I discovered this by accident. Not in a rehearsal room or at a performance, but in the shower at a hotel in Innsbruck at six-thirty in the morning.
I had been preparing for a keynote that included a mentalism routine I had been developing for weeks. The script was written. The method was solid. I had rehearsed both the technical elements and the spoken lines multiple times. On paper, it was ready. But something felt off, and I could not identify what it was.
In the shower, not thinking about magic at all, I started humming. Not a song — just humming the rhythm of the routine. The way you might hum a melody you cannot quite remember, following the contour of the sound rather than the specific notes. I hummed through the opening — the greeting, the setup, the first interaction with the audience. Smooth. I hummed through the first phase — the question, the spectator’s response, the buildup. Still smooth.
Then I hit the transition between the first phase and the second phase. My hum stuttered. I tried again. Same spot. The rhythm broke. The melodic contour of the routine hit a bump that I could feel in my throat even though I was not saying words.
I got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around myself, sat on the edge of the bed, and hummed through the entire routine three more times. Every time, the same spot broke. And when I went back to my script and looked at that specific transition, I saw the problem immediately: there was a tonal shift that did not belong. The routine went from conversational warmth to formal instruction without any bridge. It was a gear-change that had no clutch.
I rewrote the transition, hummed through the routine again, and it flowed. That evening, the routine worked better than it ever had.
What the Humming Test Actually Tests
After that morning in Innsbruck, I started using the humming test deliberately. And the more I used it, the more I understood what it was actually detecting.
It is not testing the content of the script. It cannot tell you whether a joke is funny or a line is well-written. It is testing something more fundamental: the rhythm and flow of the routine as a continuous experience.
Pete McCabe writes in Scripting Magic about the importance of structural unity — the idea that every element in a routine should work together as one cohesive piece. Alan Moore’s pre-scripting framework, which McCabe adapts, includes “unity” as the sixth and final question: how do all the elements work together as one? The humming test is a practical diagnostic for exactly this quality.
When you hum through a routine, you are tracing its emotional and rhythmic contour without being distracted by specific words. You feel where the energy rises and falls. You feel where the pace quickens and slows. You feel where the transitions are smooth and where they are jarring. The hum reveals the shape of the routine as a whole — the architecture, not the individual bricks.
A routine that hums smoothly has structural integrity. Its parts connect naturally. Its transitions flow. Its energy arc makes sense. A routine that breaks the hum has a structural problem somewhere — a transition that does not earn its gear-change, a section that disrupts the established rhythm, a tonal shift that comes without preparation.
Why Rhythm Matters More Than We Think
I came to magic from two worlds: strategy consulting and music. In consulting, I learned to think in structures and frameworks. In music, I learned to think in rhythm and feel. And one of the most surprising discoveries of my magic journey has been how much more the musical thinking matters than the structural thinking when it comes to actual performance.
A routine is a temporal experience. It unfolds in time, like a piece of music. The audience does not experience it as a structure — they experience it as a flow. They do not see the beginning, middle, and end simultaneously the way you see them on a script page. They experience one moment after another, each one emerging from the previous and leading to the next.
This means that the quality of the transitions is at least as important as the quality of the individual moments. You can have brilliant individual moments — a perfect opening line, a devastating reveal, a hilarious callback — and still have a routine that feels disjointed if the transitions between those moments are rough.
Music teaches this instinctively. A great song is not just great melodies — it is great melodies connected by transitions that feel inevitable. The verse flows into the chorus. The chorus flows into the bridge. Each section prepares the listener for the next. When a transition is poorly handled — when a song shifts key or tempo without preparation — the listener feels it as a bump, even if they cannot articulate what went wrong.
The humming test brings this musical awareness to magic scripting. It asks: does this routine flow the way a good song flows? Can you feel the contour from beginning to end without stumbling?
How to Do It
The process is simple, but it requires a specific kind of attention.
Step one: close your eyes. You need to remove visual input so you can focus entirely on the rhythmic and emotional contour of the routine.
Step two: begin humming from the very start of the routine. Not from your first line — from the moment you approach the audience or the moment the lights come up. Include everything: the walk-on, the greeting, the initial contact. Hum the shape of these moments — the rise and fall of energy, the pace, the dynamics.
