Is talent necessary?

[IbanezFreak777]

Talent is drive and persistence to pull the music from within your mind out into the real world....

[HeavyMetal4Ever]

Originally Posted by Inzane

That's reassuring to hear as a beginner. I just wish I was starting out at age 15, instead of my current 34. (well 33, since I technically started playing/learning last year)

I'm pretty sure it was in the "Steve Vai 30hour guitar workout" published in Guitar World a couple of years ago.

I started when I was 13, and i'm 34 now, but I wasted years just noodling and screwing around before I got serious about practice.

Imho, it's all about the quality of time you spend on the instrument, not the quantity.

Rock on!

[Dino]

Originally Posted by Inzane

That's reassuring to hear as a beginner. I just wish I was starting out at age 15, instead of my current 34. (well 33, since I technically started playing/learning last year)

It only takes a couple years of dedicated practice to become pretty darn good. I've been playing since I was 13 and for most of those years I have been playing the same pentatonic crap and didn't learn anything new. Only recently I have been taking lessons again (at age 33) and expanding my knowledge of music theory. Find a good teacher and take lessons twice a week so you retain what you have learned better. A couple of years is all you need. fter that it's just refining your skills.

[richard1973]

anyone watch that program last week about Vanessa May? they were trying to find out through tests and such whether her talent came from her natural ability she was born with, or dedication and practice.

But as mentioned already their summary came up with what was mentioned here and is quite obvious really, u need the endlesss hours of practise to get the agility and ability and feel for the instrument, but being born blessed with a good ear and having theory drummed into you at an early age is also going to help.

So yeah being born lucky or have loads of understanding from tuition isnt going to make you a speed freak genious, the hours of practise is going to do that part.

[SteVeTurchin]

Musical view will always be the first for me. But its probably easier to learn music and compose when you are a better player. So I'm 15 and I'm doing my best on practicing guitar, 6 hours per day. Hoping for great musical talent.
Its really a shame when you got a lot of music going through your head, you hardly write it, but you can't express it. :/

[AxeHappy]

This is copied from Troy Stetina's website, and conviently enough follows pretty much exactly what I think:

Skills are learned. Of course, some of us may have better or faster response times, or be a little quicker at learning certain types of things than others. But in reality, the level of skill we achieve as guitarists has far more to do with our motivation, our interest level, and our enthusiasm and temperament, than some elusive, innate quality called "talent." It’s practice that gives a guitarist good technique.

I’ve already dealt with motivation, inspiration, and enthusiasm in 1. The key to success So let’s take a look at temperament--the other biggie as I see it. Obviously, someone into perfection and detail will likely wind up with a more highly-honed and precisely-controlled technique than someone without that trait. But is that necessarily better? I mean, it’s a big world and there are a lot of different tastes in music. Simplicity is an art, too. And maybe another guitarist who may lack a focus on detail may have a unique creativity, or presence, or feel, etc. Music isn’t just about skill. If it were, it would be just like juggling or typing. Music is about creative expression.

I think temperament also has a lot to do with the more elusive qualities: so-called "star quality," or "fire" in one’s presence or playing, and even creativity itself. Here are the aspects that really fall more clearly into the innate realm. We can’t do much about our basic temperament. But again, it’s a big world out there, with room for every expression of style: from intense, dramatic, and explosive, to relaxed, lazy, silly, etc. So wherever you happen to fall on the spectrum, there is undoubtedly a way to make it work for you.

Anyway, I would venture to say that your motivation level, interest, and enthusiasm, operating through your particular temperament, result in your innate talent. It is well established at this point that our brains actually change in response to what we learn and do--our behaviors. When you are learning guitar, you are actually "re-wiring" your neural pathways and changing the structure of your brain. You are building new connections, and new abilities. So what exactly is innate, anyway? I mean, after you have played guitar for three years, hasn’t that skill become innate in you? In a very real sense it is enabled by the very structures of your brain itself. That sounds "innate" to me, by definition.

I think creativity is also very misunderstood. It is not something that one either "has" or "doesn’t have." Everyone is creative to a certain degree. Yes some people may seem more creative than others, and some people show their creativity in different ways. But none of us really knows just how creative we might be, given the right circumstances and the right approaches. There are things that we can do to bring out and nurture the creativity each of us has. The first step is to realize that there really are no rules. We need to start trusting our ideas, to stop judging them right away, and to stop worrying about whether we are "creative enough." Beyond that basic advice, certain of my books, like Speed Mechanics and Secrets to Writing Killer Songs, explore a few more specific techniques for expanding creativity in their respective areas.

Bottom Line:

Don’t worry about whether you’re one of those chosen, "special" people with "talent." Just follow your own heart: your own motivation, enthusiasm, and interests. And in time, people will be talking about what an incredible "talent" you are. If you have the drive, there’s certainly a way that you can make your mark out there.

