"Talent" and "being born with it"

[Hounddog409]

The more I practice, the more talented I get.

Will you ever be a Mozart or Geddy?

 

[Hounddog409]

Pretty much ( whilst I have no idea who Tom Brady is).
I'd consider oportunity (circumstances that support ones endevour - time and money for example) quite important also, however.

And you are dead wrong.

 

[Hounddog409]

Talent matters but I’ve never met anybody that put their 10,000 hours in on a skill and still really sucked at said skill. Music is a thing you can definitely get ahead at by being a “gym rat”.

Everyone is different. Everyone has a limit for everything. The result of10k hours will be vastly different for EVERYONE.

This is why we have the few greats, and a whole lot of pretty good.

If all it took was practice, there would be no standouts. No greats. No world records.

Everything would be the same and very boring.

 

[TroyK]

I am 95% in the "talent is a myth" camp. Everyone I know who is great at something invested a lot in becoming so. That doesn't mean I could be a theoretical physicist, there are people who are better equipped for that type of math and logic and others who are more athletic. There is also the odd phenom. But, I think that what is most often called talent is actual a learned and developed ability.

I am very self-conscious about using it regarding anyone without knowing their story because it can be dismissive of the work that they have done.

 

[J-Mags]

I come out of a culture that values intelligence and book smarts. I was frequently told how brilliant I was as I was f***ing up and struggling to do rudimentary tasks. I have my doubts about this "brilliance" that I was told was a thing. Talent is similarly ineffable and perplexing. Does it actually mean you have a higher ceiling, or are you just a quick study?

My daughter has frequently been called a "talented" singer, and she does have a unique voice, which she uses skillfully, and she writes memorable songs. I was waiting for her to finish a guitar lesson once, and she was singing whatever song she was learning on her guitar and I was blown away. I'd never even heard her singing in her bedroom or the shower. She sounded amazing. But if she forgets the words, she forgets. On those occasions when she takes an artistic wrong turn, talent can't help her. And she's probably never gonna sell as many records as Lou Reed.

I'm not talking about my daughter here, whose music I love and respect, but talent requires many qualities extraneous to "talent." There's nothing about talent that says your art will be any good.

Conversely, I have no innate hand-eye coordination, and I don't know more music theory than most people, but I can still play better guitars solos than most. It's not talent. It's whether you're using your head and your emotions.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I am 95% in the "talent is a myth" camp. Everyone I know who is great at something invested a lot in becoming so. That doesn't mean I could be a theoretical physicist, there are people who are better equipped for that type of math and logic and others who are more athletic. There is also the odd phenom. But, I think that what is most often called talent is actual a learned and developed ability.

I am very self-conscious about using it regarding anyone without knowing their story because it can be dismissive of the work that they have done.

^^^^We are 100% as one on this.

 

[OptimalOptimus]

Kids learn very fast so the younger you the highest chance are that you will be good if you kept at it.
Kids can have perfect pitch, the older you get it becomes impossible.
The bar for music is always pushed further … younger player play and come up with stuff that wasn’t even though out 20 years ago…
You can get pretty good at something and play very well, composing music is another game that very few are good at.

 

[Hummergeist]

Will you ever be a Mozart or Geddy?

Haha not enough hours in the day for that!

 

[ToneMonkey]

Haha not enough hours in the day for that!

And I’m never gonna dance Swan Lake.

 

[DanAdams]

If we get out of the bass playing mindset for a moment I think this debate settles itself. Let's talk about vocalists for a moment.
No amount of practice and lessons can make you a great singer. Lessons or school can make you a much better singer, but lessons can't make you Adele, or Mike Patton, or Pavarotti.
Furthermore, some little kids are top notch vocalists.
It's the same with any instrument, or craft, or job, or art, or sport. People are just good at different stuff.
"talent" is not an insult.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

So here is something I have been thinking about.

I got talking to one guy some weeks ago about instruments and I have mentioned that I play the bass.

His response was something akin to 'i wish I was that talented'.

Being talented...

I don't think having talent is a thing. I think with practice, repetition, studying and playing you can be as skilled at music and playing and instrument as anyone else.
I was watching an interview with Jaco Pastorius and he said that he was born with "it", and you know, maybe he was... But then he said he spent hours upon hours just practicing and playing and studying.

