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Talent


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I certainly think you are born with certain talents and timing is one of them.Any sport depends on timing and good footballers,cricketers,baseball players etc have it, that split second accuracy of hitting the ball at the exact moment it reaches you,it is something that you can improve on but the most gifted are born with it. Top Musicians can move in and out of the timing they hear and feel the rhythm,those that have it take it for granted against those that struggle.My Dear old Dad loved played tunes for me on his Electric Organ,but sadly many times I could not work out what he was playing because his timing was so far out with the background beat he added to the music.My Sister from a very early age was a natural swimmer.We knew almost from the time she got into the water that she would be good and was.She very nearly represented the country at the Olympics being beaten by a touch from the girl who went on to get a gold medal.

Very interesting discussion.

Al

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I appreciated David B's last long post. And what Alan had to say.

They're dead right about rhythm and how difficult it is to teach and to learn.

I think it's very important that dance musicians do at least some dancing at some point.

 

On another tack-- what is the effect of believing -- or not -- in Talent?

Would a belief in the existence of Talent hold you back or move you forward?

Is it like believing in God? Or god? I mean a Sky Father as opposed to some universal life force.

Does it matter whether or not you believe in Talent?

 

Then again- I assume that believing in your own talent gives you confidence, which is probably good.

Would that result in more hours of focused playing, or in a tendency to relax and wing it?

 

We should also be very careful not to confuse accomplishment with Talent --

the latter being the innate ability to become accomplished.

You can measure accomplishment but not Talent, as David B. pointed out.

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Would a belief in the existence of Talent hold you back or move you forward?

 

Depends on the individual doesn't it.

 

A consistant amount of my meager living as a voice teacher was a steady stream of 40, 50 and 60 something folks who had decided that they were going to find out wether or not they could in fact sing. Some played musical instruments, others not. At the bottom of every last one of them was some sort of Sister Assumpta who had told them not to sing with the other children because they couldn't match pitches, "just move your mouth." They in fact accepted the authority figure's assessment and spent a life not singing and living up to that expectation.

 

Lord what a struggle it was to overcome and in many cases not overcome. Most were able to match pitches in the end and learn songs and eventually sing for others. Several achieved their goal of singing in the church choir! That was indeed very cool and one freakin' load of backbreakin' work for all involved. I don't care much for the universal Sister Assumpta.

 

Talent, I'm an adhearant. Anyone with hard work can learn almost anything and in the end have a pretty good time. Do we all have an equal potential at everything? As a kid I really wanted to be able to play baseball with the other kids in the neighborhood. Well, I'm blind in one eye since birth. Catching, hitting or pitching a baseball was problematical. I worked and worked and worked (acceptance being so important). Made some headway I did and was pretty happy when I got to the point that I didn't completely suck.

 

At age 10 I discovered I could run like a scalded dog, and for the first time played what we Americans call soccer. Hey, I turned myself into a wicked fullback (actually turned out to be a bit of a "goon"). A talented athelete, naw but I loved being involved in a sport where at least what abilities I did have found a use and therefore some measure of acceptance. Ah, but then I signed up for chorus class (by mistake). Like a duck to water it was and girls started to smile at me....didn't look back :P .

 

Believe what you will, but saying we all have the potential to be a Joshua Bell or a Joe Lewis if we just work hard enough strikes me as daft...sorry.

Edited by Mark Evans
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Believe what you will, but saying we all have the potential to be a Joshua Bell or a Joe Lewis if we just work hard enough strikes me as daft...sorry.

 

I've heard dafter beliefs!! :lol:

 

We may all be born with an innate musical talent, but we are also born with other characteristics that can help or hinder that talent. I mean internal ones, not Sister Assumpta, although she too has to carry some blame.

 

My son and his friend have electric guitar lessons together, and it's amazing the differences it's shown up. Son is a bit (too) cool, not overly keen on challenges or effort, but quite open-minded and accepting of different types of music. Friend is extremely competitive and motivated by a challenge and will repeat a task a thousand times until he can do it, just because. Oddly though, he also turns out to be a bit of a musical snob, and basically, if it's rock music or at all well-known, it's just not even worth discussing. Brian May et al don't even deserve to call themselves guitarists. :rolleyes:

 

Same age, same starting point, same lessons, completely different results. Son wants to be part of things with his guitar, friend wants to do the solo, melodramatic classical guitar. But his competitive streak means that he also has to put in loads of time on other things, like doing homework so that he gets good marks.

