the concept of "talent": C/D?

I got this too from punk at first, but then after listening to a lot of people "being creative" I decided that what the real idea should be is that no one should be prevented from attempting to be creative. I think people do have varying levels of inborn talent (or aptitude, if you will - a less loaded word), in both the creative and technical senses.

Now would you like that new sonata composed by teatime or dinnertime, Your Highness? I have a little shopping to do in Salzburg, then I'll get straight to it.

Point 3: it is irrational to use anything resembling this argument to dissuade someone from trying something, as you can't know if you have a talent for something without having a good crack at it.

Point 1: Of course there's all that stuff out there and the zeitgeist leads others in particular directions and certain kinds of things are going to come along. Nonetheless, even accepting that certain kinds of dance music are coming and that nothing is truly original in some pointless sense, some people have demonstrated a greater ability to make good music than others. Maybe trip-hop was inevitable, but the fact remains that Massive Attack have consistently done it better than the Sneaker Pimps. Do you really believe that it is only that they worked harder? That there would be a direct and universal correlation in music between hard work and quality of output? This strikes me as nonsense. Being self-aware and disciplined might help make you a good musician, but it might also make you a good manager of a shoe shop. There is far more to music than that, and I see no harm in summarising the various different qualities that generally combine with some learning and effort to mean that some people make good music and others don't under the term 'talent'. (I'd say the same for painting or writing or anything along these lines; and indeed for computer programming and accountancy and magazine editing and nearly any other human endeavour.)

That said, I'm not sure why we've even made that separation between "talent" and work or practice: the word was originally meant to apply to all three, no? Which is to say: if someone could do something impressively, whether it was playing an instrument really dexterously or arranging strings with particular skill, they were "talented," no matter whether that talent was more "innate" or more "developed."

Oh wait: arguments can be made that we separated them because of rock and then because of punk, wherein being good at things and being "good" at things became regimented, separate, and often ostensibly opposite. It's a pretty recent idea that someone can be aesthetically "good" at something without having both natural or personality-based aptitude and formal training.

i think there is way too much emphasis on 'talent' in pop these days - - alicia aside, have none of you heard the horror that is vanessa carlton's rewrite of 'the entertainer'?

i pretty much believe anyone can learn to do anything (aka no such thing as talent). As argued by Shakey above and in this book which I haven't read:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounce-Myth-Talent-Power-Practice/dp/0007350546/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

I think the human brain is incredibly plastic, no-one is born specialised for anything. Walking and talking are incredibly complicated skills that almost everyone masters without a problem. I think that what ultimately makes a difference in learning a skill is interest, desire, passion. If you want to learn a skill you have to put the hours in, and if you don't care about that skill you won't be motivated to. "Putting the hours in" is though a simplification, doing the same thing and making the same mistakes over and over again won't lead to improvement. Thoughtful, directed practice is key.

no-one is born specialised for anything. Walking and talking are incredibly complicated skills that almost everyone masters without a problem.

chomsky of course would say we are all specialised for language.

there are some people i've in the past played gamelan with who are very, very good instrumentalists in their own fields - orchestral music, or various other non-western musics - and they give every indication of applying themselves but they just cannot learn to play to even a minimally good standard. they can't get their ear in; they can't work out how things fit together; they get lost and can't find their way back into a tune that is being played by everyone around them. conversely, i know people who can listen to cassette tapes, recorded in mono with one microphone in the 80s, and identify single instrument lines that they can then reproduce.

and, like, this is gamelan - the level of musicianship needed to just join in is super low (this is why i like it! a group can have wildly divergent skill levels and it will still sound good and be a satisfying experience), but these are people with a high level of musicianship.