I personally do not believe in talent, it's just work. I would say that I do not have any ability that I have had when I was born, instead I practice and put the hours in and eventually i get better.

The whole concept of being talented and someone telling me that I am talented is lowkey insulting because it implies that I havent worked hard for my ability to play, which I have.

Do you share similar views on this? Or do you believe something else?

Thanks!

I certainly do think that talent makes it easier for some people to get where they are, but I think your right that besides having a natural talent, they did the work. The talent can be a natural affinity or familiarity with what they are trying to do, but "it" doesn't get done unless they develop that talent with a lot of work. It might take me 25% longer than them to get to the same place because I'm not as "talented" as one of the greats, but none of the greats played like they do without putting in the work themselves. I'm one of those that thinks talent is a gift from God but only 10% of your achievement is due to a God-given talent, the other 90% is the willingness and determined perseverance to get the work done to get to the level that you can be offended by someone calling you "talented".

 

[Trailertrash74]

I have a friend that purchased the best of the best instruments, took many lessions, practiced for many hours a day and talked about theory but in the end, He just did not have God's gift of music. I make dogs howl and babies cry when I try to sing because it was not a gift that was given to me. I am so blessed to have God's gift of music (instruments not singing!). Practice doesn't guarantee you will be a good musician.

 

[JimmyM]

Talent is something people accuse someone else of having because they cant fathom that someone would put in the effort as they themselves would not be willing to do for whatever reason that they don't.

Talent is a term that I think should be defined as a measure of the passion which someone has for an activity in relation to others around them. No matter what age it strikes or what abilities they may possess at any time.

Talent as a word is a lazy compliment in place of actually saying something meaningful like someone is good or "I liked it because you moved my soul and embodied my emotions in the sounds that you created."

Talent is a word that is often used to displace ones own control of ones destiny in to the hands of something magical therefore acutely protecting the fragile self worth of those who don't have so called talent.

Not a fan of the term, talent.

Why do you associate that negative connotation to it? Talent exists. Some folks have a lot more aptitude to do certain activities than others. For example, my singing voice was never going to be any better than average but I know people who have fantastic voices naturally and didn't have to work too hard to sound great, though they certainly worked hard to build their voices to make them sound even better and have the stamina to do a show. Meanwhile, I did work at my singing and improved it over the years, but nobody's ever going to mistake me for Sammy Hagar and there was never anything I could do about it.

On the bright side, you can have all the talent in the world in your head, but if you don't work out the mechanics of your instrument(s), you won't be able to express your ideas fully, so you still have to work at it. That doesn't mean some people don't have a natural aptitude for it, and if you don't, you can work at it and pretend easily enough But if someone calls you "talented," that doesn't mean they're slagging off all the work you did, and you don't have to make sure they know about it. Just take it as the compliment it's meant to be and accept that you did well.

 

[lizardking837]

So here is something I have been thinking about.

I got talking to one guy some weeks ago about instruments and I have mentioned that I play the bass.

His response was something akin to 'i wish I was that talented'.

Being talented...

I don't think having talent is a thing. I think with practice, repetition, studying and playing you can be as skilled at music and playing and instrument as anyone else.

I was watching an interview with Jaco Pastorius and he said that he was born with "it", and you know, maybe he was... But then he said he spent hours upon hours just practicing and playing and studying.

I personally do not believe in talent, it's just work. I would say that I do not have any ability that I have had when I was born, instead I practice and put the hours in and eventually i get better.

The whole concept of being talented and someone telling me that I am talented is lowkey insulting because it implies that I havent worked hard for my ability to play, which I have.

Do you share similar views on this? Or do you believe something else?

Thanks!

It's a little bit of both. People are just innately good at certain things and with hard work and practice can take them to levels of greatness. I absolutely believe that people can learn anything they want and become great with hard work, but somethings might go quicker or feel more "natural" than others.

 

[Liko]

I personally do not believe in talent, it's just work. I would say that I do not have any ability that I have had when I was born, instead I practice and put the hours in and eventually i get better.

The whole concept of being talented and someone telling me that I am talented is lowkey insulting because it implies that I havent worked hard for my ability to play, which I have.

Do you share similar views on this? Or do you believe something else?

