring my own dedicated video guy. If it's within Brisbane, like I'll get them to hire my videographer for like camera to magic stuff.

I've done that many times. So that way he gets, first of all, so you're getting him work. Number two, he's going to record your shit. So he'll give you a copy of your act that he's filming anyway, and then you've already sorted it for the conference. So when possible, I'll put him forward for doing the live to screen. Yeah. Yeah. I'll second that. I think that having a dedicated tech is really important if you're going to be doing a run of shows, something like a fringe festival.

That's probably really handy to have someone who knows your show back to front and they have some sort of investment that they really want the show to run well and hit every cue and, play every audio cue and so forth i've done a lot of you know i've been in audio visual game for a thousand years so i've teched a lot of my friends shows during magic fest which is a pain but you know when you bring those expertise it actually adds a lot

of production value but yeah like doing it on your own yeah i'm sure we can talk about stories when it went wrong like I remember at the assembly just passed, we had that amazing gala show at the end and there was one of the performers had some issues with their remote, you know, just like overstepping on the, on the queues. Another example of being in a small room with lots of tech around it can interfere with the remote, 100%.

Again, because it wasn't plugged in on the stage, it was plugged in at the sound desk and you're relying on that distance not getting in the way. I will make mention, there's legalities now, I can only speak on behalf of what I know in Australia, but there was an agreement eventually. So I want you to imagine that there is like a spectrum, a straight line, like going across the screen right now. And there is like, this is like the frequencies that everything can operate at just out of control.

Everything can go nuts. That's what it was like for the longest time. And then there was a legality that was put in place some years ago. And what happened then is they said, okay, this is the spectrum between like, I'm just going to use very basic numbers. So we understand between one and a hundred, there's a straight line. We're going to dedicate numbers from now on. And they went, okay, cool. Okay. All right. Well, one to 20 can be radios for people who are chatting in the thing for security.

And then we're going to go from like 20 to 50. That's going to be all of the audio stuff. And then the frequency after that is going to be all the video stuff. So let's not step in each other's toes anymore. That was really important. But I tell you what, man, anyone who's ever used Pro Mystique stuff before this time, oh my God, your stuff would go nuts.

Like your your stuff would just be vibrating like out of control from like microphones and this and that when you're doing a festival and with other people using pro mystique stuff forget about it man out of control the newer stuff now since all these legalities are coming place you don't really have those issues anymore in fact they've actually made it a legality where you can't use certain devices because they don't operate within the bracketed frequencies allowed to them anymore

So those sort of things now are less of a problem if you stick to very new technology.

And I only want to bring that up in case anyone's inspired to go out there and buy a headset microphone that is. 23 years old i would avoid that and adonis says that he thinks the usa has some requirements i imagine it's been done sort of globally at this scale but i can only speak of my own knowledge so you'll be okay yeah i think if i think if you're buying new gear from an actual av place you'll be fine like don't go to ebay and buy like a you know 1995 headset it's really cheap

and brand new because the guy who uses an iphone 6 yeah well said yeah i've got a spare one if you want to buy an iphone from me actually i've been in the market for that exact reason i've been looking for a cheap burner to use for music so but the shipping would kill me it's probably cheaper just to buy one on ebay yeah i think so i think so look one of the questions in here and it's something else to consider is what happens if your music fails do you have a backup so the

show can still go on because i have definitely had moments where everything on my end is working and just for whatever reason they can't get the music to to pump out on their end or i go on stage and they've rearranged stuff and now it's not working okay so that's a technical issue not an operational you in a sense that like our gear has failed. That's right. Yeah. And so sometimes you can't plan for it. Like you can do everything in your power.

And like the large, the biggest example I can give is I'm watching the illusionists 2.0, right? Like these guys are Marvel characters. This is in stone. Adam Trent is on stage. It's a matinee show. So no one else other than me in the world remembers this, but he's doing his, he's doing his like video to life act where he is interacting with the giant screens behind him. Like there's multiple versions of him popping up on the screen.

There's like a New York city on the screen and he's like skateboarding through it. And the, the video is moving. So it makes it look like he's skating and stuff. And his premise of all of this is like, when you think of the future of magic, this is what I envision. And then it goes all tech. Well, one day those screens stayed dead black off and the music came on and he's like, and if you were to think of the future of magic, this is what I think.

Nothing happened. And it's like, what do you do in that moment?

You can't, you can't be like to a room of 2000 people. Oh, sorry, guys. My screen didn't turn on.

Everyone just hang for a sec like you got to do something right so he and he told me afterwards that was the first time that ever happened and i think louis de martos who's in the show too was like this is a great lesson because like what will you do next time to make a great act out of your screen not coming on but he basically did a manipulation act for two minutes, with the black background behind him so he did a couple of layers of manipulation

act an appearing cane and then he did the ending of jump like teleporting from one side of the screen to the other with a big gap in the middle but like you couldn't see the digital version of him jumping through the screen and all that so.

