How important is talent?

[tbdana]

Assuming that talent is a natural aptitude for playing music, how important is it to have that?

I think talent can actually work against you. Let me tell you a story about my brother and me.

Growing up, I had a brother two years younger than me. His name was Rick. Rick played the trumpet. He had natural talent. I did not.

Though I was two years older, Rick quickly rocketed past me. I practiced hard. Rick hardly practiced. I had played in the youth band for four years and was buried in the middle of the section. Rick had been in the youth band two years and was already playing first trumpet and being featured in solo pieces in concerts, with audiences wildly applauding him. I was invisible. Rick was a star.

When I was 17 I got promoted to first trombone in high school. Rick turned 15 that year, and dropped out of high school to go on the road with Bette Midler and was given his own feature that he got to play every night before thousands.

I practiced two hours a day, religiously. Rick hardly ever practiced. I played first in my high school band. Rick played with pros and was a celebrity.

But at some point that all changed. Rick reached a plateau, but I kept steadily improving. Other trumpeters started to pass Rick. He wasn't a prodigy anymore.

In 1980 I got a gig with Al Hirt and moved to New Orleans. Rick got buried in ash and debris by the explosion of Mount St. Helens (45 years ago TODAY) while playing in a club band. I went on to have a music career. Rick, rather than practice hard to stay up with other trumpeters his age, quit playing.

In my mind, the moral to that story is that slow and steady wins the race. Applying yourself consistently over time is more important than natural talent. Talent helps. But work wins.

What are your thoughts on the importance of talent?

[ghmerrill]

I think Aesop had it pretty much nailed about 2 millennia ago -- if there really was an Aesop and he really did write those fables (about which there now seems to be some degree of revisionist thinking ).

[tbdana]

I think Aesop had it pretty much nailed about 2 millennia ago -- if there really was an Aesop and he really did write those fables (about which there now seems to be some degree of revisionist thinking ).

The Crow and the Pitcher?

[ghmerrill]

I was thinking more of the tortoise and hare, although this is often taken to be a story about arrogance or over-confidence. But I always took it to be more along the lines of "slow and steady wins the race" or that work and perseverance can win over pure "talent" and "natural ability" (in the absence of the work and perseverance). I do see in the Wikipedia summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tortoise_and_the_Hare) of the fable that such a view has been endorsed throughout history.

[Burgerbob]

Sometimes I wonder what talent is.

I think some players get lucky and happen to get the fundamentals almost spot on right when they start playing. Some examples might be the brother in this story, or Alessi. How much easier is it to get better when you don't have to worry so much about the basics of making a sound? You can actually worry about the music, or intonation, or any of the higher level skills.

Of course, Joe combined what I am terming "luck" with obvious talent (whatever that is) and 100% commitment to hard work, which is how he ended up at the level he did. This is a lightning-in-a-bottle combo that has only happened a few times. Lindberg is another example I think.

I think there are plenty of talented players out there that did NOT get that luck- Dana included. But that talent does make it easier to get to the end goal with hard work compared to someone without it.

[ghmerrill]

Sometimes I wonder what talent is.

Yeah. It's usually applied to areas of activity in which some degree of special physical ability is required -- whether this is muscle strength, hearing, sight, stamina, coordination, etc. You do hear people sometimes referred to as "talented" mathematicians or engineers, but I think that's really a kind of borrowing of the term. Some people hear better than others (in various ways), see better than others, react more quickly than others, are stronger or faster than others, etc. -- and that seems to be the "base" of their "talent", upon which performance can be built. But there are other cases where it's difficult to separate such "talent" from determination, focus, practice, and development of skills.

"Talent" does, so often, seem to refer to something "innate" that one has without "working" to achieve it -- as though it can't be acquired. This may not be entirely accurate.

[GabrielRice]

Joe Alessi came from a family of musicians. His mother was an opera singer and his father was a trumpet player (and so is his brother). Which means that he heard high level music making - specifically practicing - at his house from the time he was born. I hear a certain seemingly innate understanding of the building blocks and language of music from children of professional musicians all the time.

