Does Talent Exist?

Factual Questions
41

A lot of music came naturally for me. I have a really good ear and a really good ability to recall a tune in my head, great memory for lyrics. I also have excellent hand-eye coordiantion, high dexterity.

However, learning to make any specific instrument sound the way I thought it should sound was another matter. Getting my hands used to certain movements so I didn’t have to think about it was hard. These troubles were only solved by hard work at practice. Even with my advantages over others I was a sorry musician for several years. I didn’t get good until I was stuck on the farm one summer by myself with no transportation other than a horse or tractor. Circumstances (play music or be bored) forced my hand into becoming an expert musician after practicing at least ten hours a day. That summer I became a good musician on several instruments. (Piano, guitar, drums, and mandolin.)

The difference between me and a lot of others is that one summer. OTOH I know people I have tried to help for years who just lack control of their hands and my memory and the ability to hear what is wrong (or right) in their playing. No amount of practice is going to make these people competent, they just can’t do it. On the other hand, there are people who play perfectly even very complex stuff from a very early age. Extremely rare.

I’m voting for hard work as the result of drive and that any average person can become a competent musician. The best have superior abilities.

As to the O.P. and annoyance for people who do not understand and dismiss hard work by musicians, I understand perfectly and agree that it certainly is annoying. I just politely smile and say thank you.

The single most important thing I think is drive, how badly a person wants to.

42

Nope. Because I don’t want to study physics as long and hard as Stephen Hawking. My immense dislike towards physics does not give me the confidence to win the Nobel Prize.

And for clarification: I am not totally PISSED when someone says I have a natural talent. I don’t run around with my head off cursing everybody out. I take their compliment and am very grateful!

After reading everybody’s comments, I understand that this has developed into a very broad topic; Because we’re talking about runners, physicists, etc.

I truly believe that skills such as music, painting, etc, (as panache said) are very much ‘nurture’ than nature. If we are raised in such an environment where all sorts of art are thrown at us, we grow up with an understanding. I grew up listening to my father play all sorts of music, music that I have grown on. It really began to touch my emotions and soul. If I showed that music to a cannibal in the woods (extreme example for effect), I probably wouldn’t get the same reaction.

Now when talking about runners and ‘talents’ that require physical advantages…obviously if one is born AND raised with good health and the right muscles, they are more suited to do these things..

Also, intellectual talent, may be, a mixture of both. A theoretical mathematician, for example, can be raised with the inspiration of his father! Growing up around all sorts of books, math problems, mathematical examples, museums, etc. Also..he could of genetically been born with the right brain power..

I definitely have the soul and emotion…this is what has DRIVEN me in the first place!

P.S: Despite the ‘mother’ in my name, I am a man!

43

I get what the OP means but also disagree with it being such a general rule. There are technical abilities that have to be trained and practiced; physical movements, uses of muscles, stretching of tendons and ligaments, etc. They are difficult, tedious and require a lot of self discipline to master for everyone, talent or no, so to say “Oh its easy for them - they have natural talent” is, or I guess could be seen as somehow diminishing all the effort and dedication involved.

Not everyone can get past even that initial barrier - developing the physical ability and coordination to play the instrument. Those who can already have displayed talent’ in some sense, having obtained at least the mechanical ability to produce the desired notes from the instrument. They have to accomplish that much before ever discovering whether or not they have natural ‘musicality’ or ‘talent’.

People who start out playing an instrument at 5 years old, from a musical family, etc. tend to find out much earlier if they do. But there is still a distinct difference between well-practiced, technical abilities, and ‘natural talent’ in terms of playing an instrument. Nobody starts out easily reaching difficult chords and making foot-wide stretches with their tiny 6-year-old fingers. That is just as hard for someone ‘talented’ or someone mechanically learning to play. But disciplined practice can indeed get either one past that initial barrier. Only then can they really begin to “hear” themselves play and know if they have a ‘natural talent’.

Here is Paco De Lucia playing Tico Tico at 19 years old. It’s one of the oldest available videos I can find of him but there is old film I have seen of him playing at about 11-12 years old. I cite this example because Tico Tico is a simple, fun song for a beginning guitar student. Almost anyone can learn to play it with just a few short years of lessons and daily, diligent practice, yet nobody can play it ike Paco De Lucia could at 19 (or even 12 though I can’t prove it just now). It’s not the notes he’s playing, its the way he’s playing them, it’s his ‘talent’. Like Mozart playing chopsticks. Whatever all goes into defining talent there is more to it than hard work and practice.

44

So would you have felt better if people had said, “That was beautiful! You obviously have no talent, but you must have worked very hard,” or if they just ignored the whole topic of talent?

45

My concern for this thread was not so much of the comments people have said to me, but HOW those remarks brought up the questions of “What is talent? Is talent an overly used term that is synonymous to people’s hard work? Wheres the border between hard work and gift?..etc…”

As I said before, I’m not really mad when people say I have talent..it just makes me wonder.

