# True talent



## darkjune (Mar 27, 2008)

When ever I see a guitarist who play's a cover song and sounds as good as the original I don't think to myself, that guy has skills , I think, he has patience. It doesn't take skills to learn a song it takes patience. Of course you need skills but you can learn them if you have enough patience. I feel natural talent comes from those who create music not those who copy it. No one can teach you how to express yourself through music because no one experiences life the same way , and no one can tell you your doing it wrong for the same reason. All you can do is try to play with your deepest emotions and hope people can relate to your music in they're own way. You'll never find someone who feels the music the way you do, and you dont want them to. You just want them to relate to the emotion you are trying to express, not the experience you had at the time you wrote the song.Lets face it if you write a song on your guitar about your break up with your girl freind, no one would know you where playing about your girl friend, however if you express the emotion you felt in that moment others will feel it too.They should feel the pain you were feeling when you wrote the song and relate that emotion to a moment they felt the same emotion.If you express your emotions through music in that way,then you will make a true connection to you listener and in my mind that is true talent.


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

Dude, I've seen some very patient people who can't master a cover because they lack feel or good listening skills, or a true sense of time - all talent based. When you say "sounds as good" do you mean note for note? 'Cause I never do that and often sound as good (or better kkjuw) than the original. AS for the parallel, b/w music and the expression of emotion, it's pretty weak. Angry is easy, happy is hard...


----------



## darkjune (Mar 27, 2008)

mrmatt1972 said:


> Dude, I've seen some very patient people who can't master a cover because they lack feel or good listening skills, or a true sense of time - all talent based. When you say "sounds as good" do you mean note for note? 'Cause I never do that and often sound as good (or better kkjuw) than the original. AS for the parallel, b/w music and the expression of emotion, it's pretty weak. Angry is easy, happy is hard...


give them more time, anyone can learn with more time.and as far as a sense of time, give them more practice.

anger and happiness are both emotions you can make in to music.


----------



## Metal#J# (Jan 1, 2007)

@darkjune. I disagree. That's an odd/narrow description of true talent.

J


----------



## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Talent comes in many forms...playing/performing is one, songwriting is another. Some people excel in one or the other, and a rare few, both.


----------



## darkjune (Mar 27, 2008)

Metal#J# said:


> @darkjune. I disagree. That's an odd/narrow description of true talent.
> 
> J


So give me a better one.What am I missing here?Not trying to be a smart ass, just want to understand the disagreement from both sides better.


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

If you think that it don't take talent to do cover songs then think again. My dad has an ear for music,he can hear a song and play it right back to you as if he had been playing it for years.my best freind plays just like Steve vai,and he has been playing for less time then me so don't tell me it don't take tallent.


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

so how many hit songs do you have, Mr. talent?


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

darkjune said:


> give them more time, anyone can learn with more time.and as far as a sense of time, give them more practice.
> 
> anger and happiness are both emotions you can make in to music.


You're either young or don't play with a lot of different people. I've played, or at least tried to, with people who have taken a huge amount of time to learn a song or two, but can't pull it off. I'm not denying the value or necessity of practice, but at a certain level, you either have it or you don't.

So what is talent? A natural inclination towards an activity which facilitates and accelerates the learning of the skills associated with said activity. As for emotion, yes music is supposed to be evocative, and generating moods and emotions in one's audience is definitely a good thing, but is that the ONLY mark of a talented musician? I don't think so.


----------



## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

mrmatt1972 said:


> You're either young or don't play with a lot of different people. I've played, or at least tried to, with people who have taken a huge amount of time to learn a song or two, but can't pull it off. I'm not denying the value or necessity of practice, but at a certain level, you either have it or you don't.
> 
> So what is talent? A natural inclination towards an activity which facilitates and accelerates the learning of the skills associated with said activity. As for emotion, yes music is supposed to be evocative, and generating moods and emotions in one's audience is definitely a good thing, but is that the ONLY mark of a talented musician? I don't think so.


Good post.

Re: songs with emotion....Ever since music became entwined with big business, I'd say maybe 10% of all recorded songs have any true emotion behind them anyways.


----------



## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

darkjune said:


> When ever I see a guitarist who play's a cover song and sounds as good as the original I don't think to myself, that guy has skills , I think, he has patience. It doesn't take skills to learn a song it takes patience. Of course you need skills but you can learn them if you have enough patience.


You contradict yourself here.
You say you need skills, but you don't see skill.
I have encountered musicians who have tons of natural ability and patience is something they have a problem with, but they can learn cover versions very quickly & easily. No patience required. Some of these people are very impatient people.



darkjune said:


> I feel natural talent comes from those who create music not those who copy it.


Everyone who has natural talent at creating music has borrowed, and continues to borrow, from others. It's part of how you learn. Unless you are creating on a completely new instrument, with a completely new scale or set of pitches, and in a completely new style the world has literally never heard before, you are building on the work of those who came before you.

However, there are those who move on form this to develop their own style, and those who continue to imitate.



darkjune said:


> No one can teach you how to express yourself through music because no one experiences life the same way , and no one can tell you your doing it wrong for the same reason.


I disagree with this.
Not completely, but in the application.
You can learn to express yourself through music--therefore you can be taught.
Ultimately, yes, you need to create your own style, but that can be facilitated.
And I agree no one experiences life the same way.
But you can be taught not only the skills, but the strategies and philosophy of music, so you can take the skills, strategies, philosophy, and whatever else, combine with your personality, passions, and experiences, etc to create your own style.

When I taught this was one of my goals--to not just teach students the skills, but to facilitate them in developing their own styles, so they sounded like themselves, and not cookie cutter clones of anybody else.

I have known other teachers, whose students sound like clones of the teacher and the other students. Even though many of them are quite talented--they are boring to listen to.


So yeah I agree with some of what you wrote, and some I disagree with--some I would just word differently.


----------



## keto (May 23, 2006)

I will add that on many of the songs where you are admiring the 'original' guitar playing, the player is not the writer. His or her playing on the recording can be anything from a note for note written part (ala Steely Dan) to largely improvised (which would, I suppose better fit your description) with a full range inbetween. The writer might not be a guitar player but what if they play keyboards and give an example of what it should sound like for the guitar player to learn? I guess I'm saying I disagree with the original post. Also, cover versions don't have to be note for note and many covers are far bigger hits than the originals. Carlos Santana's biggest single hit (OK, I didn't look it up and stand to be corrected) was Black Magic Woman. Did he write it? No, but his version is the defacto standard for the song.


----------



## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

keto said:


> I will add that on many of the songs where you are admiring the 'original' guitar playing, the player is not the writer. His or her playing on the recording can be anything from a note for note written part (ala Steely Dan) to largely improvised (which would, I suppose better fit your description) with a full range inbetween. The writer might not be a guitar player but what if they play keyboards and give an example of what it should sound like for the guitar player to learn? I guess I'm saying I disagree with the original post. Also, cover versions don't have to be note for note and many covers are far bigger hits than the originals. Carlos Santana's biggest single hit (OK, I didn't look it up and stand to be corrected) was Black Magic Woman. Did he write it? No, but his version is the defacto standard for the song.


Or* Hey Joe *covered by Jimi Hendrix

*'Cause We've Ended As Lovers * covered by Jeff Beck


----------



## darkjune (Mar 27, 2008)

You dont need talent to do a cover song.if you can trace a drawing, you can do a cover.thats all it is,you just trace what is already there.no talent needed,its not hard to do, not hard at all.


----------



## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Lots of bait out there3dgrw


----------



## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

darkjune said:


> You dont need talent to do a cover song.if you can trace a drawing, you can do a cover.thats all it is,you just trace what is already there.no talent needed,its not hard to do, not hard at all.


Ok thanks for sharing/dictating/pontificating!


----------



## Metal#J# (Jan 1, 2007)

darkjune said:


> You dont need talent to do a cover song.if you can trace a drawing, you can do a cover.thats all it is,you just trace what is already there.no talent needed,its not hard to do, not hard at all.


You're wrong. And I'd imagine by your own definition.......... talentless!


----------



## darkjune (Mar 27, 2008)

Metal#J# said:


> You're wrong. And I'd imagine by you're own definition.......... talentless!


 

I have more talent in one hand then you do in your whole body!


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

darkjune said:


> I have more talent in one hand then you do in your whole body!



Masterbation is not a talent!!!!!!!!!


----------



## Metal#J# (Jan 1, 2007)

darkjune said:


> I have more talent in one hand then you do in your whole body!


 So post up or shut up!


----------



## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

jetavana said:


> Masterbation is not a talent!!!!!!!!!


i don't know if i agree there. for the sake of decorum i won't get into specifics.

that said, when it comes to guitar, i have far less talent than i'd like to have. there are mountains of really cool material in my head. but i can't get it to come out of the speaker.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Whenever I see "debates" like this, it's a bit like watching a knock-down, drag-out fight between guys hanging around the homeless shelter about who has the best-smelling breath or clothes. I mean, _somebody_ does, but does it really matter? The kind of music we cleave to here represents a very tiny corner of the universe called "music". Whether we are able to render a decision about this topic or not, is a bit like ants coming to a decision about whether or not God exists.


----------



## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Yes, lets start with your mastering of Cliffs of Dover you mentioned in another thread. Youtube vid plz!


----------



## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

This is going downhill fast. 

darkjune: maybe your true "talent" lies in your ability to stir a pot. Who really knows. All we have is your digital word on a computer screen.


