Here's a creative challenge for anyone interested.

Suppose I want to create a mentalism effect that combines mentalism with being able to play a bit of music -- I'm not a brilliant musician, but I can play a few nice guitar tunes. The only 'plot' that I can think of is the obvious one: bunch of famous tunes written on billets, spec makes a 'free choice', I read her mind and can start playing her tune on the guitar. Or, same thing more directly, 'spec thinks of tune and I play it'.

This is ok, but being able to play the tune is just another form of reveal, slightly more interesting than 'and here's the name of your tune written on my scribble pad'.

I'm wondering if there's any other plot, any other path, which would allow me to combine mentalism with being able to play a bit of guitar, and not just use it as a reveal. Any ideas?

Ian, does it matter what the tune is?

Not really.

1. Music Influence :

While the performer plays his guitar, the participant become relax and visualize a landscape with different characteristics.
After the participant´s visualization, the performer takes an envelope that shows a landscapes with all the different things that the participant saw in his mind.

2. Note vibration:
Because every natural note (C-D-E..., without alteration) is related to a chakra, a participant focus on an recent life situation, and with that arrives to a specific note. The performer can play that note on his guitar (or play that note on a record), and for those who cant recognize notes, he has it written on the back of his guitar.

A few ideas




Best

Start off by saying that most people get existing songs stuck in their head but you get melodies that haven't been written yet. Play a haunting and brief melody a few times throughout your show stating that you don't know why you can't get this tune out of your head. At some point after you've played this melody a couple of times force a word which consists of letters A-G, like FACE or FEED or DEAF. As you focus on the spectator you return to this haunting melody which consist of those notes. You then write the melody on a staff which has been prewritten on a whiteboard. (So as not to give the game away too early the staff should be written on the backside of the whiteboard and then turned around at the appropriate time.)

Eventually you figure out what has happened and write the letter of the note underneath each note on the staff revealing their word.

This sort of moves it from a reveal to a spookier auditory prediction.

To make things more acoustically interesting, instead of individual notes you could arpeggiate the chords with these letters offering a greater chance at hitting on something more interesting. Like F to Am to C to Em would sound pretty good.

Amira: Music influence. Very good! I like this. I see some potential here. Thank you.

Steven: Some nice ideas to explore there. I especially like the opening patter theme: some get tunes stuck in their head, I get tunes that are GOING to be stuck in someone's head. Nice twist. For me personally, in practical terms, it would have to be a self-contained routine, start-middle-end, not something that runs through a show. But yes, this idea has a lot of merit. Thank you.

According to a lot of sf stories music is the universal language - with that concept, you could communicate all sorts of things besides reveals - you can do mental journeys - thought implantation - enhance cognitive abilities - manipulate cosmic harmonic forces and so on. I often use music as a creative exercise for imagination engagement.

Hi Ian,

I'm not sure if this is possible (methodologically), but how about the idea that some tunes are part of our "collective unconsciousness." Ask four volunteers to join you on stage. There are a stack of cards with a single digit number on each, a line of hand held bells with corresponding numbers, and a stand on which individual cards can be placed in a row. Have the volunteers separate the cards into two piles of "sound" and "no sound" (or some such terms) and keep the "sound" pile in sequence. When finished, the "sound"' cards are lined up in order on the stand and the bells are played according to the sequence. The sequence produces a very well known song (e.g., Mary Had A Little Lamb) demonstrating the original proposition of a collective unconsciousness for some tunes.

Regards, Steve

See what interesting words you can spell using EADGBE, and you play your prediction...

and/or then force something suitable with lexicon cards...or maybe force a rock band badge from a group of objects and play the chords BADGE too...

Different tonic notes interfere with brain frequency subtly, playing this secret code(s) cause people to behaviour in interesting ways...

maybe mixed in with OTL...

Each note in the scale corresponds to a number from one to eight. Pointing that out to an audience can lead to some interesting reveals, I think. (I'm also reminded of the five notes used to communicate with the aliens in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind.")

Music is mathematics, hence both are universal languages of a sort.

Taking Iain's suggestion a bit further - forcing a passage out of a book which happens to match a song lyric or title. Reveal your prediction or thought reading to be a string of letters that don't make sense. Until, that is, you read them as musical notes and the tune you play matches the passage.

We kicked about an idea based on the Beatles downstairs too...
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......forum=82

Also you've got things like musical cues in movies - the Jaws is coming music, the Psycho slashing music, the Close Encounters tune...movie title forced and you pick up a tune.

Thinking along the lines of Greg Arce's 6 Degrees of Separation too - doing the above but making the link a bit more subtle.

Phantom artist but using sven'd photos of different artists and lots of ways to reveal that...

maybe your entire script could be different lines from different songs...

A Note Test... it's like a chair test but with musical notes.
Everybody gets to arrange themselves in a certain order and it turns out to be the music cue that you were playing as they came on stage
Bonus points if you can find a string of notes that makes a popular tune upside down as well as upside right for two possible reveals.

Musical Association
You know that game where you sing a song but then the next guy has to come in on a word from your song with a word from his (this is a real game BTW)
for example: Love, love me do, you know I -- Love, Love will keep us together think of me-- Babe, I got you babe, I got you etc. etc.

This could be a process to get you on the same wavelength, or an an explanation of how-- with a natural limit to vocabular (babe, love, hand, you, me, together, forever,don't, heart, etc.)
Or as an effect-- you predict where the chains of melody may take you.

d

"I'm a reasonable guitar player in my spare time but I discovered something interesting...if someone around me is deceiving me I can't play! Seriously - any time someone tells me a lie I play a bum note. I'll tell you how I discovered this (insert amusing story of your own devising) and then I'll show you it working (insert lie detector style routine)"

One of my funniest memories is music teacher at High School playing the theme from "The Sting" a la Les Dawson. It's naturally funny to hear a familiar tune then a bum note...this could play on that and develop humour from the lie detector theme too.

Also... you might want to have a look at Joshua Quinn's "Playback" prediction from his penguin lecture. I can't remember it's name off hand.

Musical chairs you play until a participant yells stop and when everyone sits down you've got the order on the back of the guitar...

Ian,

Check out Eric's demo video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDf-5SK9SA4

Best wishes,

Scott