46

Frankly, I think 90% of talent is really having enough interest in something to dedicate the time to it–and not just 10 spare hours a week, not even just every free moment, but actively sacrificing other activities (sleep, relationships, etc.) to work on it.

It’s not that the rest of us lack the dedication, the willpower, etc.–it’s that we lack the interest. Or the parental units to force it on us, at any rate. Besides Mozart, there is the example of the Polgár sisters in chess.

47

I’ll have to agree. I don’t know about others, but the reason for my dedication and willpower is because I’m genuinely interested in it.. When we’re interested in something, it gives us the want and focus to do it!

48

The problem with this theory is that some accomplish in their first five or ten years what others can’t match even with 25-40 years of earnest, dedicated, professional level effort. But now we are also starting to cross the line between “talent” and “prodigy”. I guess that could be considered a sort of super talent. I maintain that 90% of musicality is not achieved by practicing a given instrument with dedication. That is just the technical barrier between being able to express the talent or not.

49

Well–I did say, 90%, not 100%. And there is something to be said about practicing efficiently.

But more importantly, I think there is a kind of intensity that simple earnest effort won’t necessarily get you. These kinds of people are developing their craft even when they’re not actively working on it–while eating, or in the shower, maybe even in their dreams. I don’t know that you can replicate this with “ordinary” dedication.

But as you say, I think this is about the crossing point from “talent” to “prodigy”–say, the difference between 1 in a 1,000 skill and 1 in a 1,000,000 or 1 in 1,000,000,000.

50

In my case, it has gone to the other extreme. The art I do is very labor-intensive, so people tend to ask “How long did this take you?” It’s understandable that people might ask this, but often it’s their only question, and it sometimes seems that they value a piece more, the longer it took. But from the artist’s point of view, the duration of the work isn’t nearly as important as the concept behind it, the creative spark, and that’s not something you’re born with. It seems that people want to give credit to my chromosomes or my clock, but not to my brain.

And don’t ask me about people like Mozart or van Gogh. It seems like a trivial understatement to say they had talent, but I have no idea where that kind of genius comes from.

51

Or whatever generates that intensity is actually just a part of what we’re calling talent.

While there aren’t many Mozarts or Paco De Lucias, prodigies clearly represent a highly concentrated form of something, and it isn’t evenly distributed among us.

With all other factors being equal in terms of instruction, quality and amount of practice, personal dedication and sacrifice, etc. some will just advance faster and farther than others.

In some cases genetics may even play a role for example Paco De Lucias hands are of a size and shape that represent mankind’s greatest weapon against the guitar string. He was just born with that, he didn’t have to practice it, and it is a part of what makes him a talented guitarist.

52

In my experience, there is definitely something in people that falls under the heading of “talent” that determines one’s ability to pick up certain skills quickly and develop them to a degree that people with “talent” cannot, no matter how much work they put into it. I don’t know whether this is something mostly innate or something mostly to do with environment but, like with the effortless acquisition of languages skills, for instance, I feel it’s something that’s wired into you at a fairly early age.

When it comes to music, in my opinion, there are clearly people who “get it” from a very early age to people who will never get it no matter how hard they try. Just look at the threads here on the Dope about picking out simple melodies on a keyboard or any other instrument, and how some people find that completely impossible. Or I remember there being various tone-deafness tests online (this is one example, but much trickier than the ones I’m thinking of. I scored a hair over 80%), and I was astounded that some people couldn’t pick out completely wrong notes. I’ve showed it to people with no musical training whatsoever, and some had no problem with it, while others were complete flummoxed by what I perceived to be the most obvious of wrong notes.

There are just some people who are so completely natural and so completely expressive with music that when they pick up an instrument–any instrument–they create magic. It’s a wondrous thing to behold, and I’m somebody with reasonable musical abilities. I think I have a hair of talent, but I don’t have the abilities that some people have, where they can pick out tunes with almost no effort. They just know where the notes are under their fingers, and they’ve never had a lesson in their lives. I don’t have any better word for that other than “talent.” Some people are just very good at synthesizing information, patterns, and feeling and expressing it through music. Others can work on it ten times as hard and never get one tenth of the soul and expressiveness of a talented individual. This is, of course, all anecdotal, and I don’t claim it to be a result of nature or nurture, just something that is pretty much established from an early age. It may lay dormant and undiscovered until much later, but I feel it’s pretty much hardwired by the end of childhood.

I also think the idea that “you can do and be whatever you want to, if you work hard enough” is a somewhat cultural idea, and perhaps even particularly American. I used to think it was true. I don’t so much anymore.

53

Not to go too off-topic, but I was surprised to get 86.1%. The weird part is that while there were a handful that were obviously different or obviously the same, for about 3/4 of them I couldn’t really say with any certainty, though I did have a feeling that leaned one way or another, and essentially guessed based on that intuition.