----------



## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

mhammer said:


> Whenever I see "debates" like this, it's a bit like watching a knock-down, drag-out fight between guys hanging around the homeless shelter about who has the best-smelling breath or clothes. I mean, _somebody_ does, but does it really matter?


Great point.

As for covers not taking talent--depends how you do them.
This one is a cover, but also practically a brand new song.
Now tell me there was no talent on that stage...
[video=youtube;QIKBq9TeFlw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIKBq9TeFlw[/video]
(Resisted posting the Woodstock version as it's more common. And I know I'm kind of getting into the smell debate--but I had to post that song.)


----------



## washburned (Oct 13, 2006)

zontar said:


> Great point.
> 
> As for covers not taking talent--depends how you do them.
> This one is a cover, but also practically a brand new song.
> ...


And when he recorded it he was too drunk to remember the second verse, so just repeated the first....and that's the version everyone remembers.

I think there are different kinds of talent related to guitar playing: one would be habving a good ear and being able to play a piece or phrase after hearing it once or twice (I don't have this talent, by the way); another would be the ability to improvise, which I do really well; another would be playing with "feeling" (Jeff Beck anyone?) and of course, technical proficiency at some level is required, depending on the type of music which you play. Some of the most famous guitarists we love are (were) limited technically, but a successful, usually unknown, studio musician has to be able to walk into a studio and play the right licks, often from a chart, in the right style, as quickly as possible (studio time is expensive)....which is more talented?


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

I think there are different kinds of talent related to guitar playing: one would be habving a good ear and being able to play a piece or phrase after hearing it once or twice (I don't have this talent, by the way); another would be the ability to improvise, which I do really well; another would be playing with "feeling" (Jeff Beck anyone?) and of course, technical proficiency at some level is required, depending on the type of music which you play. Some of the most famous guitarists we love are (were) limited technically, but a successful, usually unknown, studio musician has to be able to walk into a studio and play the right licks, often from a chart, in the right style, as quickly as possible (studio time is expensive)....which is more talented?[/QUOTE]



I think you hit the nail on the head with that one.


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

I don't see any post of you playing yet DJ.

do I smell a big pot of chicken cooking?

Or did you use up all that talent last night in your one hand?


----------



## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

When I read, what IMHO, are poorly thought out comments, at first I might have a WTF!?! moment. Then I remind myself that the individual posting could be 25, 17...or 12. Best to take mildly inflammatory internet discourse with a bag of salt.


----------



## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I'd like to hear you cover a new Terrorhorse song then please, if it's that easy


----------



## Guest (Aug 23, 2010)

Rugburn said:


> When I read, what IMHO, are poorly thought out comments, at first I might have a WTF!?! moment. Then I remind myself that the individual posting could be 25, 17...or 12. Best to take mildly inflammatory internet discourse with a bag of salt.


Apparently he's 31: http://www.guitarscanada.com/members/darkjune.html -- not that calendar age has anything to do with mental age. 

To throw my hat in to this ring: darkjune, a talented individual makes you think it's easy. All that preparation and technique get washed away and what comes through in the moment is something bigger. The talent-less like to kid themselves, saying "If I just had 10 hours a day for 10 years to work on that stuff I'd be just as good." But the truth is: you probably wouldn't be.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Ah, but that's where you might be wrong.

Personally, I don't really believe in talent. Folks who study expertise and experts will tell you that it takes thousands of hours for people to become skilled enough for someone else to think they are "talented". (Malcolm Gladwell threw the 10,000hr figure around in his "Outliers" book but the research had been around for a while before he started citing it.)

Of course, the immediate retort of most people in the classes where I covered this material was that it can't be_ just_ practice and experience, since they had applied themselves to many tasks and come up rather "talentless" in the end. Ergo, high skill levels must come from something magical and "built into" the brains of those who can attain such high levels, and not from mere experience and training.

The weakness in their reasoning is the assumption that ALL experience is somehow equivalent, and that *your* 10,000 hrs = *my* 10,000 hrs. Folks who study this stuff will tell you that critical to the acquisition of expertise is the *sequence* of those experiences. The central feature of people who possess expertise in anything, whether it is cooking, medical or automotive diagnosis, a sport, or a musical instrument, is that what they know is highly organized, so that they can a) get to any fact from any other fact, and b) their knowledge about the content domain is organized in such a way that they can easily distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information, and ignore the irrelevant. When experience ansd training is structured,or spontaneously happens just the right way, it assists the structuring/organization of what you know, rather than simply piling on more information. Good coaches and teachers are able to identify what the learner needs to be exposed to right this second, by being able to second-guess the learner's knowledge-state and assumptions. And if you don't have a coach and you're lucky, the right learning experiences happen in the right order so as to provide the same outcome.

Of course, one of the interesting side-effects is that deeper comprehension facilitates competence, and motivates exploration. So the person who is on the way toward developing expertise is more likely to think "Well, what if I tried it _this_ way?", simply because they are more able to have hypotheses about the subject matter of their developing expertise, and test those hypotheses in their subsequent dickering around.

Note as well that the thousands of hours of practice also includes so-called "off-line" practice; i.e., thinking about the subject matter even when not visibly engaged in it.

If you're interested in the acquisition of expertise, there is probably no better place to start than the research of Anders Ericsson ( Dr. K. Anders Ericsson ). One of his colleagues at the center for the study of expertise, Neil Charness, used to be at Univ. Waterloo about 20 years ago. Neil did some interesting work with "musical savants" that we had some enjoyable chats over in years past. One of the things you find about virtually all savants, whether they are musical ones, or the "Rain Man" type of computational genius, is that they spend almost every waking minute of the day engaged in thinking about their area of expertise. We make a big deal out of their special skills because they strike us as being in such phenomenal contrast to their other cognitive weaknesses, but really what you're seeing is the fairly natural product of allocating thousands of hours to a skill, and a sort of "cognitive specialization".

"Talent" is a lot more peculiar, in some ways, and a lot more banal, in other ways, than most people think.

Of course what start off this thread (and unfortunately, a lot of unnecessarily hostile responses) was not the origins of so-called talent, but rather its observable product. In other words, regardless of your explanation for how it got there, how would you identify someone as "talented"?


----------



## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

that post kicked @ss. it reminds me of hearing satriani talk about teaching steve vai. i think he illustrates your point pretty well, for those who know his story.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Well thank you! When it comes to a**, I'd much rather kick it than suck it.:rockon:

Although not all of us here might describe themselves as "expert" players, I think we can all remember moments or experiences that made us take a step back and go "...ooooohhhhhhhhhhh.......riiiiiiiiiiight!", where some things in what we knew about playing guitar (whether we could explain them or describe them to others or not) gelled/clicked/dovetailed, and we felt like we had kicked it up a notch. 

That could have been when you learned to hammer-on, a chord inversion (or realized that all those augmented chords were really the "same"), or figured out how to double-bend, use pinch harmonics, or play those Lenny Breau all-harmonics chords. Or it could have been when you finally started thinking "Hmmm, I'm gonna hold back, just hit some low notes and leave a bit of space between 'em, before I rev up", and suddenly realized you were _thinking_ about your solos instead of just playing them.

My buddy, former Albertan Gordon Logan at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, an acknowledged authority on human attention and skill acquisition, but a pretty decent guitarist too, is starting to study how people acquire skill on guitar. One of Gordon's principal areas of research interest is "automaticity". That is, the process whereby something complex and calibrated that you might have to think about a lot at first, becomes automatic and unconscious, and effectively "takes care of itself" so you can shift attention to other aspects of the task. The poster child for that is learning to keep pedalling so you can concentrate on steering.

If you stop and take a good long hard look at what it is you do when playing guitar, I'll bet you can think of lots of examples of stuff you used to have to concetrate on, that now you do without thinking, and are probably completely unable to describe to people because it is that automatic and embedded in your playing. For example, do you *think* about how you pick? If you want something short and choppy, how do you co-ordinate the manner in which you hit the the strings so it seems they are all hit at once, while quickly lifting your fretting fingers up to deaden things, and simultaneously resting the butt of your picking hand on the strings, post-strum? Are you consciously aware of doing that?


----------



## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Mark is pretty much awesome, just sayin'.


----------



## Stratin2traynor (Sep 27, 2006)

mhammer: Well said. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I wanted to say but lacked the time and more importantly the eloquence to lay it out. Plus it was much easier for me to write a simple "nana booboo...." Thanks.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Thanks, gents. That's very kind of you.


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

"The weakness in their reasoning is the assumption that ALL experience is somehow equivalent, and that your 10,000 hrs = my 10,000 hrs."

I think that is_ part of_ talent. Being able to put practice to better use than someone else, but also having the _inclination _ and aptitude to do so. We all know people who play better than we do who also seem to put far less time into it. Mark's theory falls flat in these cases.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Certainly motivation is a big part of what leads to skill. And you are quite right that the *pursuit* of the skill is what gets you to rack up those hours in the first place. But what the theorists and researchers say is that if you find any hundred people that are highly skilled in some area, and a hundred other people who are interested in the area, AND have put in the exact same amount of time and practice, but have far less to show for it, it is the insertion of pivotal experiences at critical times that makes the difference between those two groups.

It is also the case the comprehensibility of an area, and success within it, certainly tug one towards investing more time and effort. If you play something that sounds great to your ears, you're more likely to want to try it again, right? It's a bit like gambling; when you get sooooooooo close to the jackpot, you feel compelled to try it just one more time. 