Step three: continue humming through every phase of the routine. When you reach a spoken line, do not say it — hum it. When you reach a moment of silence, hold the silence in your hum (a sustained note or a pause in the hum). When you reach a moment of action, hum the energy of the action.
Step four: pay attention to where the hum breaks. Where does your throat catch? Where does the melodic contour hit a bump? Where do you feel uncertain about what pitch or rhythm comes next? These are your structural weak points.
Step five: go to your script and examine those exact moments. You will almost always find one of three problems: a tonal shift without a bridge, a pace change without preparation, or a dead spot where the energy drops without purpose.
The Three Problems the Hum Reveals
Over several years of using this test, I have found that the hum almost always breaks at one of three types of problems.
Problem one: the unbridged tonal shift. This is what I found in my Innsbruck routine. The script shifts from one emotional register to another — from humor to seriousness, from intimacy to formality, from high energy to quiet contemplation — without any transitional passage. In music, this is like jumping from a major key to a minor key without a modulation. It feels wrong even if you cannot explain why.
The fix is usually a bridging sentence or moment. A line that acknowledges the shift, or a pause that gives the audience time to recalibrate. Something as simple as a change in vocal tone or a physical repositioning can serve as a bridge, signaling to the audience that the emotional register is about to change.
Problem two: the unprepared pace change. The routine is moving at one speed — say, a quick, conversational pace during a comedic section — and then suddenly slows down for a serious moment. Or the reverse: a slow, contemplative section abruptly accelerates into rapid-fire action. Without preparation, these pace changes feel like the routine is lurching rather than flowing.
The fix is a gradual speed change. If you need to slow down, start slowing two or three lines before the slow section begins. If you need to speed up, build momentum gradually. The audience should feel the pace change coming before it arrives, the way you feel a car accelerating or decelerating through the gradual shift in pressure against your seat.
Problem three: the purposeless dead spot. There is a moment in the routine where nothing happens — no forward motion, no energy, no engagement. Maybe it is a procedural moment where you are setting up props. Maybe it is a section of script that is informational rather than dramatic. Whatever it is, the hum drops into nothing at that point, because there is nothing to hum.
The fix is either elimination (cut the dead spot entirely) or transformation (make the dead spot serve a dramatic purpose). Eugene Burger’s principle applies here: “Presentation is the elimination of non-moments.” Every moment in the routine should be hummable — meaning it should have energy, direction, and purpose.
Beyond the Script
One thing I did not expect when I started using the humming test is that it works for more than scripts. It works for the physical performance as well.
I hum through my physical actions — the way I handle props, the way I move on stage, the way I interact with spectators. The hum follows the physical energy, not the verbal energy, and it reveals a completely different set of problems. A moment where I fumble with a prop creates a break in the physical hum. A transition where I walk awkwardly from one position to another breaks the movement hum. A moment where my body language contradicts my verbal energy creates a rhythmic conflict that the hum catches.
This expanded version of the humming test — applied to the full experience rather than just the script — has become one of my most reliable diagnostic tools. I use it in hotel rooms before performances, humming through the entire routine while miming the physical actions. It takes three to five minutes and consistently identifies problems that hours of line-by-line script analysis miss.
The Music in the Magic
Austin Kleon writes about the importance of cross-pollination between disciplines — the idea that your best creative insights often come from applying the principles of one field to the problems of another. The humming test is exactly this kind of cross-pollination. It takes a fundamental principle from music — that rhythm and flow are structural qualities that can be felt before they can be analyzed — and applies it to magic performance.
The result is a diagnostic tool that bypasses the analytical mind entirely. When you analyze a script on paper, you are reading it. When you hum through it, you are feeling it. And feeling catches problems that reading misses, because the audience does not read your routine — they feel it. They experience it as a flow of moments, not as a sequence of lines on a page.
If the hum flows, the routine flows. If the hum breaks, something is wrong. It is that simple, and it is that powerful.
I still use this test before every significant performance. I stand in my hotel room, close my eyes, and hum. Some mornings it flows perfectly and I know the routine is ready. Some mornings it breaks, and I know exactly where to focus my final rehearsal. The test takes less than five minutes and has saved me from more performances with hidden structural problems than I can count.
Try it with your own material. Close your eyes. Start humming. Follow the contour of your routine from the first moment to the last. Where the hum flows, you are ready. Where it breaks, you have work to do.
The routine should feel like a song. And a song, above all else, should flow.