 

Moi, I have two hurdles between me and musical success. Lack of confidence, and a short attention span. Oh look, there's a pretty butterfly in the garden, lots of them around for the time of year, I'll just go and...... :ph34r:

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Interesting discussion!

 

Although I'm generally more of a nurture than nature person, there are certain characteristics in people that just seem so overwhelmingly "genetic". And they keep discovering genes for all kinds of things, eg. some gender-specific behavior (cf. http://www.innovations-report.de/html/beri...cht-44970.html).

 

My friend's son has only met his biological dad once in his life for maybe one or two hours, but has developed some mannerisms that both my friend and I have only seen in his dad. The weirdest one is the propensity to make up extremely complex, long-winded analogies to prove a point, analogies that are usually way off target and nonsensical. The similarities between father and son are often uncanny. How can that be if father and son don't even know each other?

 

However, it will never be possible to isolate all factors that come together to shape the individual person. Maybe, unknowingly, my friend reinforced the similar traits from an early age on, maybe even occasionally saying how much alike his father he is. Who knows. I recently saw a TV special on intelligent animals, including a dog who could do all kinds of calculations. Amazing, until they separated the dog from its owner. Although the owner never gave any perceivable signals to the dog, the dog was smart enough to pick up some involuntary clues that told it when to stop tapping its foot. Parents, teachers, peers etc. do of course send out similar unconscious or conscious signals to reinforce specific behavior. How could anybody ever analyze such a complex reward and punishment system?

 

But the existence of such system doesn't force the conclusion either that there isn't any genetic base for some essential characteristics that determine the degree of "talent" present in a person. The only true test would be raising test-tube babies in complete isolation with exactly the same type of stimuli around.

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Believe what you will, but saying we all have the potential to be a Joshua Bell or a Joe Lewis if we just work hard enough strikes me as daft...sorry.

 

Yes. People who believe in nurture strike me as New Age folks, whose overriding ideology is that "everybody is special". In itself it doesn't mean much, but it rejects some folks' posession of leaping intuition, that is talent.

I picture it this way:

Imagine a World as a circle. For dwellers of that world moving straight means going in circles, right? Until someone with perceiving intuition comes up and dives towards the center. What fool! But before we know it, he is on the other side of the circle waiting for us. Talent is this. It cuts through, goes directly towards the destination, disregarding rules and experience of long practice.

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Ah, thanks m3838. Now I understand.

The trick is to ignore all those other concertina players.

I won't waste any more time in practice.

I'll tell Noel and Dympna and Michael.

See you on the other side of the circle.

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Or you could say that Paddy Murphy found a way to walk across the circle and Noel et al followed him there...

 

Ah, thanks m3838. Now I understand.

The trick is to ignore all those other concertina players.

I won't waste any more time in practice.

I'll tell Noel and Dympna and Michael.

See you on the other side of the circle.

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A "talented" person is someone who has merely figured out what few could, not because he was the chosen one based from his genetics.

I think that amounts to an admission that some have it and some just don't. Most of us do not have it in us to figure it out. Those that do, "have it". The ability to figure it out came from within. If it was environment, there would be more cases of siblings sharing talent.

 

There isn't a music gene (or collection of genes) that reliably produces another Mozart, in the sense that we use genetics to reliably retain certain characteristics in carrots or racehorses. I am reminded of the comment of a leading Nobel prize winning physicist, I think it was Fermi, but I can't remember for sure. There is an organisation which collects sperm samples of male Nobel prize winners. The physicist said, you are collecting the wrong person's sperm. What did my sperm ever produce, a couple of guitar players (he didn't mean that as a compliment). You should collect it from my father, a Jewish tailor.