Conversely, when things make no sense to us, or seem to have little payoff, it is difficult to sustain our attention for very long (umm, first year calculus or stats, anyone?). Indeed, one of the current and prevailing theories of attention-deficit-disorder is that something is amiss with "reward systems" such that people with A.D.D. switch willy-nilly from task to task in search of reward because they are somehow neurally "under-rewarded". Drugs like Ritalin are presumed to affect the neurochemistry of reward, permitting attention to stay focussed on a given task (whether that turns out to be true or not, is another matter. I'm just conveying the underlying reasoning.). And of course, with all of the blowing-up, loud noises, and flashes of light, video-games provide mountains of easily discernible reward; which is why any kid diagnosed as ADD can spend 5hrs straight in front of an X-Box but can't spend 5 minutes concentrating in a classroom.

This is going to seem like a complete digression (but then when have any of my posts NOT been so?), but there is also a research literature on people's beliefs about where their level of performance comes from. Theorists contrast between two different sets of beliefs, or "naive theories", of performance. At the one end are those who believe that their performance comes from something about them, that is "built-in", and fixed. The notion that one is "good at" or "bad at" certain things, or has an inborn aptitude for it, or predisposition against it. At the other end are those who believe that higher levels of performance come from remdiable or "incrementable" factors. So, they believe that their performance comes from things like being prepared, current mood, effort, quality of instruction, practice, relevant (but acquirable) background knowledge, and so on; things that can always be improved.

A couple of interesting things pulled from the research (which started out exploring why girls in middle school and early high school suddenly started tanking in math and science):

1) Beliefs about the basis of higher/lower performance vary with culture. North American parents are more likely than Asian parents to feel that their children's performance emanates from "talent" or the lack of it, where Asian parents are more likely to adopt a more "Confucian" approach that diligence and hard work lead inexorably to higher performance and greater skill, and poor performance is a result of low effort and minimal practice. 

2) People who think that effort and practice matter more behave the same as those who think it all comes from "talent" or inability....as long as things are going well. When difficulty with a task arises, though, that's where they separate. People who believe performance comes from effort will exert *more* effort in the face of difficulty, where those who think it all comes from something about yourself that you can't change will exert less effort. There are several rationales for the latter. One is that if effort is not "responsible" for performance, then there is no incentive to engage in it. The other is that if your performance is felt to come from something about you, then who would rub their noses in their own weaknesses? I.E., they exert less effort and tend to give up because it is less personally hurtful than trying and potentially failing again.

3) Such beliefs about where performance comes from also have to "come from somewhere" too. Subsequent research has suggested strongly that praise, and perhaps more importantly, the content of that praise, helps to shape beliefs. In talking with one's children, you can say "Terrific! You see what happens when you practice? All that effort paid off.", or you can say "Terrific! Wow, are you ever good at this!". Unqualified praise that places the emphasis on things internal to the child can ultimately be harmful by fostering beliefs that lead to giving up easily in the face of difficulty. Although I personally have not seen any such work in the literature, I would imagine that non-praise, and comments like "Well, maybe you oughta try something different...that you're good at", also serves to shape children's emerging belief systems about themselves and the basis of human performance. So it's not just praise, but indeed criticism, or even messages of consolation, that can send a message to the kid that there is, or isn't, an eventual payoff to hard work.

One shouldn't extrapolate this too far, though. I'm sure many parents here have had struggles with their kids over schoolwork, where the conversation went "I can't do X", "Well, you're just not trying hard enough". So, such beliefs need not be something that is a) applicable to every activity, or b) uniform within a household. People DO adopt different kinds of beliefs about different sorts of tasks and subject matter, such that they can work on their gymnastics ceaselessly because "practice improves", while simultaneously giving up on creative writing because "I'm no good at that. I never had the knack or talent for it." The point is that, even though their beliefs are not necessarily consistent with each other, within each context, their beliefs about their performance matter.


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2010)

Mark, the science aside: darkjune's post still echoes with the all to familiar sentiments of the lamely practiced. "I could do that...if I had the time." If I was a betting man I'd always bet against that type of person. As you say above: there are key moments that come together to move a practiced individual from good to great. Intentionally manufacturing those is of unknown difficulty. Which is to say: there's so much in the realm of random when it comes to how someone went from lame to great at something that, based on the OPs attitude, I'll bet they'd veer off the course pretty quickly.

Innate or learned, talent or practice: not everyone can do it given enough hours in the day.


----------



## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

Thanks mhammer... I enjoyed reading post #39 (above). 

Cheers

Dave


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

Thanks mhammer

I wonder if this is what DJ was trying to tell us but just lacked the wording to tell us.
I thought he was just being a jack as*, but maybe not.
Sorry for being so hard on you if this was the case DJ.
My mind has been opened when I though it was you who was close minded.
But for next time try to think before you type, If you think first you may save you self some heart acke.

(wow Im one to talk)


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2010)

jetavana said:


> Thanks mhammer
> 
> I wonder if this is what DJ was trying to tell us but just lacked the wording to tell us.
> I thought he was just being a jack as*, but maybe not.
> ...


I still think he was being...well..immature. He says:



darkjune said:


> When ever I see a guitarist who play's a cover song and sounds as good as the original I don't think to myself, that guy has skills , I think, he has patience. It doesn't take skills to learn a song it takes patience. Of course you need skills but you can learn them if you have enough patience. I feel natural talent comes from those who create music not those who copy it.


Which is odd in itself because you are _creating_ music when you _play_ music even if you happen to be playing what's written on the page instead of creating from some stream of consciousness out of your head. Never mind his whole "it doesn't take skills -- of course it takes skills" back peddling up there.

And when he goes on to say, "I feel natural talent comes from those who create music not those who copy it." -- well, that's not at all really what Mark was talking about. Mark was talking about skills being completely independent of nature -- that _there is no such thing as talent_, but there are paths of practice and conditioning that can affect degrees of success at learning and mastering something. Talent is defined as innate abilities, things _not_ learned but gotten naturally. Without conscious effort. So even talk of developing talent through practice is kind of counter-definition.

But that's not even what darkjune is rambling about: his is another poorly veiled jab at anyone who performs music other people have written.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

iaresee said:


> Mark, the science aside: darkjune's post still echoes with the all to familiar sentiments of the lamely practiced. "I could do that...if I had the time." If I was a betting man I'd always bet against that type of person. As you say above: there are key moments that come together to move a practiced individual from good to great. Intentionally manufacturing those is of unknown difficulty. Which is to say: there's so much in the realm of random when it comes to how someone went from lame to great at something that, based on the OPs attitude, I'll bet they'd veer off the course pretty quickly.
> 
> Innate or learned, talent or practice: not everyone can do it given enough hours in the day.


I think your point is well-taken. It is one thing to be able to *describe* the optimal conditions for development of expertise, and quite another to be able to *assure* them. For the vast majority of us, pot luck is the order of the day. For some folks, things just fall into place serendipitously, and the rest of us struggle to simply get a little bit better at something than we were last year...or 5 years ago.

It is also the case that people specialize over their lives, and some things that they might have invested considerable time and effort into are simply set aside (and THAT's where mint condition vintage guitars and amps come from, folks). Nothing like wanting to get laid, and especially _not being able to_, to make a kid woodshed like crazy.

And some people have woodshedding thrust upon them. Remember that Australian kid, Nathan Cavaleri? gets diagnosed with leukemia at 10, and hangs around the house, woodshedding. Ends up playing with the Allman Brothers. Even where illness was not a factor, you have to wonder what led Joe Bonamassa to concentrate on his instrument so much that he ends up playing with Danny Gatton at age 12. When I was in Nashville last year, there was a kid playing on the sidewalk on Broadway, outside a honky-tonk on a Saturday night, who was the next Brad Paisley, and he couldn't have been more than 12. I'm thinkin' his X-box is either still in the store, or is gathering dust while he works on his double bends. Nashville cats, been playin' since they's babies.

There is also the very real constraint imposed by the physical. I've looked at some of those chords in the Ted Greene books, and man, my fingers do not stretch that far, not even on a short-scale ukelele neck. As I move through middle age, my knuckles ain't what they used to be, either. So, even if I devoted the time, and had exceptionally well-engineered experiences in just the right order to leverage what I have learned and practiced, the best I could hope for is to play as well as BB King (not a punishment from God, by any means), and simply forego playing "manouche" or Pat Martino style. The spirit and brain may be willing, but the flesh is _very_ weak.