If you get a chance to look at the 2001 print edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, take a look at the Bach family tree. Johann Sebastian is in the middle of the two-page spread. He was not a "singular genius" in the sense that he came from nowhere. He was in the family business.

I have a certain amount of "talent" that seems like it might have been inherited. 6 years ago I met an older half-brother for the first time, and it turns out he and his twin are also both very musical, and their children are professional musicians. One of them is pretty famous in the R&B/Hip-Hop world right now, actually, though he also has training as an operatic singer.

That said, I credit most of the basis of my success in music to my early musical education, which was in a community music school with an incredible program that included ear training from the very beginning. I don't have absolute pitch, but I learned to identify intervals and do rhythmic and melodic dictation starting from when I was 6 years old. I was never required to take an ear training course in college or grad school.

Nature? Nurture? Yes.

[LeTromboniste]

I think defining "musical talent" is very difficult, maybe impossible, because it is used to refer to any number of aptitudes that may in fact be innate abilities that have nothing inherently musical.

i.e. If your memory, or language acquisition abilities, or IQ, or fine motor skills, etc etc is at a very high level, and you happen to start playing music and like it, that innate ability will most likely help you in music and make it easier for you than for many others, and you will be called "musically talented", but in reality that ability would also help you in many other fields and has initially nothing to do specifically with music.

[hyperbolica]

Talent is a lot of different things. I lacked a couple of skills early on that I wasn't a natural in - I didn't read very well and my time wasn't what it should have been.
Learning about rhythm patterns would have helped me with both of those. I wish my teachers had focused more on my weaknesses than my strengths.

On the other hand I did better in engineering than I would have done in a musical career.

People who acquire natural skills without a lot of work are considered talented. I had certain skills that helped me early on like tone, range and interpretation , but also had certain limitations that prevented me from going past a certain point. I could have chugged through and been a mediocre college professor, but I scored above average as an engineer, so I'm glad I wasn't a better musician in a way. Music has made a really excellent avocation. .

[NotSkilledHere]

I think talent in anything really is certainly important. However, I do not think talent makes or breaks someone's ability to perform something or improve, unless you just happen to be particularly untalented at a specific something.

That being said talent is nothing without hard work. I see talent as someone who has an innately high skill floor and a high skill ceiling, talkin in terms of video game mechanics.

Having an innate high skill floor means that at minimum, they will be doing things at a noticeably higher/proficient level compared to others of equivalent experience/effort, particularly early on. having an innate high skill floor means that with little effort and perhaps immediately, they will be classed as "talented " or a prodigy.

Having a high skill ceiling refers to the very limits of their abilities, provided that everything goes right in life for them. This most certainly means hard work, regardless of talent level. Nobody hits their skill ceiling without religious and meticulous hard work at their craft. and often is the case where we people dont reach their skill ceiling because their innate high skill floor causing them to more or less become lazy.

It is my personal theory that most of those who are regarded as the best are not the most talented, but those who are the most talented have the most potential to become the best. In almost every case everywhere, the person who is often regarded as the best or at least current best, has talent without a doubt but also has hard work and meticulous practice behind them. And they will often speak of people they knew earlier in their career that they, and perhaps even many others, that they feel are far more talented without a doubt.

I think most "talented" people have significantly above average innate skill floors compared to average.

it's my belief that those who are regarded as the best often have skill floors above average without a doubt but below those considered "talented" early on.

I think it is almost impossibly rare to find someone with such a high innate skill floor that their innate skill floor can carry them through a career and gain achievements that they are regarded as one of the best, considered lazy, and still have people wondering the heights they could have reached if they had put in even minimal effort to practice/train. I know of only one such person: KennyS, who was a pro counter strike player who won a Major and was so good at his particular position/weapon, that he was always in conversation among who is great. And when people look at the peak of his career, many people still consider him the greatest of all time at his position (and if not, certainly in the conversation). He's even gone on record to say that he's always been lazy and never put in the effort required to truly reach the heights he could have hit.

At the end of the day, talent is only truly relevant at the beginning. Everything past it requires hard work. If you do not put in the effort to become who you could be, you will never get there

[boneagain]

I find John Muir Laws take on talent very illuminating.