― He is "The Developer" and the children view him with a deep susp (c sharp major), Wednesday, October 16, 2013 1:53 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

does gamelan have different tuning? maybe those with a western music education would have to 'unlearn' certain things.

trouble with this kind of argument is that it tends to become a tennis match of anecdotes. But here's one anyway about the psychologist who tried and succeeded in making all three of his daughters chess prodigies:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/the-grandmaster-experiment

by "learn to do anything", do you mean at a basic/competent level or at a high, a-list level?

competently, for sure. but for a-listers i would still argue passion is a if not the significant factor.

ok, my anecdote is about drumming. i think i was drawn to it mentally but there's a huge physical component as well. when it comes to really fast finger control, i just don't have the fast twitch muscle fibers necessary to do it past a certain point (at least in my weak hand), and never will no matter how much time i put into it. i'm stubborn so i kept with it and developed a style around my shortcomings, but it's a different story from friends who had crazy amounts of speed & finger control from day 1. with the same amount of practice & work, those people are going to have a lot more options and facility.

xp

ok yeah there are physical, bodily differences that can have a large effect on performance, i won't deny that.

but i think when people talk of "talent" that's not generally what they're referring to.

my problem is overestimating the importance of 'talent' as you will notice on football threads where i tend to praise talented but feckless prodigies

i flinched a bit when jonathan meades said of vanbrugh or suchlike that he didn't belong to any school in the conventional sense but that didn't matter because there was only one school, the school of talent

I've always rolled my eyes when public figures attribute their success to "just hard work", as though natural attributes - physical and otherwise - aren't the most important determining factor. There are too many measurable factors that are unlearnable that contribute to mastering a skill - perfect pitch is a thing, for example, you can't teach or acquire that. I went to a specialist music school where a good proportion of the students had mastered their instrument to grade 8 level by the time they were 14-15, if not younger, and had been practising it from the minute they physically could - all were very clear and certain that there was a divide between those who were at grade 8 standard just because they'd been practising for their whole life, and those with a "natural" gift.

And then there are even more obvious things like HEIGHT in sports. As hard as she works - and she's got a reputation for being one of the hardest workers on tour - 5'4" Sara Errani will just never be able to serve like 6'1" Venus Williams.

Also think things like hand-eye coordination, academic intelligence are innate.

I went to a talk given by Matthew Syed a couple of weeks ago. He was entertaining, his anecdote about playing tennis with Michael Stich was particularly amusing. I haven't read the book. I assume it argues that the concept of talent is often overemphasised and can be damaging to motivation amongst other things. Not that people have no predisposition to individual differences at all.

but i think when people talk of "talent" that's not generally what they're referring to.

man i think that's exactly what they're referring to.

there's surely a lot of fun to be had on ilx arguing for the heritability of 'academic intelligence'

lex is on team gove huh

perfect pitch is a thing, for example, you can't teach or acquire that

perfect pitch is so not a thing

what was that chap called? dominic cummings?

the via media in this area gets lost in a slough between the genetic determinists and the gladwellian practice practice practice queens, never forgetting the it's all luck crowd

lj i would recommend a skim through the engagingly haywire and convinced dom c paper, linked to on the caek thread

I couldn't be a professional footballer/nuclear physicist/R&B diva no matter how hard I worked at it. "Anyone can learn to do anything" leads you to some dodgy Thatcherite conclusions if you follow it to its logical conclusion.

nilmar u forgot the cultural marxists

man i think that's exactly what they're referring to.

i think of it more as referring to some ill-defined idea of learning as a mental skill, regardless of the physical nature of the task. "i couldn't learn to juggle, i don't have the talent" - you've got two hands, that's all you need.

all babies have crap hand eye coordination.

the real answer IN MY SUPREME OPINION lol is that some effort, well directed, is the optimal circumstance for achievement of goals artistic or otherwise. one's ability to choose the direction(s) might rely on instinct but this instinct will be honed by experience. ultimately the best one can hope is to be aware of one's moment

are there any soi disant cultural marxists? did a telegraph blogger ever start castigating them only to summon the apparition of walter benjamin in the commentboxes

xp i don't really know about perfect pitch (apart from my total certainty that i don't and could never have it) but it was taken as a given among the musicians i grew up with that it was innate?

and yeah it's the "hard work and practice" line that's beloved of tories right now

I sympathize (but don't agree) with the "talent don't exist, don't matter in music" stance. "Talent" has been used incorrectly to praise and sell musicians for so long that it's led to a dilution of the word's meaning. "Alicia Keys: she is a talented pianist" is usually some more-legitimate-because-piano-lessons hoodwink. But talent exists and it matters, as lex said, there are sexy mfs and then there aren't.