Schoolyard basketball courts are full of 5'6" people who play a great game...against others from 5'4" to 5'10". Their endless practice has paid off, but there is a physical element to what they aspire to, that will be hard to practice your way through. Suffice to say that most of the research on how people get to become highly-skilled experts sets aside the physical constraints, and focusses on what gets accomplished cognitively. A lot of the work on expertise comes from studying chess, where a) physical skill doesn't matter, b) there are international rankings which allow the researcher to reliably identify an individual's level of expertise, and c) time spent playing can be reliably assessed because matches are recorded. But there is also work on people like waiters who can remember everyone's order from a table of 16, or how diagnostic radiologists examine mammograms, and so on. Physical limitations to high-level performance are clearly not a factor in any of that.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

"_When ever I see a guitarist who play's a cover song and sounds as good as the original I don't think to myself, that guy has skills , I think, he has patience. It doesn't take skills to learn a song it takes patience. Of course you need skills but you can learn them if you have enough patience. I feel natural talent comes from those who create music not those who copy it._"

EVERY form of skill acquisition relies on having observable models that set a standard to aim for. I can't think of anyone who hasn't tried to emulate someone that initially drew them to a field. Back in my previous life as a "rock journalist", one of the questions I used to enjoy asking people is what group of musicians, alive or dead they would like to play with, because people had an answer ready *immediately* (David Wilcox wanted to play in Stevie Wonder's band; Marshall Crenshaw wanted to play bass for Gene Vincent, Leonard Feather wanted to play in Count Basie's band); it was that much a part of how they thought about music. Is it appropriate to want to go beyond that, rather than stick with "mere replication"? Sure. DJ's scorn for those who stop at replication is entirely reasonable, in my view, and going beyond to make something your own is the goal to shoot for.

But going "beyond" still takes time and practice. Twenty years ago, teaching at a small university, I attended a teaching workshop. The facilitator (who was tragically murdered by his son-in-law a few years ago) asked all of us in the room to write down how we learned to teach, and remain silent until we were all done. Then he went around the room and asked us to read what we had written. Without ANY exceptions, people said "I tried to emulate the very best teacher I had ever had as an undergraduate, and did that for a while until I found my own style".

And that, my friends, takes time and perspective. And often enough for me to say it is necessary, it takes many bits of practice for people to acquire a higher-order conception of their skill, and of the skill domain they are trying to succeed at. There are things you can't really know about an area of skill until you've been at it long enough to take the birds-eye view. Indeed, when we look at the reasoning capabilities of children, we see that they are often far more abstract in those areas where the child has invested considerable time and effort, and far more concrete and lower level in those areas where the child has not invested much time and effort. By virtue of practice, we're ready for some insights, and not ready for others.

That is, of course, what makes superlative teaching and coaching...superlative. The great coach is able to find the "teachable moment" more easily, deem the learner/prodigy/apprentice ready to connect a particular insight with what they already know, and benefit from that insight...at that moment. The same insight, delivered months, or maybe even days earlier, would have glanced off the learner like a weak wrist shot off Ryan Miller.

But more often than not, you have to spend a LOT of time copying people to get to the higher-order ideas. Same way a toddler has to spend a lot of time copying people before they can think "Riiiiiiiggghhhht......*sentences*!".


----------



## jetavana (Feb 2, 2010)

mhammer

you sure one smart cookie,I could read your comments all day.


----------



## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

9kkhhd


jetavana said:


> mhammer
> 
> you sure one smart cookie,I could read your comments all day.


I think mhammer is just a naturally talented writer/author (not to mention, a talented typist).9kkhhd

Dave


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Again, very kind of you folks to say that.

As for "naturally talented writer" (accepted in the mischievous spirit with which it was offered), I have racked up well over 40,000-50,000 on-line posts since 1991 by my estimation, so I passed my 10,000hr mark a long time ago.

Many of those (including this one) are from work, during working hours. Do I feel bad about it? Not that much. One of the things I am known and valued for at work is explaining things well, and that's a skill that needs constant honing to keep up one's chops. For my part, what I learn about explaining while in the process of showing someone how their fuzzbox works, is entirely applicable to explaining to someone in HR at Health Canada why it's hard to measure how long it takes to hire someone. Same basic skill.


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

im not reading 5 damn pages,eff that.

true talent.....to what? write songs?reproduce sounds you hear? have dexterity on your instrument?improvise? adapt to any situation? lead a band? have great melodic/and or harmonic/ and or rhythmic sense? 

true talent to do what? exactly?

some people have 1 of these,some pleople have more then one. very.......very few have all.

not trying to be a prick to the OP here,but what was the point of this exactly? i mean what you mentionned is 1 talent,yes. but saying "true " talent,as if it was one all encompassing thing is kind of well,short sighted,IMO.

Bobby


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Good points.


----------



## xuthal (May 15, 2007)

I don't like learning other peoples songs.I'd rather make my own.Does that make me talented or lazy?largetongue


----------



## mrmatt1972 (Apr 3, 2008)

xuthal said:


> I don't like learning other peoples songs.I'd rather make my own.Does that make me talented or lazy?largetongue


Yes, it does9kkhhd


----------



## zontar (Oct 25, 2007)

xuthal said:


> I don't like learning other peoples songs.I'd rather make my own.Does that make me talented or lazy?largetongue





mrmatt1972 said:


> Yes, it does9kkhhd


Yup, both...


----------



## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Sorry, but the only people I have ever known to state that it only take patience as opposed to talent, to learn a cover and play it bang on are those who lack the talent to do so themselves.

Sorry if that sounds like a rather agressive statement, but I've heard this sort of thing too many times from guys who write mediocre original tunes but couldn't play a Chuck Berry tune exactly right if their lives depended on it.

I call BS on this one.

And no freaking way can anyone learn covers bang on with enough time, any more than anyone could write Peaches en Regalia, given enough time.


----------



## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

Milkman said:


> Sorry if that sounds like a rather agressive statement, but I've heard this sort of thing too many times from guys who write mediocre original tunes but couldn't play a Chuck Berry tune exactly right if their lives depended on it.


dam, that's me on both sides! hahahahaha


----------



## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

cheezyridr said:


> dam, that's me on both sides! hahahahaha



Me too I suppose, but I taught for many years and pride myself in being able to lift parts accurately. Most of the guys who talk down about cover bands don't have much to back it up IMO.


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

Bobby said:


> im not reading 5 damn pages,eff that.
> 
> true talent.....to what? write songs?reproduce sounds you hear? have dexterity on your instrument?improvise? adapt to any situation? lead a band? have great melodic/and or harmonic/ and or rhythmic sense?
> 
> ...


yup, I am with Bobby on this. Whenever you make over-simplified and over-generalized statements like the one in the OP, well you get lots of interesting responses and debate for one thing... 

Talent and skill are different, and you can have a talent for some of many aspects of the music making process. Skill is something that is developed. 

hammer, I don't know if I agree entirely with your thesis that talent is the apparent product of good practice and learning, if that is indeed what you were saying (you say quite a few things). good posts btw. 

proper practice and training is essential but I have been coaching and teaching (art and sports) for over 25 years and you can work on skills but you cannot train, practice, or coach that extra something into someone, lets call it talent, that separates the best from the greatest.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Well I would agree with you that teaching talent is hard to do, and I imagine so would the OP. After all, if doing something "different" or counter-intuitive is what we value in the arts, then it is incumbent on the performer to think that part up, and nigh impossible (if only by definition) for the teacher to "teach" the counter-intuitive. They can certainly suggest it, but obviously it is ridiculous to imagine someone saying "Here is something that no one has done with the medium before. Now copy me!".

At the same time, what we like to socially label as "creative" or "talent" rarely comes from those without skill. Certainly what makes it look like talent to us is that they leverage their capacity to think in higher-order fashion about something, and DO something with that perspective. Many of the players we idolize are thoroughly capable of playing cover tunes in bar/bar-mitzvah bands. Indeed, if they couldn't, we'd be mighty surprised! But they DO go beyond in ways we find appealing (that is, when they aren't just noodling around waiting for an idea to come). They have the level of familiarity with the idiom to be able to anticipate what note/s you THINK are going to come next, and play something unexpected that contains remnants of the expected. That sort of "leveraged foresight" requires tremendous familiarity with what is normally done, and that requires thousands of hours.

In one of my conversations with Neil Charness some years back, he was telling me about some musical savants he had studied. He noted that while people often assume that such savants can listen to a piece once and play it back flawlessly, they actually make a lot more mistakes than you think. When you look at the mistakes, though, they tend to be the "2nd best choice" for what ought to have been there. The choice is made based on countless hours spent at the piano or whatever, constantly repeating the idiom. The way you and I know that if it's a blues tune and the root chord is A-min, you don't have to be told what the other chords are; you KNOW the idiom from practice.

A great illustration of this "2nd best note choice" is the way Neil Innes and Co. come ever so close to Beatles melodies with their "Rutles" songs, and seem to have everything except for THAT note. Musical savants have enough practice that when they don't remember the specifics of what "goes there", they fill it with what they feel sounds familiar in that spot....the same way people throughout my life have called me "Mike" when they couldn't remember my first name (it's Mark).


----------



## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...i'm not a fan of "talent". i would much prefer to work with, and listen to, a musician with who has passion, attitude and soul.


----------



## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

I guess the classical world is filled with a lot of talentless people .. seeing how most are just reading the cover songs note for note....gee and then they may memorize it too....


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Although to be fair, there are musicians who play compositions from sheet music (I hesitate to call it "classical" since that refers to a specific historical period) in a way which shows that they know how to produce the notes written on the page, and others who are able to rise above the individual notes and lines and impose a broader interpretative vision of the piece, whilst still playing everything that's on the page. Think about Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. Hard to imagine anything more mathetmatically precise and constrained than that yet, without changing a note, Gould was recognized for superimposing his own vision on it.

I harken back to all those high school and university jazz band concerts I've attended, where they were all playing from the same Thad Jones or Sammy Nestico arrangement, and nobody made a "mistake", as such, but the music simply didn't flow or swing or have any feeling. Often it would feel like a bunch of people playing a succession of individual 16th notes. I guess this is partly because there is only so much you can transcribe, using standard notation and transcription techniques and descriptive terms. And even if you did have an immense standardized lexicon of terms for transcription purposes, the sight reader still has to have the idea in their head and hands of what it is the term means and physically/aurally translates to. It's one thing for a person to point off in a general direction at a cluster of objects, and quite another to know what they are thinking when they point.


