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“Look at that!” McPherson says. “She’s got a blueprint in her mind she’s constantly comparing herself to. She’s working in phrases, complete thoughts. She’s not ignoring errors, she’s hearing them, fixing them. She’s fitting small parts into the whole, drawing the lens in and out all the time, scaffolding herself to a higher level.”
Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code (p. 4). Random House. Kindle Edition.
See Edwin Gordon. Also Hal Galper.
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04-25-2019 12:00 PM
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My general opinion on most non-fiction pop-science kinda books is pretty dim, most books like "blink" I feel would be better served by a paragraph than a book.
Originally Posted by christianm77
This book is my absolute favorite study of talent and practice habits I've ever read. I recommend it without reservation.
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The most important talent is commitment to practice. The "extremely gifted" has practiced so much more. They were born with a talent to practice, to stay focused for many hours. And the more they practiced, the better they became at practicing. The sixth sense is there, but it's an individual thing, never the same.
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Natural talent in a jazz context? I think there are people with a knack for hearing fundamental harmony. They're just wired in their brains to hear it and on a basic level articulate physically through voice those notes better than others. But I think jazz harmony, rhythm and improvisation has be nurtured whether consciously or subconsciously, for instance, your family or individual who appreciates jazz by constantly hearing recordings (whether they can know it's called that or not) and that naturally talented person is willing to explore those extra colorful sounds that express the genre...this is also assuming their jazz listening taste are more traditional jazz (trad to bebop eras).
Who's going to naturally scat like Louis Armstrong without some little bit of context like from a record and hearing things like the blues or those distinct elements that are attributed to a basic sound of a jazzy blues? The sound of a dominant 7th or "blue notes", though, one with no musical training can't articulate those technical descriptions likely can imitate jazzy pentatonic scale not knowing that's what their doing. The "natural" has heard those things more acutely than others and has nurtured that ability interest through jazz-listening intent or environment.
I'm partially using my experience as an example. I impressed my guitar instructor in my late-in-life lessons because he saw I had a knack to play fairly simple Freddie Green things, but this person observing my immediacy for some jazz guitar chords, for example, probably didn't realize it took lots of time for myself to explore it in a self-taught manner. There was a time I could not articulate the term "dominant 7th" about chord but when I recognized it via listening to jazz, I could identify it more immediately than others, sound-wise, and could likely vocalize it. In a nutshell, I think natural talent in a jazz context has to be nurtured (maybe for a few joyous listens as a young person or perhaps for years behind-the-scenes) for the observer to declare that he or she seems to have this ease-of-ability and is a natural...imho.
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And some see blue, green and yellow much better than others, and come by it quite naturally....Some people seem to be born with perfect pitch and can just hear the notes like other people can see blue, green and yellow...
I think a big part of talent is an affinity for a something in life. Some people are more visually aware, some more aurally, some more gastronomically etc. It's part of a personality. You could say it starts with a curiosity and interest in something, and very often it seems to come out of nowhere. This is the fuel that fires the hard work. One of them anyway.
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See below; scientific paper on amusia.
There are true congenital amusics and there are false amusics (adults who believe they are tone-deaf, but are neurologically normal).
Now, if we assume there are true congenital highly musical individuals; -what about the false ones (musicians who believe they are highly musical, but are neurologically normal)?
...Forget about it. it leads to nowhere.
In my experience musicians in general have very different abilities, different strengths and weaknesses.
Exhibit 1; guitarist with right-left hyper co-ordination that plays "Flight of the Bumblebee" at the speed of light, but can't swing.
Exhibit 2; Symphonic musician who can read ahead 10 bars prima-vista, but can't improvise.
Exhibit 3; A "lead-guitarist" that refuse to play chords and do rhythm work.
....a finger player that can't use a pick, a bottle neck, an amp...
....a jazz musician that doesn't listen to Coltrain....an organist that can't play bass pedals...
....A multi instrumentalist that can play 10 instruments, but doesn't stand out as phenomenal...
...a singer with a world class voice that can't remember lyrics....
No problemo! you just need a little self confidence, be good looking and give people a reason to pay attention.
Find your niche, and don't forget to practice.
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Quantifying tone deafness in the general population.
Sloboda JA, Wise KJ, Peretz I.
