Innate "talent"

[Roger Fjeldet]

Of course you have people with natural talent for playing, sporting, math, you name it....
BUT it is the work that give the results.
People with natural talent has the capability to reach longer than the "norm" IF they put down the same amount of work in their doings
Roger

[Roger Lewis]

Great topic!

There are some unique underlying aspects that come into play in the quest for the answer to this question. Adler, the psychology theorist, postulated a theory of overcompensation. Whatever you "thought" your biggest weakness was, you would overcompensate for it and turn this into your biggest strength. I, for example, was a sever asthmatic as a child. So I selected the most air demanding wind instrument and over time turned breathing into a "strength" instead of a perceived weakness (capacity 127% of normal, expulsion rate 123% of normal). I didn't realize that this is what I had done until I learned of this theory in my psych studies.

I played football with a man who was born without knee caps who went through many surgeries as he grew and worked incredibly hard on his "weakness". He was able to do squats with 600 pounds on his shoulders when he and I were playing together - overcompensation.

A friend of mine's son was quite small for his age and just "strength" was very important to him as a child. He has gone on to become one of the top martial arts people in the country.

I'm a firm believer in the overcompensation theory, but there is also the "innate talent" aspect. Being tone-deaf is going to make it extremely hard to follow music as a career - not impossible, but extremely hard. For what we do good hand/eye coordination is necessary as well as having a good "ear".

For someone with innate talent I would look at Robert Nagel, the trumpet player from the New York Brass Quintet. He was what would be called "a natural", and then he trained hard to take advantage of his ability to play the trumpet at an extremely high level. There is a story about him showing up to do the Brandenburg, opening his case and seeing he had forgotten his piccolo trumpet. So he pulled out his Bb and went out and did it anyhow.

The hard work is still important, but if you have a genetic "leg up", it can help you achieve things a tad easier than the guy in the next practice room.

Just my personal experience.

Roger

[GC]

My two cents: no amount of work will make a talentless person into a world class player. No amount of talent will make someone who won't work at it into a world class player. It takes a combination of the two to get to the top.

But a talented player can become decent without a huge amount of work. A hard worker without a lot of talent can become a decent player through effort. Both can enjoy a rich musical life. And as for no talent and lazy . . .

Talent seems to me to be whatever it is that makes learning how to do something easier than for a person without talent. There's not virtue in it like with hard work; it's just there.

[MaryAnn]

I have examples from my own family; my older sister was tone deaf and had to be taught, by my frustrated mother, to move her voice in pitch to carry a tune. She was often a quarter tone off but could not tell the difference. The only instrument she could possibly have played would have been piano.

My brother is a competent amateur pianist, able to play piano music that I can't. He has worked like crazy on it, taking lessons on and off his entire adult life (we all had piano lessons as kids.) Every teacher tells him the same thing: he does not play musically. We had a phone conversation once in which he asked me how to play musically, what was actually done to have the audience/teacher perceive it as musical. I told him, it is variations in dynamics and tempo, applied in such a way as to achieve the desired effect. He still cannot perceive how to do it though.

My mother was what we would call gifted, but her family did not think musical education was worthwhile. She got a few lessons in the summers, but that was that. She was essentially self-taught, with technique to match. However, she played musically and without the rhythmic problems so often seen in amateurs. My sister would *never* in a million years have been able to do that. She had different gifts, which I do not have. I got the music in my family, according to my family.

However, working my rear off has netted me only a level that could be called low-level pro on my major instrument (which was violin, and not being played for 30 years has thrown that level out the window.) The problem is physical; I'm just not coordinated on the level that high-level achievers in physical things are coordinated. Doesn't matter how much I work, I reach my level where I don't get better. Someone with more *physical* talent would be able to keep going, but I reach my level before I reach the level they would reach.

I've seen people with less "musical talent" than I have, but more physical talent, pass me up, all through my life. I've seen people with immense physical and musical talent who got stuck from bad instruction and as adults don't have the wherewithal to go back and do it over. My partner in life can pick up a trumpet or flute part the day before the concert, spend twenty minutes on it, and get it right. I simply cannot do that; if I don't have the ability to more or less sight read the part, I'm not going to learn it even in a month of concentrated labor. We are different in our physical abilities. He was a gymnast at Stanford, and I can do situps in my living room.