----------



## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

mhammer said:


> Although to be fair, there are musicians who play compositions from sheet music (I hesitate to call it "classical" since that refers to a specific historical period) in a way which shows that they know how to produce the notes written on the page, and others who are able to rise above the individual notes and lines and impose a broader interpretative vision of the piece, whilst still playing everything that's on the page. Think about Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. Hard to imagine anything more mathetmatically precise and constrained than that yet, without changing a note, Gould was recognized for superimposing his own vision on it.
> 
> I harken back to all those high school and university jazz band concerts I've attended, where they were all playing from the same Thad Jones or Sammy Nestico arrangement, and nobody made a "mistake", as such, but the music simply didn't flow or swing or have any feeling. Often it would feel like a bunch of people playing a succession of individual 16th notes. I guess this is partly because there is only so much you can transcribe, using standard notation and transcription techniques and descriptive terms. And even if you did have an immense standardized lexicon of terms for transcription purposes, the sight reader still has to have the idea in their head and hands of what it is the term means and physically/aurally translates to. It's one thing for a person to point off in a general direction at a cluster of objects, and quite another to know what they are thinking when they point.


Quit ruining my point with facts.. gee...


----------



## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

david henman said:


> ...i'm not a fan of "talent". i would much prefer to work with, and listen to, a musician with who has passion, attitude and soul.



All of which can amount to a hill of beans without good ears and some chops. I've heard your work. You have both.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for great writing. I just don't get off on listening to guys I KNOW can't play snearing at "human Jukeboxes" who happen to have worked for decades in some cases to master their abilities.


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Although to be fair, there are musicians who play compositions from sheet music (I hesitate to call it "classical" since that refers to a specific historical period) in a way which shows that they know how to produce the notes written on the page, and others who are able to rise above the individual notes and lines and impose a broader interpretative vision of the piece, whilst still playing everything that's on the page. Think about Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations. Hard to imagine anything more mathetmatically precise and constrained than that yet, without changing a note, Gould was recognized for superimposing his own vision on it.
> 
> I harken back to all those high school and university jazz band concerts I've attended, where they were all playing from the same Thad Jones or Sammy Nestico arrangement, and nobody made a "mistake", as such, but the music simply didn't flow or swing or have any feeling. Often it would feel like a bunch of people playing a succession of individual 16th notes. I guess this is partly because there is only so much you can transcribe, using standard notation and transcription techniques and descriptive terms. And even if you did have an immense standardized lexicon of terms for transcription purposes, the sight reader still has to have the idea in their head and hands of what it is the term means and physically/aurally translates to. It's one thing for a person to point off in a general direction at a cluster of objects, and quite another to know what they are thinking when they point.


to make a long point very short,theres one HELL of a difference between Gould playing the Goldberg variations,and yer local chuck berry tribute band. i hope this is obvious. if i have to explain why,well...god help us all.

Gould's interpretation of Bach pieces is creative in and of itself. and if anyone spent 10 years learning how to do Brooks and Dunn covers "just like the record/cd/mp3" well,they are idiots. im sorry,youve wasted your time. thats just time in your life your never going to get back,nothing more.

i am going to get flamed for this one,as well.....

Bobby


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Certainly no flames from me. I think we're in complete accord, here.


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

mhammer said:


> Certainly no flames from me. I think we're in complete accord, here.


well im glad someone doesnt hate me on this forum. but lately ive been getting nothing but shit for having the GAUL to suggest that people should play because they want to and feel it,not for money.

another time,i had the sheer lack of respect for humanity as a whole to say that MCartney was kind of a hack,imo,and that i think his political views are short sighted and childish.

in both cases,you would think i had just spat on the virgin Mary,ffs. 

so im a little surprised when someone agrees with me,i am starting to think im just wrong about everything.

Bobby


----------



## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

Bobby said:


> well im glad someone doesnt hate me on this forum. but lately ive been getting nothing but shit for having the GAUL to suggest that people should play because they want to and feel it,not for money.
> 
> another time,i had the sheer lack of respect for humanity as a whole to say that MCartney was kind of a hack,imo,and that i think his political views are short sighted and childish.
> 
> ...


My wife once pointed out that saying you're not really into the Beatles is a lot like saying you "don't support the troops" in music circles. It's funny cuz it's true. And BTW we are all wrong all the time on the internet Bobby. Didn't you know the Net is where all the secret experts come to tell us what's right??

Cheers Shawn.


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

Rugburn said:


> My wife once pointed out that saying you're not really into the Beatles is a lot like saying you "don't support the troops" in music circles. It's funny cuz it's true. And BTW we are all wrong all the time on the internet Bobby. Didn't you know the Net is where all the secret experts come to tell us what's right??
> 
> Cheers Shawn.


yeah Shawn we had a bit of a disscussion on the whole "china" situation. but i dont recall you calling me an idiot,or wrong,or out of line or disrespectful for disagreeing with you. we just disscussed 2 sides of something, like men.

i have no problem with people dissagreeing with me. of course they are allowed to think whatever they do. but we can dissagree without getting all prissy and offended by shit.

i mean,i look after my mother and she watches alot of these "infotainement" type shows. everytime i hear" youll never guess what biebs is doing now" or something like that it makes me want to go throw a big,blunt object at Ben Mulroney. but i dont do it. why? because Ben Mulroney is a shill working for a big corporation that fuels itself from idiots. thats ok. 

id just hope id find some more enlightened views amongst my peers. (im not saying yours arent). but just insulting someone because they dont agree with me on here seems dumb,or id want to at least address their points before insulting them.

Bobby


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

Bobby said:


> to make a long point very short,theres one HELL of a difference between Gould playing the Goldberg variations,and yer local chuck berry tribute band. i hope this is obvious. if i have to explain why,well...god help us all.
> 
> Gould's interpretation of Bach pieces is creative in and of itself. and if anyone spent 10 years learning how to do Brooks and Dunn covers "just like the record/cd/mp3" well,they are idiots. im sorry,youve wasted your time. thats just time in your life your never going to get back,nothing more.
> 
> ...


No flames from me either Bobby, I usually enjoy reading your insightful and intelligent input on topics, and agree with most of it (the Paul MaCartney stuff too) - I must say though, I am not sure what your point is here or how it relates specifically to the original topic. Keep on throwin' it out there though,...


----------



## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

Bobby said:


> to make a long point very short,theres one HELL of a difference between Gould playing the Goldberg variations,and yer local chuck berry tribute band. i hope this is obvious. if i have to explain why,well...god help us all.
> 
> Gould's interpretation of Bach pieces is creative in and of itself. and if anyone spent 10 years learning how to do Brooks and Dunn covers "just like the record/cd/mp3" well,they are idiots. im sorry,youve wasted your time. thats just time in your life your never going to get back,nothing more.


i partially disagree. obviously brookes and dunn never intended to approach the depth of content explored by bach or some other baroque era composers. stating the obvious doesn't really mean anything when "preaching to the choir". the people who spend huge effort to exactly reproduce more shallow works are doing it for the same reason those works are created. it's entertainment. 
it's like doing a crossword puzzle or learning to line dance. it was never intended to be anything significant. it's just for fun. no way can you say that about precisely learning some of the classical pieces, or even the more esoteric and bizzare jazz stuff. there's far too much involved to put that kind of dedication into it for it to be *only* "fun" true talent can manifest itself in as many ways as there are unique snowflakes. some talent is extremely complex. some is amazingly simple. segovia was talented. angus young is talented. but they are not on the same plane at all.


----------



## Guest (Sep 12, 2010)

Bobby said:


> to make a long point very short,theres one HELL of a difference between Gould playing the Goldberg variations,and yer local chuck berry tribute band. i hope this is obvious. if i have to explain why,well...god help us all.
> 
> Gould's interpretation of Bach pieces is creative in and of itself. and if anyone spent 10 years learning how to do Brooks and Dunn covers "just like the record/cd/mp3" well,they are idiots. im sorry,youve wasted your time. thats just time in your life your never going to get back,nothing more.
> 
> ...


But do you think Gould's skill was learned mastery of music and his instrument or was it innate, something he was born with that no other person could learn?

Mark, this brings up the interesting topic of the Savant (which I'm fairly certain Gould was). Does this mean you can be born with it when you consider the outliers like the mildly autistic with musical aptitude?


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Personally, I am not a believer in "born with it".

It is easy to imagine nervous systems hard-wired for finding certain things appealing (e.g., the human predilection for certain configurations of face: big forehead, big eyes, "average" spacing of facial features - what some theorists call "innate cuteness"), or hard-wired to experience greater emotional lability (from birth some kids calm down easy when startled or excited, others take a long time and need assistance....for the rest of their lives). It is easy to imagine nervous systems hard-wired such that they interfere with the ready acquisition of knowledge from normative experience (e.g., the extreme difficulty those with autism have in learning what others think or feel), or interfere with the capacity to acquire, forge and maintain higher-order plans and self-monitoring (e.g., people with Down's Syndrome or fetal alcohol syndrome).

