#42

To clarify on what I said above. Let me add that I totally second this.

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#43

This totally resonates with me, I often feel like I don’t have as much skill as I paid for with practice. I would be very unentertaining on a stage, I think mostly because i don’t practice with the mindset of becoming entertaining… Does that make sense lol? When I “practice” it’s often far more like play.

I think this is all a feature for me though… It lets me really appreciate true talent and makes for a hobby that I’ll never deplete.

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#44

I am reminded of Leopold Mozart and Whiplash.

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#45

Let me clarify: I believe that people will be better or worse at certain things due to their experiences, knowledge, and what was reinforced to them. I do not believe that at any stage in your life you can achieve anything if you just work harder (though if you start early enough with sufficient singular drive you can go a very long way). I also do not believe you are solely responsible for the talent you attain; my point is that I don’t think it’s something you were born with.

At a very young age (likely before you have any memory) I don’t think you have the ability to express any talent or aptitude; this doesn’t stop those around you ascribing talent to the things you do (in the same way as dressing a baby in traditionally male or female clothing affects how their behaviour is described); That is to say, those around you project onto you. For a very young child, positive reinforcement from parents (or anyone acting in that capacity) is a huge driving force for development. This means that the (spuriously) ascribed talent gets reinforced. In other words, by the time you have a capacity to decide, an aptitude was already built which self reinforces. The same can be true in the opposite direction: a belief in a lack of talent can develop which may equally inhibit growth. In either case I don’t think the ability or inability was innate, but it was developed by those around you, outside of your control. This may only be a semantic difference in practise but in terms of thinking about child development, I think it matters a lot.

As for talent revealed/developed at an older age, my general feeling and observation is this. The fundamentals of a talent do not lie solely in the doing of that thing, but also in how you apply other knowledge and experience. This can be a mental model, an approach to learning, a practical prior skill or just about anything. Personally I love learning new things, and the feeling of being a beginner. The result is that I swap between interests yearly (alongside long standing ones) and feel that I become adept more quickly each time around, meaning I’m less likely to feel like I should cut my losses. In the long term though, for skills I stick to longer term my development is controlled by commitment more than anything else, and commitment is controlled by how strongly I feel about it. For things I feel strongest about, practising ends up being something I do unquestioningly, it’s almost “part of me”. Again, this doesn’t mean I was born with it, but it’s part of who I am today.

I concur with your statement on talentless as a negative sounding phrase: choice of words matters a lot. I don’t think it’s intended to mean “generally talentless” but rather lacking in refined skill in a particular domain. Moreover it’s intended to make a core point: you don’t have to aspire for greatness in everything you do; it is okay to do some things just because you enjoy them.

Anyway, I think I’m perhaps diluting the thread with this talk of child development so I shall take a step back. Thanks for your response and sharing your perspective with me.

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#46

At the risk of reducing this to a twee one liner: it’s called playing music, not labouring music :wink:

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#47

You don’t believe in IQ or Emotional Intelligence, for example?

Or the below sort of more detailed breakdown. I certainly do. It’s part of genetic variation. Influence of environment on the expression of genes and the reinforcement of neural pathways is important too, but people are born with differences.

Differences in temperament are also largely genetic, which makes sense, as natural selection works on populations, not individuals (except when you consider Fitness, but then that’s also contribution to gene pool of a group, which is why you have kin selection). So a variety of aptitudes and variation in general benefits the group, rather than a blank slate for each person.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0264-5

" We conclude that human temperament is strongly influenced by more than 700 genes that modulate associative conditioning by molecular processes for synaptic plasticity and long-term memory."

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#50

Let me start by saying that when I talk about inherent traits I mean things you were born with, and not characteristics that are learned in early life. Similarly, a generic factor having a statistically significant effect doesn’t mean you are a slave to those genetics: humans are complex organisms.

Addressing IQ: it is a well defined construct at the abstract level with a set of associates tests (of variable quality). The skills are, IIRC: the ability to understand, manipulate and reason about numeric, linguistic and spacial constructs. These are broadly academic and, without education, I don’t think anyone would have a high textbook IQ: to me this means it is far from inherent in the individual (I say this as someone who’s taken very many such tests as my middle and high school was used as a calibration data point).