MA

[Donn]

I can do situps in my living room.

Really? I have to try that!

This is such a sticky subject because it has roots in one of the fundamental problems of philosophy - do we really choose, or have our choices really already been made for us? This one is endowed with terrific musical faculties, but little ambition, this one has good technical abilities and reflexes but has no sense of why music means anything, this one has great abilities but suffers from performance anxiety and hates to perform, ... Even if you do get there on willpower and hard work alone, where did that come from? Have there ever been two siblings, for example, one with apparently much greater powers of persistence than the other from the very first? Sure, you can choose to do what it takes to achieve your goals ... but the ability to choose that, came to you just like any of your other gifts.

You can't really struggle against who you are, any more than you can fly like a bird if you flap your arms hard enough.

[pwhitaker]

Stephen King said it as well as anyone I've ever read: In his book "Christine" the protagonist brought the beat up old car - Christine - to the local auto body shop and was told by the the cynical old owner in this immortal line: "Sorry kid, you can't polish a turd."

[toobagrowl]

Stephen King said it as well as anyone I've ever read: In his book "Christine" the protagonist brought the beat up old car - Christine - to the local auto body shop and was told by the the cynical old owner in this immortal line: "Sorry kid, you can't polish a turd."

[k001k47]

The very people who - in the past - tried to claim that "all children can do just as well if given a chance"

I think this should read "All children can do just as well if [they have the drive to]."

[averagejoe]

I think that "innate talent" has a lot to do with musical exposure during the first few years of a persons life, much like learning language. With work an adult can certainly catch up to a native speaker of a language, but it will be more effort than the child who was raised immersed in the language put in. A person who grew up listening to and even making music will be perceived as having a natural gift. I am not sure that this can explain all examples of musical talent (perfect pitch may be an example of a brain that is simply wired for music), but it seems to me that people who seem to naturally phrase music well or hear intervals well often have musical backgrounds that are not immediately obvious.

[Roger Lewis]

The very people who - in the past - tried to claim that "all children can do just as well if given a chance" later complained about "No Child Left Behind", when they apparently discovered that their truism wasn't necessarily true

We have to realize that there is a difference between "all children can do just as well if given a chance" and a "measurement system" that requires all students to be at the top. No Child Left Behind would be like requiring every pro football team to win the Superbowl each year. Almost everything on our planet has been measured with The Standard Deviation, establishing the "bell curve" as a mathematical fact. With No Child Left Behind there would be no bell curve - and as far as I know the only way you could do that would be to fudge the statistics.

Just an observation.

Roger

[swillafew]

My favorite talent quip:

To Paganini: " I would give my life to play the violin like that"

Paganini: " I did ".

Still, talent is as real as any other thing in the world, and evidence of it is everywhere you look.

[Donn]

I think that "innate talent" has a lot to do with musical exposure during the first few years of a persons life, much like learning language.

JS Bach and Mozart were children of musicians, weren't they? It seems to me it's kind of a standard story - grown-ups are sitting around playing, for fun, and Junior pops up and says "look, Dad, I can play too!" - and pretty soon, he can really play. Musical exposure per se is one thing - these days I don't see how anyone can escape it - but when your people make music part of their lives, you're likely to make the connection according to your abilities.

Foreign language is an interesting comparison. There are different ways to learn them - translating or "native", different things to learn that some find difficult and others easy - pronunciation/accent, grammar, vocabulary. And great differences between individuals - everyone can learn languages pretty well up to 14 or so, but much harder for some of us than others after that.

I'm pretty lucky on foreign language ability, much easier for me than my father's side of the family, but the one thing that kills me is ability to pick out what people are saying, at a native pace. That's probably normal, it's just a very hard thing until you've been working with the language long enough, but it's funny that I'm also at my worst with fast paced music. That's why I play bass instruments, you know - fewer notes.