[kotornut]

I think most people are right that talk about it here. Talent is that bit of natural ability that helps you in the learning process. I play with a guy who takes lessons and practices techniques and learns all the good songs and so on. He's a good guitarist but I've played with people that never took any lessons and are better. They practice too, so there is no way around that, but as far as rifling off the names and positions of scales and modes and showing technique after technique they couldn't do it. But there are a lot of people in between I think.

I'm a little bit like the second type. I don't have a lot of patience for working on my "speed" or my "sweeps" and so on, but if there is something in my head that I want to do, I do it. Pure and simple. But on the other hand I'm limited when I'm trying to do a lot of other things like learning songs for covering or understanding anything in theory which can hurt my ability to improvise in a lot of situations. Also, theres a limit in how clean I play something when I'm really trying to use speed. I'm trying to bridge these gaps now, but for a long time you couldn't make me practice anything but stuff I write. But I still had to practice a lot in order to achieve what was in my head, even if it was something I came up with.

I have to say that talent is 5-10% and work ethic is 90-95% of the equasion. But I have to say I'm sort of sad that a lot of guitar players are becoming athleticly minded about guitar. It's less about the music and more about the techniques these days. Just go look at youtube. It's a shame when people start to think that just by showing speed and insane techniques they are making quality music, 'cause they aren't.

[IbanezFreak777]

Originally Posted by IbanezFreak777

Talent is drive and persistence to pull the music from within your mind out into the real world....

Yeah I aggree ibanezfreak777 your so right, and clever and handsome i might add :P



jokes aside, I really believe that any human can play an instrument well, because alot of the technical side of playing an instrument, is muscle memory. The more you repeat something the better and easier it gets. Talent is the energy that comes from within that actually pushes you to practise.

People who pick up an instrument, learn for 2 weeks and then say, nah I cant be bothered, that right there is a lack of talent.

Talent is what makes you want to play.

[ColinMmmmm]

I think of natural talent as being stronger, faster, or smarter. None of which really matter all that much in guitar playing. Moving your fingers quickly doesn't make you a better guitarist. Being smarter doesn't make you a better guitarist (although it may help with comprehension of theory). I watch the best guitarists in the world and they make it look so easy - because it is if you do enough repetitions. Practice makes you a better guitar player, natural talent gives you a negligible advantage.

[Clonetool]

I saw a savant on 60 Minutes that played amazing pieces but he was blind. The teacher said the kid is a genius but plays every note exactly the same striking the keys at exactly the same force every time. How can you rate talent like his. Is it talent or mimicking?

[Myst and rain]

Wow, there are a lot of very interesting replies in this thread.

[Myst and rain]

Originally Posted by Clonetool

I saw a sevant on 60 Minutes that played amazing pieces but he was blind. The teacher said the kid is a genius but plays every note exactly the same striking the keys at exactly the same force every time. How can you rate talent like his. Is it talent or mimicking?

You mean a 'savant'?

Anyway, that's a good question you asked there. I don't know what the the answer is, personally.

[Matheau]

Originally Posted by ColinMmmmm

I think of natural talent as being stronger, faster, or smarter. None of which really matter all that much in guitar playing. Moving your fingers quickly doesn't make you a better guitarist. Being smarter doesn't make you a better guitarist (although it may help with comprehension of theory). I watch the best guitarists in the world and they make it look so easy - because it is if you do enough repetitions. Practice makes you a better guitar player, natural talent gives you a negligible advantage.

Isn't that a little self contradictory, since you get stronger and faster by working out and smarter by learning. Just like guitar playing, you might have a few traits that help or hinder any of those things a bit, but in the end, it still is the amount of effort put into it that counts.

[ColinMmmmm]

Not really - some people just have the genetics to develop exceptional speed or strength. And reading books doesn't make you smarter.

[Racerx2k]

This is a fun and philosophical read. Here's my 2 cents:

Talent is not entirely necessary. Yeah, it takes a CERTAIN amount of talent to merely be able to pull a song out of your fingers that is pleasing to the listener, but many "talented" people have gone a long way on very little.
Now, "talent" is what you make of it, whether it be a natural talent, whereby a person just "gets it" rather easily, or it is a learned talent, acquire through dedicating hours and hours, honing your skills. sometimes, it is BOTH, however, in my case, I tend to pick up on things, easily, but don't really spend much time at all, practicing. The thing is, is that my lack of practicing ethics isn't based on laziness. What it IS based on was my concern of the instrument losing that certain magic in my eyes. Once you climb a mountain, you can't look at it the same way, and I never wanted to become bored with it, so I never really forced myself to practice several hours a day, learning every chord and scale I could get my hands on. I chose, instead, to take it as it came, and that's what I still sorta do, today. for me, I find it more important to play whats in your head and in your heart, that whats on some scale chart. To me, music should always be about invoking some emotion in the listener, whatever that emotion may be. Otherwise, if the musician hasn't done his/her job.