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Oh.. too many people have no talent and still play, and play and play...
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05-15-2020 11:34 AM
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If clueless people would only stop telling others how they're supposed to play.....
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lets see...talent...yep I believe in it...its much like love...
and it makes you believe your going to have it..be in it..forever...you even take vows..
I will love you forever...and then...
your wife changes her name to ..plaintiff...Last edited by wolflen; 05-16-2020 at 02:10 PM.
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Originally Posted by Jonah
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Originally Posted by Litterick
But it is more like a human sympathy.. not what I expect real art to deliver...
As for talent.. I do not quite understand.. I thimk there can be different talents.
For example.. some can be talented in hearing well, some can be physically gifted (good hands on guitar), some have some kind of math gift in music and can quickly get through complex conceptions they create (I am sure Holdsworth had that)... etc.
We often mix it when we admire musicians..
for me artistic talent is very special thing, it is not necessarily connected directly with perfect pitch and virtuoso physical talent...
And I mostly meant that when I said: there are lots of people without talent who keep playing and playing... I meant professional enviroment
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The word talent just means a natural aptitude or skill. It doesn't necessarily mean high-level aptitude. Someone with a very high-level aptitude will obviously become more famous or successful than those with only mediocre aptitudes but that's to be expected.
Everybody here has a talent for music otherwise we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't be playing the guitar at all if we had no aptitude for it; it would be senseless. And it's highly likely that music isn't our only talent. Nearly all of us can do other things too.
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Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
Very similar sentiment.
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Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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Talent, ability, creativity and style... God given, acquired, and or developed? Hmmm...
I've squandered much on my fret time on foolishness. Less practice and study given up for writing and technique / nuance development and just playing trash and then there's the focus / obsession on the instrument to get in the way.
Gads if only I had split those endeavors 50/50 25-35 years before arthritis grabbed my hands.
At any rate, of all the player attributes I think that once a player finds a style that is clearly identifiable as their own which few (IMO) find even mediocre players become vastly more interesting than technical wizards, and great players with style are even more interesting.
I think whether they liked their style or not most any player could pick out Alvin Lee, David Gilmour, Blackmore, Malmsteen, Tom Scholz, Django, Di Miola, McLaughlin, Benson and many others. To illustrate the point... how many players have easily copied many of the famous players, but how many clones developed their own style? Likely none or they wouldn't play someone else's style :-)
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FWIW I think talent is a real thing, but I see it as the measure of how effectively you learn new skills from practice. For a talented person acquiring new skills to add to your arsenal takes less work and fewer repetitions. Ease in learning has the added bonus of being more rewarding, which in turn encourages more work.
I have a friend I've known since eight grade. He really doesn't even like playing music much; but ever since we were thirteen he has been able to listen to something, pick up the guitar, spend a few minutes working through it, and... voila he's playing it. People would push him to play particular things, so he did. The less he liked something, the better he played it. He HATED Santana, for example, and could play any Santana solo he heard from ear indistinguishably from the recordings. But of course, he wasn't born playing Santana leads. He had to do the same process for learning the solos or a particular physical technique the rest of us did. The difference seemed to be that it would take me and my other friends weeks of working at something and only an hour or so for him.
He never became a professional musician and, frankly, hasn't developed much as musician in the last 35 years. I became a lawyer because the work required for me to push my musical skills to a professional level was too high a bar. A couple of my music nerd friends from childhood have become successful professional musicians. They fell in a spectrum between my friend and myself.
That said, over nearly 40 years of playing the guitar I have definitely advanced and evolved. I put in a lot of hours, and am proud of how far I've come. But it is still true that I can spend six months learning some new technique or theory. I'll go over to my friend's place to jam, demonstrate what I've been working on, and have him work it out and play it better than me by the end of the evening.
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I'm not sure if I believe in innate talent for abstract things like music (maybe that's because I seem to have little experience with it myself, lol). If it does exist, I'd imagine that talent factors into one's skill at guitarin' in much the same way the human development in general works -- i.e., a combination of nature and nurture, genetics and environment.
Instead I go by an aphorism Pa Thump would use on occasion: "Attitude plus aptitude equals altitude." Of course, he didn't mention the other leg of that triad, which is practice. It's funny how the more I practiced, the more others thought I was talented.