[TMurphy]

Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Certainly, a large part of his success was his obsession with being the best. His work ethic was incredible, and it paid off; his accomplishments are well known and speak for themselves.

He also tried his hand at professional baseball (his first sport as a youth). He Batted only .202 with 3 homeruns at the AA level. Never had a chance at the major leagues.

Somehow I doubt the reason he didn't make it in baseball was a lack of effort. Clearly, natural talent is involved. Why should music be any different?

[Art Hovey]

If you don't love whatever your talent is good for then it is worthless. As a physics teacher and as a musician I have seen examples of talent without love and love without talent, and they have all been sad cases. The few who are born with both are truly blessed.

Choosing the right parents has a lot to do with it.

[jjhomefry]

Hey there. I dont post often but had to share this.

I study with a very wise old guy. He says this.

There are three types of successful musicians.

First, there are those who work VERY hard to get good and get where they want to go.
Second, there are those who dont work that hard, but have so much natural talent that they get where they want to go.
Last, there are the naturally gifted ones that also work their buns off. These people are the stars.

We were actually talking about singers when this came up, but it works for all musicians I feel.
Yes, my primary mode of music making is singing. There is just something about the tuba that keeps me coming back though!

[happyroman]

I think that some people have a natural predisposition that may allow them to learn more quickly that others. Take for example, Josh Waitzkin, the young man whose story was featured in the excellent film, Searching for Bobby Fisher. Josh won national championships in chess during his teens, and then turned to martial arts, eventually winning world championships in Tai Chi. He believes that he was not necessarily exceptionally talented in either field, but had a tremendous ability to learn. His book, The Art of Learning is excellent, and a must read for anyone striving for excellence in their given field of endeavor.

Another excellent book on this subject is The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, discusses recent discoveries in how the brain works, including understanding the importance of the development of a substance called Myelin. Myelin is s substance that forms around neural pathways that acts as a sort of insulator, resulting in the neural impulses being sent along those pathways to be stronger and travel more quickly. The analogy is that increased development of myelin in the brain turns what had been a "dial up" system into "high speed broadband."

Here are a couple of links for more info on these two books.

http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Great ... 603&sr=1-1" target="_blank" target="_blank

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Learning-Jour ... 638&sr=1-1" target="_blank" target="_blank

[Rick Denney]

I can find no real evidence why we should believe someone of world-class ability when they say they have little talent. They say that because they want to be recognized for their own hard work, of course. And who can blame them? But to say they achieve world class ability by hard work alone also invalidates those who have worked hard and still not achieved such success. Yes, that includes people who have the talent necessary for their hard work to earn world-class achievements in more than one field.

Again: I doubt that Picasso painted more diligently than many other skilled, but not great painters. So, why did he excel when others didn't? Those who don't achieve that rank often blame it on luck or connections. But more likely, he had a vision and the drive to realize it, and for him, skill was not the goal but rather the means to achieving his goal. It's true at a lower level, too: There are those who have no training in art and can draw something that has life and movement, and others who have studied it extensively and still produce subjects that seem to be made from wood.

We hear that blame in a variety of forms. "Anyone who was at the audition could do the job fine--it was just this one guy who happened to impress that particular audition committee that day." If that's so, then why did Alan Baer win three (or was it four) auditions in a row a few years ago? Here's another one, "Success in art is just a matter of marketing." Marketing helps, of course, but it has to have something on which to build.

That something is probably more related to vision than to skill. Many pop singers are not necessarily all that skilled, but they have a vision of where they want to go that resonates with what people want to hear. There is something there that sets them apart, as much as those who are less successful might discount it. Is that vision talent? Partly at least--there are many with an abundance of skill who do not achieve greatness.

Also again: But we cannot know whether we are talented at something until we put some diligence into pursuing it. A well-educated person has diligently pursued a range of activities in search of their true talent. That's why well-educated people are often pretty good at a lot of things, and never seem to stop enjoying learning new things.

Rick "with many interests but limited talent" Denney

[Dylan King]

The spiritual dimension of inborn talent cannot be overlooked. King David was the most skillful musician on his time, talent given, and ordained by Almighty God.

Psalm 139:13
For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.