Deliberate Practice...
 

This might be interesting to some of you...it was for me.
Just take it in and think about it.

Geoff Colvin - Talent is Overrated
Part 1
Part 2

It's a mix of nature and nuture and therefore tends strongly to be a self selected group by the end of it all.

Talent is only part of the equation. It's raw material, just like a tree is raw material. The tree isn't going to turn itself into a guitar. It takes hard work, expertise, and focused effort. Likewise talent alone does not equal success. It has to be honed, developed, and nurtured. Eventually, it will turn into something...and that something will be a reflection of what was put into it...

Very interesting, thanks.

"Talent" is not over-rated. It's just misunderstood and poorly defined.
Obviously, some people seem much better equipped to learn music than others are; they seem to pick it up quicker, and get better faster. "Talent" is a useful term to describe that difference: whatever it is that makes such people stand out from the rest.

Question is: what does that quality - "talent" - consist of, and where does it come from? That's where the myths arise.

Eg, it's a myth that those few individuals are born with a specific musical talent - which then may or may not be nurtured. There is no evidence for this, and it's obviously it's lazy thinking (or absence of thinking) to say they were born like it. We only see the way they are now, and conclude (through no reasoning at all) that they must have always been like it.

But the more one looks at "talented" people (and how they got like that) - and their lives up to the point where the observation of "talent" is made - the less evidence one sees of genetic abnormality, and more one sees "hard work", an unusual level of application to the activity.

I put that in quotes, because to the people concerned it rarely feels like "hard work". It's normally something they just enjoy more than anything else, which enables them to devote masses of time to it. If they find difficulty in it, that's an exciting challenge, not a problem. It looks like hard work to us, and sometimes like unhealthy obsession.
So if there is anything psychologically different about these people - any quality we might define as "talent" - it's a kind of monomania: the ability to focus on one activity obsessively, to the exclusion of anything else. It can take precedence over relationships with loved ones, even over things like eating and sleeping. It's an unquenchable enthusiasm for the activity.

The idea of being bored with practice would never occur to such people. They probably don't even think of it as "practice", which smacks of imposed discipline and schedules. They would think of it as "playing". (And the word "play" is highly significant here. It suggest both enjoyable recreation, and the serious absorption of childhood play. It's a very deep activity, not superficial. "Work" may be superficial. Play is not. It's only the protestant work ethic that suggests otherwise.)

What there is evidence for is that musical ability depends (apparently exclusively) on early upbringing. We can learn it the same way we learn language. We're not born being able to speak, but we learn our mother tongue in infancy.
We can say, therefore, that every child is born with the potential for speech (both the hardware and the OS, if you like) - but the actual language learned (the software or programming) depends on environment, on what the hardware is faced with having to do.

IMO (based on common sense and the research I've seen, and indeed the children I teach), music works the same way. We all have the potential within us. The difference from language is that few of us encounter music as an essential active part of our early lives. So we don't learn it. The later in life we encounter it (as something we might partake in, not just hear passively), the harder it is for us to learn it, which suggests that it has a lot in common with language.

I don't think there is anything special about music in this respect. The infant brain is prepared for pretty much anything that might be thrown at it, or which it might be forced to comprehend. You could say the same for pretty much any specialized skill or art. The only thing that makes some people better at some things than others is early exposure to it (as an activity) and encouragement and/or reward for doing it. (And the reward can simply be personal fulfilment.)

The point about music is that all of us must somehow have it within us - or we would not understand it when we hear it. It would have no meaning for us. But it "speaks" to all of us, in some way. It has a language of its own, and works very much like verbal language, in that it consists of organised sounds, modulated pitches, phrasing, cadences, etc.
The only difference between a musician and a non-musician is the former needs to learn to operate an instrument of some kind to make it produce the sounds that we ALL know are "right".
It's quite possible (in fact quite common) for a person to be extremely knowledgeable about music as a listener (or critic) but completely unable to play a note. They may well know and understand more about music than a highly skilled musician does.
IOW, skill on an instrument is technical only. It's about learning to manipulate the object. (Ear training matters too of course, but that's only refining a skill we all have. Like, anyone with legs can run, but it takes an athlete to train to be a better runner.)

yes , parents should find their children's "special natural ability" or talent or whatever and with the right teachers and hard work they will be great
i totally agree
i only want to add that these achievements without self awareness are not that great
i want to say that most great musicians, composers etc who we now worship couldn't live in the real world

Talent is the ability to enjoy--hell, crave, the hours of practice it takes to be good at something.

Ding, ding, ding. Thats what I think.

Everyone "wants" to be a great guitar player. But very few people want to sit and practice 8 hours a day.

The Beau Matz...

Talent .. some obviously find it easy, others struggle.

Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

I agree, the music craving, the addiction to learning, to playing,
it is that talent that will bring out the DNA talent.

... and to then learn how to use all those hours to practice intelligently, correctly, and effectively. :D

This and two other best sellers that say, in effect, "to get good at anything you have to work hard at it" create a derhay response in me, and I'm more interested in the social phenomenon of these books being best sellers. Three generations ago, no one would have had to be told this fact (and wouldn't have had the leisure time to read the books). I suspect it's easier to read the best seller (and easier still to watch a TV interview about it) than to get off one's butt and go do the work to get competent at something. I grew up in a blue collar town with men (women weren't allowed back then) who went through apprenticeship, journeymanship, and finally became masters at a craft in their late 30's or so.

I don't believe in innate musical talent...but I do believe in the lack of it. Some people are just tone deaf. Researchers are fairly certain they've located the problem in the posterior superior temporal gyrus of the brain; there may well be a gene missing in such folks. Also, things that happen to you before you are four years old have something to do with the ability to learn later on; we can hardly blame the toddler whose parents didn't expose them to music for being slow learners at it when they pick up the guitar at age 45.