Exploring the Origins and Initial Concept of the Segue Principle
Thus far in my journey into Mentalism, one of the biggest influences to how I go about developing my performance theory and execution is my love for music. Now, I can’t sing, play a musical instrument, or write sheet music to save my fucking life, but I am an avid and opinionated consumer of music; and since programming my mind to allow any and all sources of information to be a candidate in influencing the Mentalism I like sharing, music has been the number one source of how I can better shape my Magic to be in service to laymen.
As I said, I can’t sing or play an instrument; but as a consumer, if the odd bit of music theory is taught to me, or if I like how a particular song is structured or sounds, my mind will push me to consider how what I just learned about the industry and/or craft of music can be integrated to what I’m doing as a mentalist.One of the most impactful principles I ever got from the world of music came about after, for years, being in awe of moments in where one song ends and the listening experience smoothly transitions into the next song. In the past, I’ve been so fooled by this experience that I’ve often thought that what I was listening to was a longer song, or that the artist added a beat change half way through. Nope! It’s just that a number of artists I like listening to happen to include a really cool moment in which the transition from one song to another is so damn smooth that it puts many listeners and fans in total awe!
After sharing my awe of this musical experience with a musically-gifted friend of mine, he told me that this is a common technique that is often called a segue. It can also be called a cross-fade or beat-matching.
As a quick tangent, when my friend told me the other terms that musical segues are called, I silently chuckled to myself that Magic and Mentalism aren’t the only art forms in which artists call the same concept or principle by different names. As a quick example, the Piggybacking, Silent-Running, Springboard, and Conversion principles are essentially, with minor tweaks here and there, talking about the same method.
During this conversation with my friend, my mind decided to remind me of one of the highlights I remembered from Joshua Jay’s second At The Table Live lecture, in which he, briefly, talks about a concept that he calls Effect Layering. Without revealing Josh’s method and routine that he used to explain this concept, the way he went about teaching it is in how by performing a Stacked Deck routine, he was able to effortlessly move into an ultra-clean and hands-off handling of Cards Across. It’s also in this lecture, with his opening card effect, that I learned to implement the simple philosophy that if the aesthetic experience of an effect is magical and astonishing for a lay audience, then less practical and “impromptu” methods are worth it.
As Josh mentioned in his lecture, it’s highly likely that he isn’t the first magician to think of ways to allow the method of one phase in a routine to allow for the easy and flawless execution of the next phase; but, as far as I know, many modern Mentalism books and video downloads don’t mention this concept so I would like to do my best to shed some light on it. Now, I believe the way I think about this general idea is different from how Josh taught it years ago in his lecture, as the way I go about it is less about the method of one phase in a routine aiding the execution of the following phase. Rather, I see it in the way that musicians use it in their mixtapes and albums; in that the structure of one song allows for the smooth-less transition of a complimentary, but still unrelated, song in the track list. Put a bit more simply, the second song in a segue doesn’t need the first song to make sense. The second song in a segue could easily be just as engaging without it. But, it does make the overall experience for the audience a lot more memorable.
When integrating this style of thinking into my Mentalism, I saw it less as a phase in a routine aiding the next; and more about how the methodological structure of one routine allows for a completely different routine to be shared with the audience! I hope the following examples make this way of thinking click with my readers!
For those who bought the first PDF I put out for publication (no longer available), the opening effect I taught was a PIN Divination that allowed for the mentalist to secretly harvest the sun sign of the participant as well. At no point in the PIN routine did the mentalist have to talk about astrology-related jargon. This meant that from the audience’s perspective, the mentalist’s goal was to divine a PIN code. Unbeknownst to everyone else, the method allowed for the sun sign to be discovered, too; and depending on how a mentalist could decide to take advantage of such information, they could use that harvested information to SEGUE into a completely different routine (from the audience’s perspective). Technically, a different, unrelated method could be used to divine a sun sign, and I imagine it would still be amazing for the audience! However, with the use of segue routines, the same routine can be shared with less methodological baggage getting in the way. This allows for scripts and presentations to closely align with how mind-reading and psychic revelations would look if they were real! The core philosophy behind theoretical principles such as Effect Layering and segue routines is “think smarter, not harder.”