Abstract
Many people reach adulthood without acquiring significant music performance skills (singing or instrumental playing). A substantial proportion of these adults consider that this has come about because they are "not musical." Some of these people may be "true" congenital amusics, characterized by specific and substantial anomalies in the processing of musical pitch and rhythm sequences, while at the same time displaying normal processing of speech and language. It is likely, however, that many adults who believe that they are unmusical are neurologically normal. We could call these adults "false" amusics. Acquisition of musical competence has multiple personal, social, and environmental precursors. Deficiencies in these areas may lead to lack of musical achievement, despite the fact that an individual possesses the necessary underlying capacities. Adults may therefore self-define as "unmusical" or "tone-deaf" for reasons unconnected to any underlying anomaly. This paper reports on two linked research studies. The first is an interview study with adults defining themselves as tone-deaf or unmusical. The interview schedule was designed to discover what criteria are being used in their self-definitions. Preliminary results suggest that performance criteria (e.g., judging oneself as unable to sing) play a major role, even for people who claim and demonstrate no perceptual deficits. The second study reports progress on the development of new subtests for a revised version of the Montreal Battery for the Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA, Peretz et al., 2003). This currently contains six tests that allow for the assessment of melodic perception: contour, intervals, scale, rhythm, meter, and recognition memory. The MBEA does not assess two capacities that are generally accepted as central to normal music cognition: harmony and emotion. The development and norming of the emotion subtest will be described. When completed, the MBEA(R) will form a robust screening device for use with the general population, whose purpose is to discriminate "true" from "false" amusics. Such discrimination is essential to achieve a better understanding of the variety of causes of low musical achievement.
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The biggest probmlem is amusics who are convinced that they are real musiciansscientific paper on amusia.
There are true congenital amusics and there are false amusics.
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Good lord...do they exist IRL? I've never met an amusical musician. A few wannabes perhaps, but no true musicians. Those "DJs" are problematic but most of them don't qualify as musicians and neither do the barrel-organ grinders. An amusical musician would only be able to outsmart an amusical audience...5% of the population...enough to make a living on YT, yo. Originally Posted by Jonah
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Yea, I kinda figured that about Gould... Not to derail it more off topic, I'm not the biggest Classical music connoisseur, but Chopin music I unconditionally love. Just naturally enjoyable. Maybe you're right about Tchaikovsky as a cliche for Russians. I don't know what it is, but his melodic sense rubs me the wrong way, I can't stand it honestly! It's a shame. I love any and all Russian composers except him. Originally Posted by Jonah
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Words of wisdom by Louis Armstrong:
"If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it."
"You blows who you is."
"My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blow that horn..."
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The talented, good musicians I know... I'm generally in awe of how good their musical memory is compared to mine. I think having a good memory is one of the elements of talent.
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The above summarizes my thoughts on the matter, especially the part about "different practice strategies" and the results of someone adopting very effective ones early on. Originally Posted by pcsanwald
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Narural Talent is, roughly 99.8% of the time, the excuse that people who want to play an instrument very well but who aren’t willing to put in the time and work and make the sacrifices necessary, use to justify why they aren’t as accomplished as they dream about. The other 0.02% of Natural Talent is ultimately, statistically insignificant.
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Clifford Brown died when he was only 25. He had an enormous impact in the short years that he was active. He had a car accident and hospitalized for a year when he was 20 and he couldn't play the trumpet months after (see wikipedia). He wasn't a professional musician at the time although he played the trumpet since he was 10. He was a math major! Dizzy Gillespie convinced him to become a professional musician while he was in the hospital. He instantly became a jazz sensation. That's not statistically insignificant.
Drive to practice is not that rare. World is full of musicians, teens, adults who are ALL drive. If someone gives them a scale pattern, tells them it's good for them to practice it, they'll do it 8 hours a day no problem. That somehow doesn't automatically translate to becoming jazz sensation. There are people in their senior years who put in their 10000 hours many times over, they aren't 1/10'th a musician Clifford Brown was in his teens, they'll never be no matter how hard they practice. That's what it is. That's just life.Last edited by Tal_175; 04-29-2019 at 09:24 AM.
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“What” you practise must be very important, scales alone are not very useful (in my humble opinion) yet a lot of people seem to spend hours on them. Here’s Clifford Brown practising, sounds to me like he was practising improvising and phrases:
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I wonder if he is reading calisthenics or just playing systematically over a progression. Originally Posted by grahambop
I agree, I'm not saying doing patterns all day is useful. I'm just saying the talent of willingness to practice is not that rare but it doesn't lead to great results necessarily. Becoming a great musician implies lots of practice. But lots of practice doesn't imply becoming a great musician.
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Also intrinsic understanding of how one should practice to develop their skills effectively is a product of one's "musical intelligence".