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"FWIW I think talent is a real thing, but I see it as the measure of how effectively you learn new skills from practice. For a talented person acquiring new skills to add to your arsenal takes less work aend fewer repetitions. Ease in learning has the added bonus of being more rewarding, which in turn encourages more work."
My feelings as well....
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Talent is the ability to love...no...ACTUALLY...CRAVE the hard work it takes to be good at something.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Talent has nothing to do with goal setting over one's musical progress. If one knows how to set goals and how to achieve them, then we can speak about a work in progress. Even if I considered myself freakishly talented, I wouldn't still believe in my talents, I would still work through my life to set new goals and achieve them.
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My talent is decidedly average. I'm an amateur in the truest sense of the word - I'm not playing as a vocation, but for the love of it. I enjoy the process of learning and applying both what I learn and what talent I have to music production. It's very much a process, not a goal at this point. Which is just as well.
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If Richard Thompson and Pat Metheny are to be believed then Kenny G is a strong candidate for this accolade...
More seriously my own view of talent is that it is present when the artist has something to say, and the level of technical ability necessary to get that message across; ideally it is then received, understood and appreciated by the audience
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I am very talented in sounding like me and creating my unique stuff.
My talent in sounding like Wes, Kenny, Grant, Bireli, Django, Martijn, Jesse, Gilad, Pat, Joe, Kurt and all the other greats is average at best.
On a more serious note: my first goal is to have fun, so I would play regardless if I would consider myself talented or not. (Obviously when I would get boo-ed off the stage a lot, the fun would be over quickly.) Now it becomes more difficult when people ask me what price I demand to perform for them. That makes me shy. I really don't even dare to ask money because there are so many others who are so much more talented than I am.
With my bands it's a different story: I compose the songs and I am much more confident about the artistic value of those and then I am backed up by my talented band members who do deserve payment.
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The more I think about talent is that talent is mostly about being able to be obsessed with something and stay obsessed with it enough to work on it for an absurd amount of time. I started getting talented when I started practicing 2 hours a day. Last year I got a little more talented when I averaged 2.5 hours a day for the year. Since the lockdown my talent seems to be increasing because I'm doing 5 hours every day.
I feel similarly about my naturelness as a musician. I bet I would be a really natural musician if I was at it 7 hours a day.
For the record I don't feel like I have any talent for music particularly. Just a deep interest. Sometimes I feel like I should pack it up. For the pandemic though I recognize that it's given me something very cheap to occupy my time in an interesting way.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I’m thinking talented players are ten a penny tbh. I see plenty of talent on this forum.
The rarity is talented players who are willing to work at it at that crucial age when you can do it and understand how hard you have to work.
OTOH you never feel like you’ve done enough work. What happens as a pro is you get busy with stuff that stops you practicing. Might be gigs...
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Having seen a 15 year old in an adult combo class progress, in two years, to gigging regularly with the teachers (while his mother, a musician, complained that he didn't work hard enough at it) , I'm convinced there is such a thing as talent.
I'm also convinced there is such a thing as genius, which is a combination of massive talent and sustained hard work.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
My parents were supportive when I was a kid but also didn't know what to do to help me. My teachers were ok. And I was distracted and probably not that into it. In retrospect, if I'd paid attention or realized just how much work I needed to do, I could have either busted my ass or given it up entirely. Or something between the two. But it's only more recently that I realized that talent or not, people who end up great work their asses off, generally. Some people show initial talent and then peater out.
Pat Metheny appears to be an obsessive practicer, then and now.
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The way I see it a lot of people use the T word as an excuse.
Some people are really talented. But, also, so what?
How does this relate to you? I mean it's nice to listen to them obviously. And it's interesting when you see it up close.
But I think question like this are a bit introspective really. The main thing is create music, and enjoy doing it. And if it pleases you, work on your shit.
There's no point being that outcome dependent.
I suppose if you are looking to make money in a job and wanting to know if you are wasting your time, but in that case maybe playing jazz isn't the best idea anyway.
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I think it's just very strange to try to assess one's own level of talent -- doing so throws one between the scylla and charybdis of obnoxious self-puffery and false humility and fishing for compliments. So I'll put it in different terms. Music feels natural to me, like it's a completely normal, unexceptional thing to do. Wanting to get better at it, and being able to focus on learning new music or new idea or techniques feel natural in the same way. Whether it sounds good is a whole other question, one that I don't think I can answer objectively because I'm too aware of all the mistakes I make and ways in which I miss the mark.
John
RIP Nick Gravenites
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