In contrast, it is very difficult to imagine nervous systems hard-wired with deployable strategies and "innate knowledge". It is the availability of efficient deployable strategies coming from (and accompanied by) an exquisitely organized knowledge base that makes the difference between experts, prodigies, "geniuses", and others. So, for there to be the sort of "innate talent" people think exists (like "getting your musicality from your father's side") would imply that strategies and knowledge can be coded for genetically, and reliably reproduced in nervous systems. Methinks that's expecting a little more of our genes than they can usually deliver.

Personally, I've been fascinated with the manner in which scientists and non-scientists alike make attributions about innateness. We often make the mistaken inference that because the individual themselves can't describe how they do it or think, that it must BE "hard-wired" or innate. But consider how many things each of us has clearly acquired remarkable expertise in, yet is thoroughly unable to describe how we learned it or how we do it. Do you KNOW how you do finger vibrato, plan out the grammatical structure of what you say mere milliseconds in advance, stand upright without falling, keep your bowels and bladder under control, chew your food without choking, or hold a pen in your hand to write? Clearly none of us was born "knowing" how to keep poop and pee inside us or stand upright, yet the vast majority of us acquire it within a year or two or three (maybe longer if we're talking about nocturnal urine control). So where does that knowledge and skill come from? Was it hardwired into us genetically and somehow "suppressed" until we reached a certain age? Likewise, I do not expect the remarkably skilled CFL players I watched today and yesterday to "know" how they time their leaps to coincide with the ball's arrival, or expect master chefs to "know" what a given dish could use just a little more of. It comes from practice and well-leveraged experience, but none of them can describe how that happened.

There is a voluminous literature in what is termed "implicit memory" and "implicit learning" that strongly indicates that one shouldn't put one's faith in consciousness as the determiner of a great many things. People put in phenomenal amounts of practice, and learn tons of stuff, without being consciously aware of it.

As for Gould, I think we have sufficient evidence that he was somewhat on the obsessive side when it came to music. Trust me, the appearance of facility, on his part, is the culmination of thousands and thousands of hours of playing, listening to, and thinking about music. A highly worthwhile investment on his part, if you ask me, but an investment nonetheless, not a "gift".


----------



## bluesmostly (Feb 10, 2006)

mhammer said:


> Personally, I am not a believer in "born with it".
> 
> As for Gould, I think we have sufficient evidence that he was somewhat on the obsessive side when it came to music. Trust me, the appearance of facility, on his part, is the culmination of thousands and thousands of hours of playing, listening to, and thinking about music. A highly worthwhile investment on his part, if you ask me, but an investment nonetheless, not a "gift".


I think that we can all agree that all the greats (musicians, athletes, etc) make it look easy because of the immense amount of time spent learning and practicing. But I still insist that given the same training and practice one player may be great (genius) while the other just really good, there are countless examples of this. And dedicated pianist with a poor sense or rhythm and a bad ear for music (ptich, melody) will not measure up to Gould, no matter the input - what then separates the two?


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

cheezyridr said:


> i partially disagree. obviously brookes and dunn never intended to approach the depth of content explored by bach or some other baroque era composers. stating the obvious doesn't really mean anything when "preaching to the choir". the people who spend huge effort to exactly reproduce more shallow works are doing it for the same reason those works are created. it's entertainment.
> it's like doing a crossword puzzle or learning to line dance. it was never intended to be anything significant. it's just for fun. no way can you say that about precisely learning some of the classical pieces, or even the more esoteric and bizzare jazz stuff. there's far too much involved to put that kind of dedication into it for it to be *only* "fun" true talent can manifest itself in as many ways as there are unique snowflakes. some talent is extremely complex. some is amazingly simple. segovia was talented. angus young is talented. but they are not on the same plane at all.


as amazing as it may sound,im not disagreeing with you either. i mean,if brooks and dunn(nothing against them,just took them as an example) want to make simple music and people dig it,whats the problem?

same with angus young. i learned his solos religiously when i was 15. it was like ****ing church to me. now i look back and think it was kinda simple. but if i hadnt listened to B.B. and Angus,and buddy guy,and folk like that,where would i have picked the basics from?

look man,if someone is in a cover band,and they are making money playing covers of some corny pop/country band,i suppose thats great. im always happy to see musicians make money. shit,if i won the lottery,id pass it around here. but dont try to pass learning covers of corny pop songs off as high art. it is what it is. you know it,i know it,and everyone on this fecking board knows it.

Bobby


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

iaresee said:


> But do you think Gould's skill was learned mastery of music and his instrument or was it innate, something he was born with that no other person could learn?
> 
> Mark, this brings up the interesting topic of the Savant (which I'm fairly certain Gould was). Does this mean you can be born with it when you consider the outliers like the mildly autistic with musical aptitude?


now THERE'S an interesting question.

personally,just me? i believe it shows a glimpse of god. i mean,its part of what god wants to tell us"see,if you just apply yourself,you could do this". i mean when i hear Gould play,it makes me want to cry. and im sure 40 assholes following this post will laugh at me for that one.

but the talent,the desire to work as much as he did,the fact that he had asperger's syndrome. to me that all just shows god at work.i know people will find 56 holes to poke in that. but to me its just god,thats my opinion.

Bobby

p.s: did you ever watch that film egoyan made about gould? it made him look pretty ****ed up. but by his own admission probably,he wasnt exactly an ordinary person.


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

bluesmostly said:


> No flames from me either Bobby, I usually enjoy reading your insightful and intelligent input on topics, and agree with most of it (the Paul MaCartney stuff too) - I must say though, I am not sure what your point is here or how it relates specifically to the original topic. Keep on throwin' it out there though,...


thanks,that means alot man. i get the impression that alot of what i say comes across wrong because i am a socialist and dont agree that people shoulld be doing this trying to make tons of money.

because i dont think people should be doing ANYTHING to make tons of money. to me,thats a waste of life.

but,thats just my opinion. i sure as shit aint got the answer anymore then anyone else. all i know what to do is to play music,cause i feel it in my guts,in my heart,in my balls. if thats wrong,well ill see you all in hell.

Bobby


----------



## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

From The Sunday Times October 19, 2008

Malcolm Gladwell says that if you want to shine, put in 10,000 hours
A new book by the Tories’ favourite sociologist claims practice is the secret of success in sport, business, art and scienceSteven Swinford 
The search for success has spawned a motivational industry worth millions of pounds and libraries full of self-improvement books. 

It is practice, however, that makes perfect, according to the sociologist whose books have become required reading within the Conservative party. The best way to achieve international stardom is to spend 10,000 hours honing your skills, says the new book by Malcolm Gladwell, author of the best-selling The Tipping Point. 

The greatest athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians and scientists emerge only after spending at least three hours a day for a decade mastering their chosen field. 

Ability, according to Gladwell, is just one factor in success. Work ethic, luck, a strong support base and even being born in the right year play a far larger role. 

Just as the Beatles rose to fame with the explosion of pop culture in the 1960s, so Bill Gates’s fascination with the ASR-33 Teletype that he used at school in 1968 placed a shy boy on track to become one of the world’s richest men. 

“No one – not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses – ever makes it alone,” writes Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success. 

Gladwell became one of the world’s most influential sociologists with the publication of The Tipping Point in 2000, which described how small actions could trigger social epidemics. 

His new book argues that there is no such thing as a “self-made man”. Instead, the years spent intensively focused on their area of expertise place the world’s most successful people above their peers. 

“What’s really interesting about this 10,000-hour rule is that it applies virtually everywhere,” Gladwell told a conference held by The New Yorker magazine. “You can’t become a chess grand master unless you spend 10,000 hours on practice. 

“The tennis prodigy who starts playing at six is playing in Wimbledon at 16 or 17 [like] Boris Becker. The classical musician who starts playing the violin at four is debuting at Carnegie Hall at 15 or so.” 

The obsessive approach is particularly evident in sporting icons. Jonny Wilkinson, the rugby player, Tiger Woods, the golfer, and the Williams sisters in tennis have all trained relentlessly since they were children. 

Much of Britain’s Olympic success is down to a combination of natural ability and sheer dedication. Victoria Pendleton’s emphatic gold in the women’s sprint cycling in Beijing came only after humiliating defeat in Athens four years ago. After training for four hours a day, six days a week the 27-year-old finally reaped the rewards. Rebecca Adlington, the 19-year-old swimmer who won two gold medals at the Beijing Games, has put in an estimated 8,840 hours of training since the age of 12. 

Bill Furniss, her coach, said: “When I first saw her, what stood out was the fact that she was so willing to take the pain and make sacrifices.” 

Such dedication is also apparent in musicians. Maxim Vengerov, 34, is one of the world’s greatest violinists. He was born in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and, after being given a miniature fiddle at the age of four, displayed outstanding aptitude. 

His talent was matched by an immense work ethic. He practised seven hours a day, giving his first recital at the age of five and winning his first international prize at 15. Vengerov said: “My mother would get home at 8pm, cook dinner and then teach me the violin until four in the morning. As a four-year-old boy it was torture. But I became a violinist within two years.” 

On a wider scale, Gladwell says that Asians excel at mathematics because their culture demands it. If other countries schooled their children as rigorously, they would produce similar results. 

Being in the right time and place is also crucial, as the possibility of success comes from “the particular opportunities that our place in history presents us with”. 

Such “demographic luck” can be critical in business. According to Gladwell, being born in the 1830s or 1930s benefited future entrepreneurs. 