Last edited by Tal_175; 04-29-2019 at 09:54 AM.
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Chet Baker is an interesting case, by all accounts he never practised much and didn’t know much theory, but had such a good ear that he could play just about anything.
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Most definitly. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I guess he had trained his ears well from early on. Originally Posted by grahambop
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Do your thing.
Words of wisdom by Cannonball Adderley:
"A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!"
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But they both worked very hard from the first minute they got the horn in their hands. otherwise, those lines don't come out. Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
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I believe that natural talent is real; some of us were born pre-wired to more easily create visual art, play music, dunk a basketball, etc. I would love to understand the science behind this but I don't think we're very far down that road.
My late mom played the piano by ear in kind of an un-hip, bouncy show tune style. Yet, if she knew a given song, she could instantly play it in any key, complete with octave runs and other embellishments, bass lines and reharmonizations. She could do this on the fly well enough to take requests from an audience - even if she'd never before played a given song. She took voice lessons but never had any formal music training beyond that. Trained pianists were astounded that she was doing all this by ear. Whenever I tried to make her analyze or explain how she did it she'd get very uncomfortable. It was just something she did and she had no interest in exploring how or why she could do it. I've read that Wes was the same way. This didn't happen without hours and hours spent woodshedding yet others could put in the same amount of time and be unable to do this. Life's a mystery! PS I didn't get those genes. Though I have some natural ability, I have to work at music. Sniff.
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Last night I learned about a large research project on musicality. The population for this study constitutes of twins, where one is a musician and the other is not. Same genetics, same social environment factors.
I didn't quite understand the purpose, but there were some preliminary findings. I was reminded of this thread and a number of related questions currently on this forum.
- There are strong indicators that confirm the effect of training, independent of genetics.
- The more someone has trained, the better the ears
- Training motivation in general is heavily influenced by genetics.
- Genetics play a role for the most fundamental aspects of music; Most people perceive a simple melody and rhythm without effort, but for a small group of tone-deaf amusics, it's nearly impossible.
- Creativity can be trained.
- Speed, coordination and muscle memory can be trained
- There is a correlation between musical ability and willingness to practice. The probability for someone to continue increases with positive feedback
A non-musician twin often had a stronger drive for another interest early in life, for example sports.
*****
Assume a teenager playing golf on a regular basis. Then family and work takes over. At 65 he picks up golf again. He wouldn't aim for the pro tour and would not be depressed over the fact he can't maintain scratch handicap. He would just play for good health and friendship.
Musicians don't play golf. Most of them lack ball-talent, and even if they've got it, it was never nurtured because the music training took all the time.
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Sorry can't read all the responses right now, but we have this debate in every profession/endeavor, even the sciences. I've always thought I would rather have a meticulous, dull, but compulsive and hardworking doctor on my case than a brilliant one. Sometimes this applies to the arts as well.
My son has a lot of natural talent. He plays keyboards and drums/percussion, as well as even a bit of guitar. He works for Google but in his spare time composes and records his own music.
My observation of him is that his talent lets him accomplish a lot with less effort than others. For instance, going into a major piano recital or competition in high school he would practice probably 1 hour a day, maybe 2. It was all self-directed, without any browbeating by his parents (though a lot of nervousness). Then on performance day, he would play the pieces flawlessly.
I imagine if he put in 4-6 hours a day, he could be a professional musician, possibly even a concert pianist. However, this was not his goal.
On the other hand, I think my natural musical talent is much less and would benefit from many more hours of woodshedding. I think I have more natural talent for things like writing, speaking extemporaneously, etc.
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This is what it sounds like:
And I will keep spamming this video until it is admitted that this video is the best jazz.
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There is absolutely no question in my mind that natural talent exists. I have known several teenagers who were gigging with the teachers before age 18. Yes, they practiced, but so did a lot of other people.
You can see it, perhaps more clearly, in dance. Some people move more fluidly than others and it doesn't look like something that can be taught. Or in drawing. Some people can draw, some can't and you can't take a non-drawer and teach them to do what the natural artists can do. Sure, you can teach some technique, but the non-drawer will always produce more mechanical renderings of anything. Even in baseball -- I knew kids who could control where they hit the ball at a level the rest of us couldn't comprehend.
As far as the 10,000 hour figure -- Gladwell, iirc, justified it anecdotally, mentioning, for example, the Beatles' time in Hamburg. He didn't quite do all the math, but it was clear that they had a lot of stage time.
OTOH, he could have mentioned the Rolling Stones who were successful without any equivalent amount of practice.
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