 

But I would still say that if you haven't got it, birth is too late to do anything about it. You can, in many things, train. But those who have it need less training, and you'll never have that extra spark that distinguishes those who have it. If it is all environment, we could reliably create Mozarts, but we can't. Most of the child prodigies in music, those who are heavily trained to high technique from an early age, turn out not to have it, and don't become rated musicians as adults. Even Ruth Lawrence (whose father dedicated his life to training her, who was studying maths at Oxford at the same time as me, except she was only 13 or something, and did the degree in 2 years and got the highest ever exam marks) has not done much as a mathematician since finishing her studies, no one suggests that she is a candidate for a Fields Medal. But some have it even without training and a most unlikely environment, Ella Fitzgerald (she wasn't just a voice, she had the most amazing technique), etc, how do those who say it is all training and environment explain those?

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Interesting discussion!

 

Although I'm generally more of a nurture than nature person, there are certain characteristics in people that just seem so overwhelmingly "genetic". And they keep discovering genes for all kinds of things, eg. some gender-specific behavior (cf. http://www.innovations-report.de/html/beri...cht-44970.html).

 

My friend's son has only met his biological dad once in his life for maybe one or two hours, but has developed some mannerisms that both my friend and I have only seen in his dad. The weirdest one is the propensity to make up extremely complex, long-winded analogies to prove a point, analogies that are usually way off target and nonsensical. The similarities between father and son are often uncanny. How can that be if father and son don't even know each other?

 

However, it will never be possible to isolate all factors that come together to shape the individual person. Maybe, unknowingly, my friend reinforced the similar traits from an early age on, maybe even occasionally saying how much alike his father he is. Who knows. I recently saw a TV special on intelligent animals, including a dog who could do all kinds of calculations. Amazing, until they separated the dog from its owner. Although the owner never gave any perceivable signals to the dog, the dog was smart enough to pick up some involuntary clues that told it when to stop tapping its foot. Parents, teachers, peers etc. do of course send out similar unconscious or conscious signals to reinforce specific behavior. How could anybody ever analyze such a complex reward and punishment system?

 

But the existence of such system doesn't force the conclusion either that there isn't any genetic base for some essential characteristics that determine the degree of "talent" present in a person. The only true test would be raising test-tube babies in complete isolation with exactly the same type of stimuli around.

In the World of dogs they follow the instincts of their breeding.A Border Collie for example or even a Border Collie Cross will herd sheep, geese etc as part of their natural instinct,without training.So a certain amount of musical talent could be born into us,others by hard work can improve the skills they did not know existed.Mark for example may now be World Champion apple roller had there been such a sport.Some of us have stacks of patience ,others have little or none.

Al

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In the World of dogs they follow the instincts of their breeding.A Border Collie for example or even a Border Collie Cross will herd sheep, geese etc as part of their natural instinct,without training.So a certain amount of musical talent could be born into us,others by hard work can improve the skills they did not know existed.Mark for example may now be World Champion apple roller had there been such a sport.Some of us have stacks of patience ,others have little or none.

Al

 

But I remember the little Spaniel we had learning to herd just by being out with us kids and the herd dog while we were moving cattle and horses, though he was definitely not bred to do so.

 

Ultimately this is an argument that can end to no one's satisfaction. We don't breed people, thank the Lord. And I am sure if their is any genetic component to musical ability, it would be one of those complex multiple gene traits that come together and not simple like say hair color. Ultimately it takes a combination of innate ability and training, the same as a good herd dog or cutting horse.

 

Alan

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when you tap your foot, where does the beat lie?

1. at the bottom (when the foot hits the ground)

2. in the middle (when the foot is between its highest point and lowest point)

3. at the top (when the foot is at the highest point)

please sing something, tap your foot, and answer the question before moving on.

everyone i have asked says it is the bottom, which is where i thought it was. james kelly taught me it is actually in the middle. he told me to watch players at a session--those who tend to rush, will play with the beat when their foot hits the ground, and those who tend to drag play with the beat at the top. it is only a millisecond difference, but it makes a huge difference.

 

Sorry to digress slightly off topic but since you raised it, I would say in my case, I start my foot movement downwards on the beat - it's the start of the movement thats hits the beat, not when it hits the ground.