Paraphrasing VERY loosely (with due apologies to Jack), the idea of talent is often a slap in the face of very hard workers.

Laws is very well known in the nature journaling/natural history illustration gang.
I have NO idea of how talented he may or may not be.
I DO know he works EXTREMELY hard.
I DO know I LOVE his work.
I DO know I love how he helps others develop the skills to do work I also love.

Playing one aspect of trumpet is not really the same as being able to make the trumpet do what you want to do. Dana's brother learned that the hard way.

The folks who get to, and stay on, the top in music achieve that by hard work.
If there is a talent involved I think it is the ability to absorb the tedium of grinding over and over on minutiae not just to gain a skill in the first place, but then to maintain that skill over decades.

Dana's playing reminds me a LOT of Jack Laws' drawing

[JohnL]

He had natural talent. I did not.

Dana, did you really have no natural talent whatsoever? Or did your brother have so much that it seemed to you that you had none?

I would argue that both "talent" and hard work are necessary to truly excel in a field. In the absence of at least some natural aptitude, hard work is like building a very nice house on sand. In the absence of hard work, natural aptitude is like have a good, solid place to build a house and not actually building something.

Have you ever known someone who really wanted to be good at something, worked really hard at it, but just never seemed to make much progress?

[tbdana]

He had natural talent. I did not.

Dana, did you really have no natural talent whatsoever? Or did your brother have so much that it seemed to you that you had none?

I don't know. That's hard to quantify. But I'll just say that for several years I was stuck in the middle of the pack in childhood trombone sections, and I did not excel or stand out from the rest. Very average player for a very long time, throughout my teens and military band.

[robcat2075]

"Talent" is the portion of you that can not be credited to someone else.

[ghmerrill]

"Talent" is the portion of you that can not be credited to someone else.

But so is "individual effort".

[VJOFan]

This question feels a bit like the question, do we have free will? People can argue that all decisions we make can be traced back to some kind of influence, input or existing condition that makes our choice inevitable. However, in the moment a lot of decisions feel very self determined.

In the same way one could argue everything we end up doing on an instrument is baked in before we start playing. It usually feels like it is the work and thought put in that leads to achievement.

We probably can't know. Some people seem to go farther, faster, but it is hard to sift out all the variables.

To me, all that is knowable is the process of learning and developing. That is the part I worked on with trombone students and work on today with language learners. There has to be the consistent, effective effort over time. How far one will develop is never knowable. However, when it's close to over, it's good to be able to know that you did everything you could to rise as far as the time in your life allows.

My answer to the OP then is, we can't evaluate the existence or quantity of talent. Only process and effort matter to an individual at any moment.

[It's over can mean the performance date, the audition, death... anything that marks an end of a development window.]

[ghmerrill]

This question feels a bit like the question, do we have free will?

The vaguer the concept, the more ambiguous the terminology, the vaguer the analysis, the less satisfying the "answer". But a good time can be had by all.

[tbdana]

I like this post. I love philosophy, physics, and thought experiments, so this post ticks some buttons for me.

This question feels a bit like the question, do we have free will? People can argue that all decisions we make can be traced back to some kind of influence, input or existing condition that makes our choice inevitable. However, in the moment a lot of decisions feel very self determined.

I feel that this question is a function of time, and my understanding is that time is nothing but a rather stubborn illusion, and therefore no matter how it feels in the moment, everything is deterministic.

In the same way one could argue everything we end up doing on an instrument is baked in before we start playing. It usually feels like it is the work and thought put in that leads to achievement.

We probably can't know. Some people seem to go farther, faster, but it is hard to sift out all the variables.

Of course, no one picks up an instrument for the first time and plays wholly formed, so work and thought are clear prerequisites to achievement. I suppose this comes down to your basic nature/nurture analysis.

To me, all that is knowable is the process of learning and developing...My answer to the OP then is, we can't evaluate the existence or quantity of talent. Only process and effort matter to an individual at any moment.