"i couldn't learn to juggle, i don't have the talent" - you've got two hands, that's all you need.

I used the examples of two top 10 tennis players w/r/t height but it's obvious if you look at the huge pool of failed pros - the ones who couldn't even make it on tour in the first place - who started just as early and worked just as hard as successful pros the role that natural talent plays.

I am a good singer and an okay musician and one of the basic facts that comes of being a good singer and an okay musician who has played a bunch of music is that I know I am not brilliant and never will be. It does not matter how much I practice. I have friends who've graduated from conservatoires or music degrees and the most practical thing they have learnt is that they are destined to be second-desk in a lesser city orchestra and no amount of practice will alter that fact.

this happens with maths, too - i think people who are good at mathematics nevertheless reach at some point their "level". As someone who is okay at maths, I can get better at performing maths functions and thinking like a mathematician with regular practice, but i'm still going to reach a point (somewhere around further maths a-level iirc) beyond which i am incapable of

many xposts

I think "talent" is a bit of a poor word in that it's often used to justify one's aesthetic embrace of something merely on the grounds of its visibly evident level of craftsmanship; i.e., the way it's often used implies a conflation of skillfulness and aestheic quality. However, to state that talen't "doesn't exist" doesn't compute for me. It's not as if there's this substance in our brains or blood called Talent that can be extracted; it's merely a word we use to evaluate a person based on his/her performances or displays of skills.

xp-to-self

"beyond which i am incapable of progressing.", i think that was.

Well the least i'm arguing is that anyone can achieve basic competence. Maybe there is some special something that the a-listers have - but maybe they're just better at practicing (as I said earlier, simply working hard is not sufficient, you have to be good at noticing and correcting your mistakes. Wait did I just imply you have to have a talent for practising?)

perfect pitch is so not a thing

Perfect pitch is a thing insofar as some people in music school like to parade around their ability to *gasp* correctly identify pitches as if they were christened by unicorn Jesus. You know who has perfect pitch? every working monitor engineer

Sorry, meant to say something like good thread, but couldn't bring myself to type it.

mostly they get good enough to know they will never be good enough?

the threads do?

...yes

those are some pretty introspective threads

and how many people believe they could *never* get that good no matter how hard they tried?

but now we're not talking about 'trying hard', we're talking about being intensively trained (in the right way) from a very early age, with the right level of encouragement, support (& possibly something else - manipulative withholding of affection?) from your family and ending up reaching (let's say) a solid professional level of competency (so you're in a second-tier orchestra maybe? I don't know how classical players make a living). I think a lot of people would accept that as realistic. And trying hard won't do it now (=post-pubescence).

manipulative withholding of affection

there's probably as many anecdotes on either side, maybe tiger woods' dad was a bastard idk, but i get the impression being inspiring and encouraging enthusiasm is the way to go.

but there are loads of young musicians with the motivation and the support and the time to put in this kind of practice, who do not become such greats.

i don't wanna be all "studies have shown" but... some studies have shown that amount of time spent on purposeful practice is the *only* thing separating the great from the good.

what separates the good from the not good

the same.

talent is classic. there should be more talented people.

It is always suspicious when someone shows a certain dedication and drive at a young age that
I'd prefer parents be actively discouraging -- like If tiger woods' dad showed up at practices with a "golf schmolf" tshirt,
I'd be more confident that tiger's desire was intrinsic.

i've three brothers. three of us can sing, one can't. one of us had a flair for drawing that the others didn't (not the non-singer, as it happens). without practice or training beyond what the others of us were doing (ie no training, practicing by doing it because it ocurred to us to do it on whims, as children do).

the guy that could never sing still can't sing (but he is in a band, lol). the three of us that could never draw can't draw yet (and one of us sat through two years of art school).

i don't wanna be all "studies have shown" but... some studies have shown that amount of time spent on purposeful practice is the *only* thing separating the great from the good.