Anyway, I wonder if music lies on the border between mental and physical abilities, and that to some degree one can make up for the other (for instance, practice can improve coordination, but some people seem naturally coordinated), but an extreme deficit in either probably can’t be overcome.

54

I think one issue is that we treat “talent” as a binary: you either have it or you don’t. In reality, I think there are degrees of natural skill. When I played instruments I was always just over the middle (maybe top 1/4th wherever I played at), so not great, but I wasn’t BAD at all. However, I never, ever, ever practiced. When I took lessons, they’d say “practice these three exercises” and, I don’t know, through sheer force of will or something I’d have them convinced at the next lesson I’d practiced a lot. However, there was someone in the school who played quite a few different instruments at almost the top level, but when starting out with a new instrument he sucked more than I ever did with a new (wind) instrument, but through sheer dogged determination could become one of the best players. Then on the other side of the continuum from me you have my girlfriend, who simply CANNOT do music, at all. She sucked when she got her first instrument and gave up because no matter how long she practiced, she never got much better at all, and to this day she has trouble picking out rhythms and sections in music she’s listening to, a lot of it is simply homogenous to her, to the point where she has trouble listening to and enjoying instrumental music.

Now, there are probably other factors at work (quality of our music education programs, for instance), but I think there’s pretty clearly some sort of dividing line.

I don’t think every success story can be isolated down to “practiced a lot” or “has talent.” Most of the “greats” probably have some degree of talent, but it’s also possible that many important physicists (for instance) also just happened to be a little “lucky,” so to speak. It wasn’t that they necessarily have “talent” for the math involved, so much as they are relatively smart people that became proficient in the field (by whatever means) in general that just so happened to have an epiphany at the right time (see the oft cited fact that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was on the horizon regardless of whether or not Einstein ever existed).

That doesn’t mean that EVERYONE with work will be able to become quantum physicists or Michelangelo if they just TRY hard enough, but I don’t think you necessarily need raw talent to succeed. Some people have more talent, which makes it quicker and easier for them to pick things up, some people can do the same, albeit with more effort, and some people will just be behind on some things. Of course, this all exists on a continuum. Even with my musical talent, maybe if I had practiced, there would be someone who could do my practicing self’s level of play without any real effort. I’m sure there are really absolute geniuses which can do truly amazing things with little training, but I’m not convinced that in the long run, even if they train themselves a lot, they’ll necessarily outclass a less talented (or hell, plain luckier) individual who trains just as much, though they may succeed in a shorter time (except perhaps in things that are measured in such a fine grain of detail like 100m dash world records).

55

As the old expression goes: (paraphrasing) “The forests would be sadly quiet if only the birds who did it best were singing”

That doesn’t discount the existence, and uneven distribution of “talent” at various endeavors as it applies to this thread, but it has been a little bit of consolation to many generations of music students.

56

I think of talent as being an immediate grasp of how something works, what it is for, or understanding its core. After that it takes skill and practice to develop that into results.

I have always loved to draw, and I’m sort of good at it, but that came from being able to translate what I “saw” to the paper, and as time passed and I did it more often, I got better at it. Then I reached a plateau, and started to lose interest in that specific skill, having found other things to occupy my creative desires instead. But that same innate grasp and comprehension of the core is still there, driving me to practice and learn how to improve.

57

Hmm. I’ve never thought of talent as an either-or sort of thing. Of course it’s a continuum, like strength, height, intelligence, or any other physical or mental characteristic of a person.

58

This topic used to come up regularly on a mandolin board that I used to visit and they reached the same conclusion as this thread!

I take the view that talent is how much improvement comes from effort. That view allows for the idea that anyone can accomplish “X” with enough effort. However, the effort that some people would require to become even competent exceeds the normal lifespan of humans.

59

I’ve never understood people with this attitude. Every person I’ve ever met with this attitude was a mediocre untalented person. This does not mean that they were not in the top 10% of some particular activity.

I knew a guy who told me that I could win the Tour De France if I just wanted to try hard enough. This is the stupidest statement that I had ever heard. If you look at Eddy Merckx or Lance Armstrong’s cardiovacular capabilites, it’s pretty fucking obvious that no matter what my what my desire was, my cardiovascular capbilities are maybe half of what these statistical outliers have.

This guy was certainly smart enough to graduate from college, but he was mediocre in every metric.

I’m pretty convinced that his mom told him that he was the smartest kid ever, but Jesus Christ, my academic performance was lightyears better than his, and I’m really not all that great.

In any case, just because I’ve ridden a bicycle from Canada to Mexico, and have ridden 3 double centuries does not mean I’m remotely a decent bike rider, and to even complete the Tour de France means that you are one of the top 300 bicycle riders on the planet.

This guy had not ever even ridden a metric century yet somehow he thinks that I could win the fucking Tour de France.

Then there is the Dunning–Kruger effect which shows that incompetent people overestimate their abilities while talented people underestimate them.