It was a bit of a weird act for people watching. But the question to ask is like, yes, set up music in your show, but you need to have a version of your show or an out, like if the music doesn't play or isn't able to play, or the song you have is too loud and their speakers actually cut the track. And like, what's the word you say? It's like spiking it and not allowing the track to play fully because it's...

Gain. Yeah, the gain is too loud. So it's like artificially cutting those high pitches and it can, it can mess you up. So is that a factor in your show, Nick? Like, are you like, look, I used to, I'll do this. Yeah. Well, I used to be very tech heavy, but I keep it so minimal now just because I'm just so tired of people screwing it up. And I've told them like, even with the lights, I'm like, keep the lights open and white.

I'm like, I'm going to throw a little bit. I'm like, don't my Rubik's cube. You throw some red, my yellow turns to orange. Don't do that.

Okay. like just no i've dealt with guys i just want to bring out a bit of color in your cheeks i'm like what did i say what did i say like i've been doing like i was just i was like so i was like no like you need to listen to me when i tell you things okay like i know you're great at your job but this is not about making you look good this is about me doing my act good so yeah what i will say is that things that are beyond the tech is on them okay you

can only be responsible what you're responsible for. Now, when we're talking about like queuing things remotely, for example, this is the only thing you could be responsible for. If you have, let's say you got an iPad that's queuing your tracks, you can do it physically on the iPad or on your laptop or on that device like this, but you're using a remote.

My advice, if you want to back up, is that if the remote's not working, right, tell the tech, if this isn't working, I'll just say, tech, would you mind just hitting the next track, please? And that would be your backup. Okay? Even if you have someone, a tech that's going to be able to help you, like if it fails, tech, sorry, this is giving me some issues. Just click the next one. Thank you kindly. And just move on. Don't put a neon sign around it.

Right? Don't make it a highlight of the show. Oh, everything went wrong. No, no, no. Just click the thing for me, bud.

Thank you. and just move on next slide please like that's the that's what i say you know because that's normal normal language next slide please and then it just moves on you know i think it's really helpful the episode we talked about the having a lanyard for your handheld microphone this actually happened to me two weeks ago where i always ask for a wireless headset mic you know a thin flesh colored headset mic to do the show but i said to the tech i need a handheld mic as well.

One, because I beatbox in the show, but also if something happens to my headset and it's not working through the show for whatever reason, and I showed him, I'm like, I had this little lanyard that I can hook it onto and I can do the show with. And he's like, oh, that's genius. Anyway, it freaking happened. The little connection point of the headset to the battery pack was loose. And I'm doing the show and it keeps making these pop sounds.

Well, this tech guy was just like so ahead of it. He like saw it was happening. He came to the side of the stage, grabbed the handheld, grabbed the lanyard, put it on for me and just like subtly came up to the side and it was great. So while I hit the queue for like people to come on stage, I just took off the headset, put this lanyard around me and we kept going. Like that little communication with the tech and like him taking some initiative was beautiful.

Like Nick said we didn't make any attention to it we just kept going it was great man there's sick footage out there of like guitarists just like shredding on stage and all of a sudden a string just busts off and then he'll just take it off and keep singing hand it off to the tech tech gives him another one he puts the other thing back on just keeps playing I'm like that's what I'm talking about the show must go on how good's that Tim also said uh you

could just beatbox in the show is not a bad idea i have thought about like my ideal show would be me doing all of the sound for when like people are coming on stage coming off stage like little bits like that it's like and and making a loop station where i can actually build up the track that's going to then play for the show it is definitely in my sort of dream box of like things to play with but yeah i like it yeah

yeah so like yeah you can definitely when I'm emceeing I beatbox all the freaking time because like it's just funny to improv the music for people to come on stage or to like open an award or whatever I recommend it learn beatboxing. Sweet. Yeah. Another question was, so we, we did, someone did bring up the copyright licensing situation. So always check on that. Theaters also like, there's like a license that I'm not remembering, but there's like a general license where you have to like,

actually log the music you're going to use. And there'll be like a fee that you pay. It'll pop up to say like, this will let you use it.

APRA or something like that. Okay. Yeah. And And look, last question is, is the music helping me connect with the audience or is it pushing them away emotionally? And I guess that means like, is the music actually enhancing the act or are you just having music for the sake of having music? I know a lot of acts that have done that music for the sake of music. And I'm like, why? Why? Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

Yeah. I've, you know, I've had some performers just like, I want it to be like a game show. I want it to be like a bar and i'm just like not for this like it's if you're gonna do that then stick to the whole thing have the whole thing be don't be like it's gonna be like a game show but i want to think of your dead parent like no don't do that in your mental show you know like it game shows are fun there's a possibility of winning stuff that's what you should stick to you know so.