This is just madness. It's like watching the young Jacko sing 'I Want You Back' and concluding that any kid with an identical upbringing could have done that.

Janet seems to have done alright. But maybe she isn't a Germaine comparison.

lock thread tbh

janet jackson-level is p much the epitome of 'anyone could do that given the time and training' tbh

At first glance his thesis seems even more outrageous than mine - I've merely been arguing anyone can achieve competence at any skill, he claims anyone can achieve world class excellence! But the difference is superficial. He thinks anyone can achieve excellence given the right circumstances, which will include access to decent facilities and coaching, ideally from a young age. Hence his anecdote about it being no coincidence, genetic or otherwise, that at one point in the 1980s one suburban street in Reading containing more top class table tennis players (including himself) than the rest of the UK put together. But obviously to achieve some level of competence will take less time and require less supporting facilities.

this doesn't really refute "talent" as innate, though. it instead suggests that the skills granted by innate talent (if such a thing exists) can be cultivated in less innately talented individuals - given the right circumstances.

once upon a time, i knew a young man who could draw super-realistic images from memory. he would sit at his desk and crank out photo-perfect pictures of dogs and birds, as that was what interested him, but he said he could draw anything. moreover, he said he'd "always" been able to do it. he looked at the paper, imagined the image he wanted to duplicate, and "saw" it clearly enough to simply trace. he wasn't anywhere near as good at drawing things from imagination. he was basically a copy machine. of course i can't say for certain, but this at least sounds like the expression of an unusual innate ability to me. a talent.

similarly, some people can perform impossible-seeming mathematical calculations in their heads and often express this ability from a very early age. i suppose it's possible that some rare combination of actions and environmental factors causes this in all cases, but it seems absurd to categorically reject the idea that innate ability (genetics, neurology, that sort of thing) might also be involved, might even provide the entire explanation.

i'm sure that people are often mistaken in their identification of talent, mistaking the result of interest, dedication and time for some kind of god-given gift, but people are often wrong about everything. tbh, i don't see any reason why one would want to nail down a final answer here. we don't know enough to be certain. and ambiguity is almost always preferable anyway.

some studies have shown that amount of time spent on purposeful practice is the *only* thing separating the great from the good.

In sport or music performance or both or something else? & what are the great/good criteria? (sorry, that's a long-winded 'can you point me to the studies please?')

Anyway asking why any child pianist who works and works and works and has the optimum level of coaching can't emulate Glenn Gould is like asking why an actor can't emulate Olivier. Or why a footballer can't emulate Messi. At some point there's just something in the personality that raises them above being merely technically perfect.

xp this is the main one: http://www.mockingbirdeducation.net/uploads/5/4/0/7/5407628/ericsson_1993.pdf

a basic talent maybe gives drive to practice in a way that struggling towards competency doesn't? the flow of succeeding at a task from instinct feeds a desire to see where you can take it as opposed to plodding along on a set of defined milestones in a text/method

"talent" IMO isn't an indicator of whether someone can or can't do something; it's more of an indicator of how quickly one can become proficient in the rudimentary skill of something.

I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpu2FuQbsVU

This toddler has probably heard this song rehearsed multiple times but clearly understands matching pitch, pitch duration and phrasing; only lung capacity is keeping him/her from singing the full lines and the words aren't quite there, but an understanding of the melody clearly is, as is shown when the busker drops out and the toddler finishes the song. Not every child of this age is able to do this.

moreover, he said he'd "always" been able to do it.

from when he was born?

we're back on the old merry-go-round here.

similarly, some people can perform impossible-seeming mathematical calculations in their heads and often express this ability from a very early age.

this is an ability that can be taught. binet found in 1896 that cashiers with 14 years experience performed faster at 3 and 4 digit multiplications than 'natural' prodigies.

Very few disciplines value tricks like eidetic memory and mental math as being the basis of world class performance especially since we have cameras and calculators now.

