iDeck by Noel Qualter

Take a deck of cards, throw in music, wrap it in an iPod theme and you've got a great little effect! Noel Qualter's "iDeck" is a wonderful trick that seems impossible but is so simple you can concentrate on the routine rather than some difficult moves.

In essence, you show a card box that looks like an old iPod. The cards inside all have various songs on them from different artists. The spectator chooses a song-card and keeps that song in mind. The cards are placed back in the box and a set of headphones is brought out. After a little magical attachment to the box, the thought of song begins to play through the headphones! The best part? You can repeat the trick with a different song instantly!

This effect might seem a lot like Adam Grace's "Ringtone" trick, and it does have some similarities in method, but this one seems a little more relaxed and the margin for error is practically zero. Between the two, this is the one I prefer and perform more often. It is almost angle-proof and allows the card magician to step up his routine to something slightly different. You could go the mentalism route with this, I suppose, but it's not necessary. This isn't meant to be a heavy "Criss Angel Space Man" routine; it should be fun.

The DVD that accompanies this really goes into a lot of detail in set up and handling. There's nothing hard to do in performing this, and you can have the whole thing ready to go about 10 minutes after watching the DVD. Noel also offers some great suggestions on how to make this trick truly spontaneous to the audience you are performing for by putting all of the songs in the playlist on your iPod so you can take five minutes in the bathroom and change it all up. The list of songs is very diverse and you're pretty much guaranteed to find at least a couple for everyone you encounter. You just need to pick your audience member with your song choices in mind.

Noel also includes his "Cut and Restored iPod Headphone" routine (and the materials necessary for it). It's a cute little effect that you can do to really shock someone if you see them holding their own iPod.

The only down side to this effect is that it's rather pricey. That will keep some folks away from this one.