Process is really all there is in life, right? Jean-Paul Sartre would argue that a person's essence is not predetermined but rather created through their choices and actions throughout their life. Therefore, it's only by observing the totality of their choices upon death, after their journey has ended, that we can understand the meaning of any life.

From a psychological perspective, the notion that we can't know a person until the end of their journey suggests that individuals are constantly evolving. Their identity is not fixed, and their experiences play a crucial role in shaping their beliefs, values, and behaviors. This is true with playing the trombone, as well. Which of us has a static experience? Our practice habits, our skills, the amount and quality of time we put in, our understanding, our knowledge, and our musical philosophies are constantly changing and evolving throughout our lives. Perhaps it's just the lucky ones who land on a particular approach or technique earlier than most that we call "talented," and perhaps we all become talented to varying degrees at different points throughout our lives.

[robcat2075]

OK.

"Talent" is the portion of you that can not be credited to something else.



I feel like "individual effort" is an imaginary distinction.

Aside from a conjoined twin, there is nothing one does that one did not do.

"Individual effort" is a phrase that seems to come up most when we are trying to cast a positive light on a dim result.

[ghmerrill]

I like this post. I love philosophy, physics, and thought experiments, ...

(Okay, I'll play ) ... Me too. In fact it's arguable that I made my living off those and related fields for decades. Now I'm not serious about them any more, but they're still fun to play with.

my understanding is that time is nothing but a rather stubborn illusion, and therefore no matter how it feels in the moment,

I'll take this in a poetic (as opposed to physics) sense, but even then don't agree with it.

everything is deterministic.

Really, really, ... disputable ... in terms of contemporary physics; and even problematic in terms of classical physics. It also depends on what "deterministic" means -- which turns out to be a pretty complex concept to be precise about. Again, a poetic (rather than a scientific) reading might be more successful.

But have you read Spinoza? You might really like his approach to determinism and free will. In the end it's quite nutty, but still very interesting.

In the same way one could argue everything we end up doing on an instrument is baked in before we start

Surely no one would argue this (maybe Spinoza?). Straw man. I bet you know that -- being an attorney. More poetic license?

Process is really all there is in life, right? Jean-Paul Sartre would argue that a person's essence is not predetermined but rather created through their choices and actions throughout their life.

Well, there isn't much process without things which enter into the processes. Of course you could go Whitehead's route and try to construe things as processes as well.

But okay, it's meaningful to say that process (or processes) is(are) a big part of life. So are events, but we can shelve that for now -- especially since it's events that seem to make up processes and in terms of which the processes are described.

I'd lay off the Sartre here. Whitehead might be more fruitful, and a lot more intelligible. But different people have different tastes.

the notion that we can't know a person until the end of their journey suggests that individuals are constantly evolving.

Maybe. At the end of the journey you can say what the person was. But if you want to say what the person is at any point, then all you have is their "journey" up to that point. A full person, in that model (very Carnapian) turns out to be a sequence of person -slices or person-segments. But whether they're "evolving" or "devolving" or just changing depends on the events and the sequence of them that make up those slices.

perhaps we all become talented to varying degrees at different points throughout our lives.

This I will buy without qualification -- pretty much independent of what "talented" means.

There! That was fun, eh?

[Savio]

Talent is good! Also we have to work. Explore the trombone, the music, Intonation, styles, listening around and understand how to fit in. ff in Beethoven is not the same as in Mozart or Sjostakovitsj. Staccato is not the same in a big band as a Brahms symphony. That understanding is not talent. It's learned. It's experience. But talent is a very good ground to become a good musician. I believe you need some degree of talent.

Leif

[VJOFan]

In the same way one could argue everything we end up doing on an instrument is baked in before we start

Surely no one would argue this (maybe Spinoza?). Straw man. I bet you know that -- being an attorney. More poetic license?

Mmm, not an attorney- I think the words got misattributed.

That talent is predetermined is said in so many words, I'd have to defer to your knowledge of argument, yet every time the phrase "X is a natural talent." is uttered, the implication is that X was destined to be great and is so only because they had the aptitude. Other variations "X is so gifted." Everything comes easy for X." X was made to play the __________."

I am not trained in philosophy or argument in any way. That is probably obvious. I was just turning some ideas over in my head and they spilled out on the keyboard.