In those decades, a combination of an economic boom and low birth rates led to smaller class sizes and companies on the lookout for talent. 

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent, said those who put in many hours of practice effectively make their own luck: “They work relentlessly hard, which means when their luck comes they are ready for it.” 


sadly for most folks the only 10,000 hours they spend are watching TV.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

I've been following much of the stuff Gladwell cites since the late 1980's. That's not a diss at him, but rather, much of this was already known to those in the field or who follow it. Gladwell did a nice job of finally bringing it to the attention of the masses.

Gould had Asperger's? I was not aware of that, but if so it does not surprise me. Obsession with the precision of things to the exclusion of social relationships is a frequent characteristic. And if you're going to get meticulous about music, Bach's a pretty damn appropriate place to start. No different than someone with Asperger's spending their life working on fractals.

I think the more interesting phenomenon of study is not how voluminous practice turns into expertise - for me, that one is pretty obvious - but rather the interesting dance that occurs between emerging skill and motivation. As bluesmostly so aptly notes, it is the perseverance and dedication that *permits* the very accumulation of thousands of hours of practice. It seems odd and counter-intuitive that someone could have a genetic predisposition to being motivated by one area of study (why swimming and not pole-vaulting? why piano and not pedal-steel?), so clearly the motivation to focus on that one domain has to be teased out of the person. I noted earlier that I have no quarrel with the idea of a genetic predisposition to finding something appealing or attractive. Myself, I've just never found movement or speed all that appealing, so you can imagine that I've never really immersed myself in anything athletic. But even if a person _does_ have some sort of inborn leaning towards sonic stimuli or bodily movement, something has to get them focussed on music vs bird vocalizations or acoustic physics or phonology, just as something would have to get them interested in swimming vs skating vs NASCAR vs ballet.

So how does that happen? The general trend is that coherence and consequence provokes and sustains interest. Things that make sense to us, and things where we feel we have consequence/results/impact/progress also motivate us, and both draw and maintain our motivation and attention. Even when individuals have severe difficulties focussing, these same rules apply. Park a kid with serious A.D.D. in front of an X-Box with a game they know or are able to acquire some reasonable mastery of within a short period, and they have absolutely no difficulty whatsoever focussing and devoting ALL their attention to it for hours. Their distractability simply vanishes. Why? Because blowing stuff up is consequence, and we are motivated/drawn-to things where our actions and attention have consequence. Part of what makes for effective coaching/teaching is often skill in both providing learning tasks for the student which provide a sense of consequence, and drawing the learner's attention to what they have accomplished. That's a huge part of the difference between practice that leads to expertise/skill and practice which leads nowhere in particular. Remember that what sets experts/prodigies/geniuses apart from others is the structure of their knowledge, fed by a multitude of a-ha experiences. Success in any task leads one to examine what you know and re-organize it to be more effective. And of course, if your knowledge-base about that area is better organized and you are able to identify your success and what led to it, further successes can't be far behind.

Ultimately, not a whole lot different than pigeons pecking harder and longer when they learn that it gets them seeds to eat.


----------



## Bobby (May 27, 2010)

mhammer said:


> I've been following much of the stuff Gladwell cites since the late 1980's. That's not a diss at him, but rather, much of this was already known to those in the field or who follow it. Gladwell did a nice job of finally bringing it to the attention of the masses.
> 
> Gould had Asperger's? I was not aware of that, but if so it does not surprise me. Obsession with the precision of things to the exclusion of social relationships is a frequent characteristic. And if you're going to get meticulous about music, Bach's a pretty damn appropriate place to start. No different than someone with Asperger's spending their life working on fractals.
> 
> ...


Gladwell is full of shit,imo. just one of these new age cats who believes we are about to evolve into a new species. i saw him in an interview in 1999,im still waiting.

but,you seem to know alot more about him then me. maybe if i actually took the time to read his ideas further,id think there was alot of sense in it. i dunno.

Gould had asperger's,as far as i know,if not outright autism. as you know he had a kind of phonosensitivity that bordered on psychosis,he hummed along atonally while playing bach pieces,rocking back and forth,and was just generally kinda nutty.he only ate at a particular place,always ordered the same thing,and etc....

if you wanna talk about it more,let me know. but i know people who knew him. and apparently yeah,he was quite a charachter,to put it mildly.

all that points to aspergers,as i said if not just being autistic.kinda hard to know now since hes dead and all that.

the whole thing with gladwell? people arent ****ing pigeons.its sort of like if i released a review saying that the more people do good shit(eat right,dont do dope,etc) the more they tend to be evolved. its probably true,but im hardly a visionary for imagining that.

but like i said,i havent read enough of his stuff,its just an impression.

Bobby


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

The current convention is to refer to "autism spectrum disorders". That's not merely a politically-correct nicety, but rather an acknowlegement that there is a very broad spectrum of "difficulties" that range from people who are dysfunctional for life, from the cradle, to those who are functional enough but need assistance to those who are thoroughly capable of independence but are considered quirky by those who know them, and all points in between.

I've known a couple of individuals who are clearly classifiable as having Asperger's and one or two whom I have strong suspicions of. We had a guy on another forum whom a number of people were certain was a troll or even a bot of some kind, because of the bizarre near-mechanical content of his posts, and his seeming nonresponsiveness to heavy criticism. I recognized him immediately as having Asperger's, and an extensive exchange off-line pretty much confirmed it for me. I would often catch folks poised to flame the bejeezus out of him and direct them off-line to information sites about Asperger's, where the pieces would suddenly fit together, and they would always go "Ohhhhhhhh, NOW I get it".

The sad part about such individuals is that they lead pretty lonely lives. They're never "in on the joke", don't know how to make small talk, are often ill at ease around others, and are probably never going to have any truly close relationships. Even though they have the intellectual capabilities to succeed in many areas, in my books folks with Down's Syndrome, or a host of other developmental delays, have a leg up on people with Asperger's because they can feel close to others. Priorities, man, priorities.

Gladwell's written some interesting things. I find his best trait is that he keeps his eyes open for interesting stuff. No harm in that.

As for people not being ****ing pigeons, I worked with pigeons for 5 years, and read literally several thousand pages of pigeon-based research across my udergraduate and graduate training, and the gap is not as large as you'd think. Same way there are a great many times when what runs through our mind as we stare out the window, and what runs through our dog's mind as they lie curled up on the floor and stare, is not all that much different. Obviously there is much about us humans that is often more complex, but the fundamentals apply in both instances. Like I say, consciousness is not all it's cracked up to be.


----------



## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

" The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." 
Bill Watterson

seemed apropos..


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

....and had enough good sense to not waste time and resources on interplanetary travel.:smilie_flagge17:


----------



## Guest (Sep 13, 2010)

mhammer said:


> ....and had enough good sense to not waste time and resources on interplanetary travel.:smilie_flagge17:


"Because it's there"
- Sir Edmund Hilary on why he climbed Mount Everest

Sometimes the irrational is what drives technology ahead.


----------



## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

athough i'd agree Gladwell isn't the be all and end all, he did condense a lot of ideas and bring them out into public discussion. there certainly is some validity to the concept of mastery by rote. but of course the factors of environment, opportunity and inclination all play a part.
you say you were not interested in physical action or speed and so did not pursue athletics. i would wager you were raised in an environment were athletics were not valued highly or practised. if your dad had been Earl Woods or Walter Gretzky you might have taken a different path.

but i think perhaps one of the key points our OP was trying to get at, was the concept of Creativity and Innovation in musical performance. yes the cynic in us can say, "its all been done before". there is no note you can play that someone hasn't played a million times. 
and that is a ripe topic for discussion. 
yes, Hendrix lived and breathed guitar. Chas Chandler and others describe Hendrix literally sleeping with his guitar strapped on, carrying it to the breakfast table, into the john, everywhere. but what made him the remarkable musician he was, was an ability to create a whole new musical language. 
so where did that come from? what inspired him to that enlightenment? 
it was definitely more than just rehearsing for 10,000 hours. 

as for the virtues of 'cover bands' vs. 'original material' i think its a matter of semantics. hey the Beatles, Stones, Elvis, Hendrix and just about everyone played covers when they started out. and hey if most so-called classical or jazz and blues musicians, didn't play covers, some of them would never play at all. if i can play Beethoven's sonatas really well, but can't write one to save my life, does that mean my musicianship is worthless? all a point of view i guess...


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

six-string said:


> you say you were not interested in physical action or speed and so did not pursue athletics. i would wager you were raised in an environment were athletics were not valued highly or practised. if your dad had been Earl Woods or Walter Gretzky you might have taken a different path.


Correct. My dad was a machinist and apparently my toddlerhood contained plenty of time sitting on the floor fiddling with what I apparently called "pieces partses", which I assume were things like adjustable calipers and verniers, etc.



> yes, Hendrix lived and breathed guitar. Chas Chandler and others describe Hendrix literally sleeping with his guitar strapped on, carrying it to the breakfast table, into the john, everywhere. but what made him the remarkable musician he was, was an ability to create a whole new musical language. so where did that come from? what inspired him to that enlightenment? it was definitely more than just rehearsing for 10,000 hours.