For those who bought my e-book Digital Mentalism Volume Two, you’ll know that I share two methods to perform a simple and classic prediction effect. However, this prediction effect allows me to covertly pre-show up to five people, without them even being aware that I’ll be divining the information I harvested from them later on when I’m doing a parlor show. For me, this is a lot cleaner, less suspicious, and a better aesthetic than pre-showing people with clipboards and page-long surveys.
Another fun segue routine, which I haven’t taught or talked about in my published works, is Bob Cassidy’s fantastic Name/Place routine. Think about this for a moment: the premise of Name/Place is that two thoughts are offered up, but only one will be divined by the master mind-reader. Decided by a spectator, one thought is destroyed and the intact Billet will be the one that the mentalist will attempt to divine. That is what is promised to the audience and that is the script we all use to justify the secret acquisition of information. However, based on the many versions of Name/Place that I’ve watched and read, many mentalists don’t. keep. this. fucking. promise!
Typically, after the mentalist has successfully divined the thought that was randomly nominated by a spectator, it is not uncommon for mentalists to say something like, “Great! Now that I’m all warmed up, I’ll now try to pick up on the thought that was destroyed! the one that only exists in the person’s mind!” When I’ve read and seen mentalists present Name/Place in this way, it felt “off” to me. As I’ve said, the premise the mentalist sets up with most Name/Place routines is that only one thought will be used to demonstrate their claim. This promise is almost always broken when the mentalist then pushes onto the audience that they will now divine the second!
In the way that I see things, the “routine” of Name/Place is to divine the thought randomly chosen by the spectator to not be destroyed. Once that thought has been divined by the mentalist, due to the premise being established of only working with one thought, to the audience the “routine” is over. It just so happens that the methodological structure of this routine allows for information to be stolen, which can then be used by the mentalist to perform a different routine at their leisure. So, what can be done with the information stolen during the completion of Bob’s fantastic Name/Place?
For one, I would suggest waiting for the audience to ask about the thought that was destroyed. Don’t jump immediately into divining the destroyed information ten seconds after divining the first one- that’s just bad theatre. Allow for the energy and excitement generated from powerfully divining the nominated thought marinate in the minds of the audience. The fact that you don’t “care” about divining the destroyed information will create a vacuum in which many laymen will practically beg to see you demonstrate more. If you choose to oblige, in the minds of laymen, I would bet money that they see this upcoming demonstration as a different routine than the one they saw.
Second, if you are certain that you’ll see the person who wrote on the “destroyed” Billet in another social context, and the information they nominated is something you can’t find on Facebook or Google, then that’s the “prop-less” routine you demonstrate to them the next time you see them.
Third, perform a completely different routine to the second participant, such as Kurotsuke or Q&A, and the information you harvested from Name/Place is sprinkled as secondary information alongside the routine (which is, again, not methodologically connected to the Name/Place).
In a nutshell, this is what my Segue Principle is and I hope that the direct examples I have given you provide enough information to adequately understand what I’m ranting on about. To me, it’s less about phase progression4 and more about intelligently planting seeds for future routines in the soil of your opening effects and demonstrations. Below are some of my favorite segues found in music:
Diddy’s Bosses in Love flawlessly segues into Mind Your Business on his The Love Album.
Tyler, The Creator’s Rah Tah Tah flawlessly segues into Noid on his Chromakopia album.
Also, in the social media space a popular trend that many influencers have hopped on is finding two unrelated songs, let’s say one song from Maroon Five and one from Metallica, and discovering that one one allows for a perfect segue into the other. The reactions that influencers and their audience get from knowing these unrelated songs have a segue with each other is akin to the grandest reactions one gets from performing a jaw-dropping piece of Magic! Here are some fun examples I pulled from YouTube:
Best Wishes,
Christopher Parrish
Sept. 23rd, 2025
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