[Bach5G]

I’d kind of like to give some a try.

[tbdana]

[JTeagarden]

I cringe when I hear band directors at concerts go on about how lucky they are to work with such a talented group of kids!

One, I think of innnate abilities as kind of normally distributed, so they're really only working with a couple truly talented students, and the bulk are all huddled around the mean/median.

They should be lucky to play with kids who work hard!

By the way, every notice how so many Japanese and Korean student ensembles play amazingly well? From where I sit, it's because they work their tails off, and deserve to be as good as they are.

[Posaunus]

... ever notice how well so many Japanese and Korean student ensembles play amazingly well? From where I sit, it's because they work their tails off, and deserve to be as good as they are.

[blast]

I think huge amounts of talent can be negative. I can think of several very musically talented people who gave up because they never had to work hard, and when it came to the stage where they did have to work hard, they couldn't find the motivation.

[blast]

I didn't have much natural talent, but I worked really hard as a kid....really hard. I therefore think that anybody can get into an orchestra job if they want it and work for it, allowing for some luck along the way.

[baBposaune]

Let me try on a different approach to what "talent" means, regardless of context. Whether it's music, chess, writing, mathematics, being an athlete (etc.) talent is the ability to acquire skills more quickly than others.

Talent is not important in the long run but can be in the short term.

Hard work over time (long term) will allow someone to catch up to the person who gains proficiency early on.

In my view, talent is not all that important if we are talking about achieving success in the music field. If you put in quality practice time you will get pretty good, even if you weren't labeled "talented" when you first started out.

[tbdana]

Since we can't agree what talent is, I suppose we can't decide how important it is.

I want to push back on the notion that talent is only a short term advantage. True talent, in addition to a quick start, allows for a higher ceiling than the rest of us can reach. Not everyone can reach the same heights, no matter how hard we work at it. Some folks just have a way of tapping into the music matrix that eludes the rest of us.

[ghmerrill]

Let me try on a different approach to what "talent" means, regardless of context. Whether it's music, chess, writing, mathematics, being an athlete (etc.) talent is the ability to acquire skills more quickly than others.

Ah, an "operational definition" of talent -- and hence intelligible and actually useful. I like that.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

I gave up on the notion of “talent” years ago. The more years I have been around musicians I have come to realize that, at one point or another, hard work and persistence is the key to success on an instrument.

I have taught students who had a two+ octave range after playing the instrument for only two or three weeks. Yet, they were not able to hold their half-notes the proper length of time after another 6 years of playing. Other students were able to name the pitches in a G# melodic minor scale, but were not able to find a mid-range F if it was the first note of a piece.

Because I have seen such huge variations in thought processes and ability to perform, I choose to think of students as being on a mind continuum and a physical-ability continuum. When the mind and the body are at the same level (and there is steady improvement), a musician is usually doing very well. For example, I once had a student who had a wonderful sound and ease of range (D5 was no issue for her). However, she was not able to name the pitches that she was playing in scale patterns (somehow she memorized them as slide patterns. In this situation, her physical ability was far ahead of her mental ability on the instrument (body was ahead the mind). After the problem was diagnosed, we had to make sure she “knew” exactly what she was playing. Thus, she had to name pitches and write them on manuscript at lessons when playing things like: scales, arpeggios, lip slur patterns, etc….. It eventually solved the problem.

Another example….. I had a student that could analyze all of the chord structures in the Arban characteristic studies (fully diminished chords, dominant of the dominant, etc….. Yet, he was not able to play them because his would become very tired after about 8 measures of playing. In this situation, his mind was leaps and bounds ahead of his body. Obviously, we had to find ways to make his playing more efficient and increase his endurance.

In all of these situations, the musicians definitely had talent, but their strength was offset by a mental or physical shortcoming. The most successful musicians, in my view, have a congruency in their understanding of music and their musical physical abilities……i.e., their minds and bodies are both performing at the same high level.

[JTeagarden]

Even professional sports is full of athletes who just kept plugging away at it, just kept improving and improving, never really becoming great until suddenly they were.