Enhancing yes like there's an amazing ability to be able to listen to a song and like go to a whole different place and that is the best you know what i mean there's ability to like listen to a song and it changes your entire mood for the day that's the beauty of music it's amazing there is a joe rogan podcast that just was posted recently with bono and i had to have a listen to it, it's three hours right but there is some absolute gold with regards to what

happens with music and how it's emotive and how it can influence people and he spoke about one moment in particular about this track that they released which is kind of okay but they performed it on jimmy fallon and it's like 20 times better being live than it is like recorded. Just because of the way it crescendos and it builds up. And it's like, that's what music can do. And if you can implement the same notion into your act, oh, do it.

Yeah, when we had Eric Leclerc and Alex Boyer on a few episodes ago, they were talking about their buddy Wes, Wes Barker. Never uses music, wants to be a pure stand-up style. And then they convinced him to at least have an ending high-tempo track when he slams the suit, escape jacket. Yeah, thank you. Straight jacket onto the floor. At least have a song to like, boom, to show that that's the finale.

And even Wes agreed, for someone who never uses music, at least having a big high energy ending track was so helpful and amazing with just like signifying it's the end, giving the audience the moment to applaud and like end the show properly. So like if I was to say the skeleton of music to consider if you are wanting to have music.

Like if you're a corporate magician and you want to add a bit of production, I would say like have a song for when you run onto the stage, have one for when you run off the stage. Have a track for when the dead time is happening. People coming up and when people are leaving. And if you can feel that, like at the very least, you're golden, baby. Like, yes, you can have background tracks and stuff, but like if you at least have that, it'll up your show perception by like 10% straight away.

Yeah. And even having that little background track where something weird happens, like if you do, like let's say you do like one of those false, like oh this is your card no called scratch and dead silence yeah like from the pa those little moments accentuate it again it's like it doesn't have to be there everywhere but if there is a moment it's going to exist find it and do it correctly for god's sake don't just do it for the sake of doing it yeah so one bit i'll give away is

i will use the who wants to be a millionaire music that dun dun dun can i dun dun dun dun dude i did that i did that in one of my shows but i was doing a blindfold routine a la lenit green style setup right like just i love this idea of like shuffling all the deck and finding the suits you know but i just did different reveals where then wrapped my my head up and then i made everything dark the whole room was black like normally the room's lit up so i could see faces but

this one part of the show pitch black just the spotlight on me that is it because i wanted everyone to feel like the darkness that i'm experiencing so that's one little moment there and the tension of that and then blindfold you know and then record scratch and be like let's level it up duct tape around the face do a couple more and then like level it up foil around the head back into the darkness of the dun dun dun who wants to be the whole thing and.

Yeah that's heavy, it's heavy and you don't have to again you don't have to do it but yeah any like tracks that will trigger memories for people like of shows they would watch or you know things like that so, that's so great when i use that track it's like at a moment where the audience has to make like one person has to make a big decision on like something happening and that music comes on and people like oh that's funny because that's like who wants to be a millionaire great look

i hope this helped you guys adding music to your show don't make it you know like yes it's a lot to take in but it's really not that daunting just find some music that like suits the flow of your character have a run on track run off track audience coming up audience leaving it'll just feel so much it's fun to do as well and the good thing about those just having those bits in your show is if your stuff doesn't work the whole show works anyway it just you don't have those little.

Accentuating points doug how are you doing there man i know it's a lot to listen to us talk about and it's good man i've grown as a artist today i know more than i did earlier and i'm i'd say about 12 percent more prepared to add music to my show hell yeah eventually we'll get i did reach out to audio wipe to see if they would come on but it was like so short notice that they probably haven't even seen the message but you should send me a unit a test drive tell

him that when we talk to him dung con needs a test driver we don't start these podcasts for nothing we want we want some benefits here you need some uh some deals some deals some collabs collab with audio would be sweet because i sure want one of those things but do you do you think trick supply would ever stock stuff of that nature like tech kind of stuff as well as magic or is that not really i can see that happening for sure absolutely yep yeah there is there is one more that's really

good that actually i think they were trying to actually integrate some ai so that you can actually cue the tracks via your voice i tried i played with it for a short while it's called one man show it's by the same it's by the same guys that make the duality app which is an amazing app if.

You haven't looked it up like by all means scope it out uh cobra magic i think they're called cobra magic yeah so that's a little something to think about guys yeah that's cool but we again we could talk about production to the cows come home and and the cows have come home so let's go milk them that's where this comes from without without strong hands that is a cold bag gag.

See ya thanks for listening it's time for us to disappear now disappear now but we'll see you again on the next episode of the magic guys.