If there is one fault that is common to a lot of magic patter acts, it’s that the performer speaks too fast! I know this not only because I have witnessed it on many occasions, but also because I am definitely guilty of it myself.
The fact of the matter is, if you patter too quickly many of the spectators may miss the essence of what you said, and this can have a dramatic effect on how well your act is received. Just think about all the different ways that this could have a detrimental impact for a moment.
For instance, if you gabble out some instructions to an assisting spectator and the person mishears or misinterprets what you have said, they might do the wrong thing and completely ruin the trick. You might imagine that they have deliberately sought to mess you up, but the truth is they might simply not have heard what you said due to the speed of your delivery, and were too intimidated or embarrassed to ask for you to repeat it all.
Another way it can affect your performance is when you rush out the words of a gag only to be met with a stony silence or a muted reaction. Again, it may be a terrific gag, but if you spit it all out too quickly, the point of it all may well be missed by the spectators.
I found this to be the case at times when watching Harrison Greenbaum at the Session convention recently. He’s a Jewish New Yorker who speaks incredibly fast and this combined with the rather harsh accent that goes with living in that big city meant that I, in common with many of the other Brits in the audience I suspect, would sometimes miss his punchlines or asides. If he had only slowed down a little, we would all have been able to tune into his delivery more consistently and then we would have enjoyed his act more.
Patter speed is often an issue for older spectators who are wearing hearing aids. Hearing aids can distort sounds, particularly background noise, and so if the entertainer is running too fast with his patter, the combination of the speed and the inherent difficulties of hearing in public places, combine to make much of what is being said unintelligible.
The other way that quick patter can destroy an act is when the performer, perhaps through nerves, fails to create pauses in the patter. Like a runaway train, his verbal assault keeps on coming leaving no gaps for the audience to react and respond to what he has said. Why would you want to talk over a laugh that you have striven so hard to create? Well, it happens.
Some performers have a laid back style and a slow patter delivery fits the character perfectly. For more energetic performers who like to move around a lot and who use plenty of hand and body gestures, it’s harder to make slow patter fit the timing of everything.
But it is possible. The answer is not that you have to slow your patter down to a Texan drawl, but that you simply need to reduce the momentum a little. It’s amazing the difference even a slight alteration in patter speed can make. The next time you perform try to make a conscious effort to patter consistently at a marginally slower speed and see whether reactions improve. I suspect that they will.