Thanks!

Talent is a real thing. It's a commonly-overrated thing, but it's more than just work.

Talent, IMHO, is a natural predisposition toward the skillset of a particular activity, that allows you to progress further, faster, at continuing to develop that skillset compared to someone else. That's not to say you don't have to work at it, but it means that your work tends to yield better-than-average results compared to someone who puts in the same effort but doesn't have the same proclivity.

Where does it come from? Are some people genetically built to play an instrument? Is it the result of development in seemingly unrelated areas that happen to apply well to playing bass? Is it just an "a-ha moment" that occurs relatively early on by pure chance? It's likely a mix of all three.

Whatever it is and however it first develops, it's a thing, and it does two important things. First, as already mentioned, it aids in the development of the skillset. You get better results with less work than someone who struggles with it. Second, and related, that feedback aids motivation. You're seeing improvement, getting noticeable results, so you stick with it, where someone who just isn't "getting it" despite the effort already put in is more likely to give it up and try something else. Talented or not, you can't get better without practicing your craft. So, talent's not a requisite for the development of a skill, but someone with a natural talent for the skill is more likely to be found at relatively high levels of it.

That is, unfortunately, the cause of the very misconception you described. When we see someone who's really good at what they do, we ascribe their high proficiency to talent, because if they didn't have talent, they wouldn't be up there doing what they're doing. However true, it discounts the work required to develop that talent, without which they still wouldn't be up there doing what they do.

 

[logdrum]

I am/Yo soy/Ich bin/Jab ar
a lazy hack.

I post therefore I am relevant

 

[hrodbert696]

So would this mean any two brains 'primed' in the same way would lead to the same results?

Probably not exactly, because there's also how the brain adjusts to the current experience and the actions it's coordinating and those wouldn't be identical. The other thing I didn't mention in my post about neurology is that music is VERY complicated in the brain. Different aspects of it activate completely different parts of the brain, there's no one "music center" of clustered neurons. Rhythm and tempo, for example, come from the cerebellum, the ancient "lizard brain" at the stem of the whole thing; it's what makes symmetrically-constructed creatures able to walk in a steady gait, left-right-left-right. Emotions, memory, sensory input (including hearing and pitch recognition), muscle control, and so on and on. So when we say someone is "talented" or a "natural" at music, for any two people that could mean very different recipes of different things happening in the brain. I don't think there's any way to raise two babies to have exactly the same experiences in the same way.

I guess part of what I'm getting at is that the "priming" of a brain to play music readily could come from a lot of different things, many of which will not in themselves have anything to do with music. Once upon a time in high school, I took a class in directing theater, and we had the dilemma of where to find enough actors for all our scripts. The teacher told us to go recruit some athletes. They're used to taking direction, they're used to performing in front of spectators, and they have a better awareness of their bodies than the average teenager. It wasn't that they were all "natural" actors with a born gift for theater, but they were already neurally "primed" with traits an actor needs.

I'm not saying that all brains are identical blank slates and that there are NO genetic differences apart from neuroplastic development; but I don't think there's a "music gene" either. Two babies in the womb might have genes that give them slightly different cerebella, and that might even mean that one has a predisposition to have a stronger sense of rhythm than the other; but that doesn't guarantee that the one is fated to be a genius drummer and the other will never figure out how to clap on two and four. A whole lot more is going on than that.

 

[retslock]

It’s interesting how some people in this thread are interpreting the word talent. It has nothing to do with work. Work will improve your capability but it won’t give you aptitude. A 5 year old child prodigy has not put the work in that some here think equates to talent. It is an aptitude for a given activity. Work will improve the end result. It won’t bestow innate talent.

 

[LBS-bass]

You really only need to read up on musical savants to realize that there is something certain people possess which predisposes them to extraordinary abilities in certain areas, music being one of them.

Nobody here is a true savant because savantism happens in people with certain impairments, nonetheless, there is something happening in the brains of those people that might also be present in normal people in a more diluted form. Nobody knows, really.

What is clear is that some folks have no basis to relate to this, so will tend to suggest it doesn't exist, because it doesn't pertain to them.

 

[retslock]

Consider how long this person has been alive. I know people who have played piano longer than she has been alive and will never be as good as she already is.