Well here you come up against the boundary of skill and genius/creativity (and some might argue a distinction between those two as well). "Genius" is the sort thing where social history plays a strong role. I would suggest that what your mom does to throw together a suitable family meal, when she learns at the last moment that guests are coming, involves every bit as much practiced skill, and certainly creativity, and completely indistinct cognitive processes, in comparison to what we call "genius". Unfortunately, its social impact/consequence is limited, so it is just your mom making dinner from nothing at a moment's notice, and not *perceived* as "genius". I'm certain a lot of the folks Hendrix played with thought he was just making a racket, and was not busy being creative or genius. That's not to say genius is something that takes generations to observe, but it does take some sort of "environmental scan" for an observer to say "This is distinctive and special. Give it your attention, because it will be significant."

Skill is generally needed for creativity (though is not sufficient for it), and creativity is generally needed for genius, but is not sufficient for that either. All of them require some degree of perspective about the content domain, and abstract reasoning and perspective is the sort of thing that generally requires...you guessed it....lots of experience and practice.

If you look closely at children in the 9-11 year zone, you'll find that their reasoning is pretty concrete and disorganized about most things, with little perspective. Stumble onto something they obsess over and spend every free moment involved with, however, and you'll tend to find their reasoning is far more abstract about that subject matter, and more highly-evolved. It can be exasperating when the same kid who, at 10, can probably install any Linux-derived OS, including those they've never seen before, and get it running quickly, but yet has absolutely no concept that leaving the lights on and sink running, or yanking 20 squares of bathroom tissue to wipe one little booger off the end of their nose, is a contradiction of their stated beliefs in being environmentally conscious.


----------



## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

mhammer said:


> It can be exasperating when the same kid who, at 10, can probably install any Linux-derived OS, including those they've never seen before, and get it running quickly, but yet has absolutely no concept that leaving the lights on and sink running, or *yanking 20 squares of bathroom tissue to wipe one little booger off the end of their nose, is a contradiction of their stated beliefs in being environmentally conscious.*


mhammer...I beg of you...please, please write a book someday (soon). I'm killing myself laughing at this !!

On a more serious note...this is a great thread. 

Cheers

Dave


----------



## Rugburn (Jan 14, 2009)

It's interesting stuff. I really love Bud Powell the jazz pianist. Miles Davis cited him as one of his very favorite players. Sadly Bud had several stays in mental hospitals over his early career. His playing suffered greatly as a result of shock therapy and medication. Many feel he never again played as well as he had in the late 40's early 50's. Obviously Bud was still a "genius", but his abilities were greatly diminished. Whatever place great music comes from in the human mind is fragile, even vulnerable. Like the Neil Young song says "This old guitar ain't mine to keep, it's only mine for a little while".


[video=youtube;TaSDinL6pC8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaSDinL6pC8[/video]





Shawn.


----------



## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

mhammer said:


> Skill is generally needed for creativity (though is not sufficient for it), and creativity is generally needed for genius, but is not sufficient for that either. All of them require some degree of perspective about the content domain, and abstract reasoning and perspective is the sort of thing that generally requires...you guessed it....lots of experience and practice.


not sure i agree with this completely. i can see it fits some cases. but i would say there are extremely creative or even genius level people out there that don't have the time in to meet that prerequisite of lots of experience and practice. there are those who seem 'gifted' or 'talented' in that they can short cut the 10,000 hour theory. whether it is genetics or some chemical imbalance in the brain or even a spiritual aura i don't claim to know for sure, but there are definitely those who have the X factor. i suppose if there was a sure fire way of knowing how to obtain it, a lot more people would.

not sure i agree that "lots of folks that played with Hendrix thought he was just making a racket." in fact he had been a much in demand session and touring sideman for years before his 'solo' career. when he started playing as a front man it didn't take long at all for listeners to identify his playing as unique and worthy of attention. but that is only an example. i would agree with the general point that we tend to recognize genius within context. to some Jackson Pollocks paintings are just a bunch of paint splattered on a canvas. Einstein's equations are just a path to mass destruction and senseless devastation.


----------



## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Einstein quotes:

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

The important thing is to not stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science.


----------



## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

six-string said:


> not sure i agree with this completely. i can see it fits some cases. but i would say there are extremely creative or even genius level people out there that don't have the time in to meet that prerequisite of lots of experience and practice. there are those who seem 'gifted' or 'talented' in that they can short cut the 10,000 hour theory. whether it is genetics or some chemical imbalance in the brain or even a spiritual aura i don't claim to know for sure, but there are definitely those who have the X factor. i suppose if there was a sure fire way of knowing how to obtain it, a lot more people would.
> 
> not sure i agree that "lots of folks that played with Hendrix thought he was just making a racket." in fact he had been a much in demand session and touring sideman for years before his 'solo' career. when he started playing as a front man it didn't take long at all for listeners to identify his playing as unique and worthy of attention. but that is only an example. i would agree with the general point that we tend to recognize genius within context. to some Jackson Pollocks paintings are just a bunch of paint splattered on a canvas. Einstein's equations are just a path to mass destruction and senseless devastation.


I will maintain that "genius" is a social appraisal, and not an objectively assessable thing. If all observers were prepared to recognize some idea or accomplishment as being distinctive, then it would be expected, and if it is expected, then it wouldn't really be genius, would it? It is the perception that an idea, skill, or accomplishment is highly unexpected and distinctive that gets it labelled as genius. A lot of the people we think of as geniuses in our everyday lives are often people who do fairly normal things that do not exceed what has already been accomplished in the world, but do them with a degree of skill and facility that is unusual for our social circle. "Sam? He's a genius when it comes to diagnosing engine trouble.", "Samantha? She's a math whiz, a genius. You should ask her for help before the calculus exam.".

None of this suggests or implies that "genius" does not exist, or that the judgment of genius is in error. Rather, it is a judgment made about something _in relation to something else_, and not in isolation. As such, what one knows or amasses about the "something else" affects the perception of genius.

How do people stumble onto great ideas? Well certainly one of the things they generally need to come up with elegant solutions to problems of general concern is a great deal of knowledge abut the problem domain. They don't necessarily require the 10's of thousands of hours, but they certainly can't just stroll into something and be brilliant; whatever they do has to address what is already known and accomplished in the area they become brilliant in. Unfortunately, one of the disadvantages that considerable experience provides is that it can constrain how the mind might wander. 

Ever try and remember someone's or something's name, and you swear it started with a certain letter? You can rack your brains and drive yourself crazy, but the name simply won't come. And the reason it won't come is because that letter is not at the start of the name but in the middle, or somewhere other than the start, yet the assumption it's at the start hems in your memory search in a way you simply can't shake loose.

THAT is the principle hurdle and paradox. You need the background knowledge and expertise, but having it puts your thinking in a rut. So what shakes it loose? Some like to refer to it as "lateral thinking"; going sideways rather than straight ahead in the rut. It should also not surprise us that great ideas can come to people during their dreams, or that some great strides in the arts, literature, or science, come to those who are a little "loose" and susceptible to tangential thinking and drifting attention. Madness or drugs are not a prerequisite to great ideas or "genius", but are one of a broad array of circumstances that allow people to not be hemmed in by what they know, but rather leverage it by stepping outside of it for even a brief moment. That's why many great thinkers get some of their best ideas from their students. The student didn't necessarily have the idea, but asked the sort of questions that permit the more knowledgeable person to momentarily step outside the mental strictures of what they know, and look at things afresh. That's why good ideas can come in dreams or why some problems are more easily soluble when you set them aside and come back to them from a different vantage point. Loosening the grip of how you've been thinking about something so far allows the mind to wander in productive ways. Again, not at all any different from the curse of thinking "Oh man, I _know_ it starts with a K".

In the case of guitar, players like Charlie Christian and Jimi Hendrix leveraged volume, and were able to take what they knew and go beyond. In Christian's case, the volume of the moderately-amplified guitar permitted the exploration of single-note lines in a way that had simply not been possible for guitarists within a band/combo context. In Hendrix' case, the much higher volume of larger amps permitted the production of sounds that would have not been audible at lower volumes, but also provided sounds that became new tools for expression. Jimi also had the luxury of being near the start of the line, such that he could apply his skill on guitar acquired the normal way, but be unconstrained by what had been done with higher volumes, because no one had done it before. There IS a certain advantage in being an early adopter; it's much more likely to get you labelled as "genius".

When it comes to the philosophy of genius in the arts, certainly many of my favourite quotes come from my hero, American composer Charles Ives. You can find a broad selection of them here: Charles Ives Quotes Unfortunately, one of my favourites is not found there: _Everyone ought to have the opportunity not to be overinfluenced_.

Ives, though classically trained at university, was also trained by his father, an amateur composer and army bandleader, who would engage in sonic experiments with his children. Ives, himself, quickly recognized that he could not support a wife and 5 kids by being an avant-garde composer, so he founded Mutual of New York insurance company, and composed on the side, while continuing to run a business. Because he had to wait until he got home to transcribe any musical ideas that occurred to him during the working day, he simply stopped listening to any contemporary music, because it interfered with his memory for his own ideas. In part, it was the manner in which he cut himself off that allowed him to wander so far afield from the musical idioms of his day, and be as brilliant as he was. If you were looking for a fascinating instance of a genius in the arts, and how influences created it, but did not wish to wade through pages of stuff about someone who spent years with a drug habit, or living the seamy side of life, Ives is your man. Score yourself a biography from the library, and prepare to be amazed and inspired. Straight-up family guy with a fascinating and phenomenally productive and inspiring career. Quite the thinker too, as the quotes above will attest to. In some ways, Ives was Zappa before Zappa was.


----------