We're not comparing ppl who have never practiced vs ppl with talent we're asking if there is such a thing as talent the answer's yes

Garbled that but w/e

xp this is the main one: http://www.mockingbirdeducation.net/uploads/5/4/0/7/5407628/ericsson_1993.pdf

― as a chocolate salesperson (ledge), Friday, November 1, 2013 9:36 AM (2 minutes ago)

the conclusions drawn overextend the implications of the gathered data. showing that people tend to acquire many skills at more or less the same rate, primarily as a result of time dedicated and method of study/practice, doesn't refute the existence of intrinsic ability. a more defensible conclusion would be that it plays a smaller role than some seem to think.

"talent" IMO isn't an indicator of whether someone can or can't do something; it's more of an indicator of how quickly one can become proficient in the rudimentary skill of something

^^^ This, as well.

we're back on the old merry-go-round here.

exactly. there's simply no way to draw a conclusion that's both reasonable and definitive. this isn't a question we can answer at present.

this is an ability that can be taught. binet found in 1896 that cashiers with 14 years experience performed faster at 3 and 4 digit multiplications than 'natural' prodigies.

exactly. that a skill can be taught does not mean that it cannot exist in some as a "natural talent".

xps on the maths
but the prodigies didn't have 14 years to learn them - they're often untrained & about 10-11 when they're noticed. And they aren't just doing 3-4 digit calculations, they're doing bigger numbers. Quick search shows this girl winning world mental calculation championship in 2010. What environmental/educational factors lead to beating a field of motivated adults? Some kids can do this purely cognitive thing - I'm willing to listen & am basically in the interaction of multiple complex factors camp, but that looks something like an innate gift.

ie contenderizer otm imo

Is willingness to perform beyond your abilities unhampered by fear of ridicule a talent? Because often that's what it looks like to me.

they're often untrained

home trained or self trained i reckon.

But there are easily thousands of people in the world who more-or-less get this kind of intensive training and practice from a young age, and most of them become generic highly competent classical musicians at best.

But generic, highly competent classical musicianship is exactly what they're being trained in. You could train a child to be a Bob Dylan too by focusing on things like songwriting and poetry rather than playing Bach.

but nobody does that

But generic, highly competent classical musicianship is exactly what they're being trained in

Rong.

Really, how many of the kids who are drilled on piano or violin from an early age are being taught composition or being exposed to a wide range of music beyond the classical canon?

the three of us that could never draw can't draw yet (and one of us sat through two years of art school).

Ah y'know they stopped teaching drawing at art school years ago now.

(Showing my innate talent for snappy ripostes)

There's that video of that kid who plays rush on four instruments at once

That's beside the point. It may be that there are people who can't tell the difference between a perfectly good second violinist in a middle-ranking professional orchestra and a really first-rate international soloist but I can guarantee you that "generic, highly competent classical musicianship" is not what either have been trained to aspire to.

(That was an xpost to WK)

Then there's this guy who was at Berklee with like four different scholarships, each one for a different instrument: http://zildjian.com/Artists/C/Louis-Cato

That's beside the point. It may be that there are people who can't tell the difference between a perfectly good second violinist in a middle-ranking professional orchestra and a really first-rate international soloist but I can guarantee you that "generic, highly competent classical musicianship" is not what either have been trained to aspire to.

ah, I see you're making the distinction between different competent classical musicians. I was referring to them all as generic competent classical musicians as opposed to the artists who are composers, songwriters, etc.

I mean I would think to most ILMers the interesting question is not the difference between the soloist and second violin, but those people vs. the Coltranes, Lou Reeds, and Brian Wilsons of the world.

There are so many stopping points along the way from "innate talent is the ultimate determinant" and "there is no such thing is talent" but I guess people have to get their theory on.
(xp to no one in particular)

Actually more interested in the first of those questions tbh.

well yeah from a scientific point of view I guess the interesting question is between two violinists like that who somehow had identical training. the michael vs jermaine question.

Jermaine was Joe Jackson's Bottle Rocket. Michael was his Rushmore

I really don't want to hear about joe jackson's bottle rocket

You can't measure innate talent or luck or happenstance but you can measure hours practiced.