But apart from that, I don't follow your point above re players in a session. If a person is playing solo - it doesn't matter where their foot is on the beat as long as they are regular and consistent. If you look at a group of people playing well together, they will be listening to each other and playing in unison, but their foot tapping may be out of sync. - some may be a little ahead or behind or double tapping in a reel etc. - no matter as long as each is regular and they listen to the others to keep together.

 

I have oftimes amused myself watching accomplished musicians and seeing if my foot tap matched theirs. I might think it was a little ahead or behind but as soon as I forget about it and let the brain take over, it feels right anyway. Have you ever been in a large hall like the Willie Clancy with perhaps several hundred people tapping their feet - it's takes on a life of it's own - a background throb rooted in the community gathered and it's not exactly even.

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when you tap your foot, where does the beat lie?

1. at the bottom (when the foot hits the ground)

2. in the middle (when the foot is between its highest point and lowest point)

3. at the top (when the foot is at the highest point)

please sing something, tap your foot, and answer the question before moving on.

everyone i have asked says it is the bottom, which is where i thought it was. james kelly taught me it is actually in the middle. he told me to watch players at a session--those who tend to rush, will play with the beat when their foot hits the ground, and those who tend to drag play with the beat at the top. it is only a millisecond difference, but it makes a huge difference.

 

Sorry to digress slightly off topic but since you raised it, I would say in my case, I start my foot movement downwards on the beat - it's the start of the movement thats hits the beat, not when it hits the ground.

But apart from that, I don't follow your point above re players in a session. If a person is playing solo - it doesn't matter where their foot is on the beat as long as they are regular and consistent. If you look at a group of people playing well together, they will be listening to each other and playing in unison, but their foot tapping may be out of sync. - some may be a little ahead or behind or double tapping in a reel etc. - no matter as long as each is regular and they listen to the others to keep together.

 

I have oftimes amused myself watching accomplished musicians and seeing if my foot tap matched theirs. I might think it was a little ahead or behind but as soon as I forget about it and let the brain take over, it feels right anyway. Have you ever been in a large hall like the Willie Clancy with perhaps several hundred people tapping their feet - it's takes on a life of it's own - a background throb rooted in the community gathered and it's not exactly even.

 

Surely an audible foot tapping beat from performers has to be precisely on the beat otherwise it serves no purpose. Why, in strict tempo music, is a foot tapping beat of any value other than immediately preceding the start of a tune in order to establish the chosen tempo at which to proceed, after which it becomes superfluous and merely a distraction ?

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To adress your question, Rod, because ..." it takes on a life of it's own- a background throb rooted in the community..." (tombilly).

 

If this is not the primary duty of music then I shall have to take up the preparation of actuarial tables as an artistic outlet.

 

 

And from Alan Dormire..."one of those complex multiple gene traits that come together..." in a word, talent.

 

RB

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Ah, thanks m3838. Now I understand.

The trick is to ignore all those other concertina players.

I won't waste any more time in practice.

I'll tell Noel and Dympna and Michael.

See you on the other side of the circle.

 

Life consists of thousands of people trying to dive to the center. But unless you have intuitive feel of right direction you'll miss. In the mean wile you can have good time practicing, it doesn't hurt. Practice, musicality and talent belong to the same family, but not necessarily depend upon each other. I'd say Practice and Musicality are smart brothers, who bring food to the table, Talent is younger Simpleton, who, given right circumstances, shows the way. In the meantime he is nurtured, but ridiculed by the other two.

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Surely an audible foot tapping beat from performers has to be precisely on the beat otherwise it serves no purpose. Why, in strict tempo music, is a foot tapping beat of any value other than immediately preceding the start of a tune in order to establish the chosen tempo at which to proceed, after which it becomes superfluous and merely a distraction ?/quote]

 

Because the tapping of the foot gives a steady time reference within which to play the tune and keep an even rhythm - like the ticking of a clock. It's each players internal clock - doesn't matter if it's audible or not - I don't listen to my neighbours foot taps when I'm playing, just feel my own. I do however listen to what my neighbour is playing so as to keep together at the overall tempo of the group.

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