Emotional IQ seems like a less well defined and less readily measurable characteristic. It is definitely viable to alter your ability to comprehend emotional responses though it’s definitely harder as you get older. I’d say the hard part is that this dimension isn’t orthogonal to things like IQ; it’s also something people rarely consciously try to advance (which makes it feel more like an inherent characteristic).

Regarding temperament, I read that paper and it was definitely interesting. The purpose of such information, though, seems to me more to help guide education than to imply inherent unchangeable characteristics. What purpose does the label have if it doesn’t effect changes to the benefit of the individual?

Anyway, I think I’m getting off topic again so I’ll stop there. Thanks for sharing your perspective!

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#51
#52

The paper highlights the interaction of genes and environment because it describes polymorphisms associated with particular behavioral traits, and pathways involved in response to social stressors from our environment.

There are genetic and hormonal factors that mediate stress response, e.g. in the HPA axis. But resource and social environment affects the regulation of genes, through changes in methylation and miRNAs and so on.

I do think that talent is a way of describing a kind of intelligence, which has genetic underpinnings but which dovetails with neural plasticity. Of course not everyone has a Leopold Mozart to nurture and torture them :slight_smile:

While the ideal intelligence test would be mostly independent of learning, there is no way to tease apart all variables. Many are unknown, anyway.

#53

This whole thread and my reaction to it has been interesting to me and I’ve been trying to unpick why I’ve gotten so involved.

I think that my initial reaction was that by using a word like talentless instead of playful or disruptive all that you are actually doing is reinforcing the idea of talent as this giant overarching thing, and that is something that I don’t agree with. I feel that that is what I have been trying to express in my posts but perhaps I have failed.

I think that in my initial impulse was that if we are going to be using the word talentless and thereby be reinforcing the idea of talent, then why not attempt to put across a definition of talent that is helpful rather than harmful. Unfortunately I seem to have followed chains of thought that gotten me lost in the weeds and my difficulty in expressing myself with any clarity hasn’t seemed to help much! Thankfully your post expresses so much of what I feel and in a way that is clear and to the point to boot!

I look forward to continuing to read everyone’s interesting posts!

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#54

I don’t know if anybody here has read Kenny Werner’s book Effortless Mastery but this thread has me feeling a similar way to how I felt after that reading that book, in that I got to the end and found myself hugely frustrated that he was still choosing to use the word mastery! It seemed to me that the philosophy that he had outlined meant that we didn’t need the word mastery anymore…if there are those possessing mastery then there are those who are not masters, and if there are those who are talentless then there are those who are talented.

My thinking is that if the terms will continue to be used then the least that we can do is to try and question and attempt to redescribe those categories when they come up and see if we can make them more fluid, subtle, nuanced, interesting, and helpful.

Okay, I’m done now. Seriously. Sorry everyone. Love you.

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#55

Coming from a zen-ish perspective, mastery needn’t necessarily imply a kind of social dichotomy. When I consider someone who is a master of their craft or art (or indeed themselves), it’s more to do with their relation to their self, the process they’re engaged in, and so on, rather than ‘being boss’ in direct comparison to others.

This is admittedly a slightly esoteric stance, and risks the kind of over-spiritualisation our cultures so frequently take part in, and which is often used to further socialised hierarchies. But I can’t help but acknowledge that when I see some people play or work, there’s an ineffable level of mastery that takes place. And as others have said, this needn’t be simply ‘technical prowess’ (which is often cold, and seems a misunderstanding of the thing).

I suppose I’m pointing to something that is a personal factor (though of course, groups can work in mastery), something to do with one’s personal relationship with one’s activity in the actual performance of it. This, then being a quality of process rather than some owned trait. Yes, there is difference - just as there are some people who are fast or slow, there are people who are masters (exhibit/act out mastery) in some areas - but that’s ok, and just as it’s irrelevant whether someone is fast at walking to the shops or slow, it’s (in a socio-hierarchical, metaphysical sense) irrelevant whether someone is or is not a master, other than that we might appreciate mastery.

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#56

Beautiful! I feel that what we are doing in this thread is exactly what we should be doing. It is just as silly to just chuck concepts out entirely as it is to use them in an overly blunt and simplistic way.

The way that different aspects of these terms are being refined, worked out, thought about and talked about within a community in which these concepts can be put to use is really cool and valuable, as far as I am concerned.

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#57

Those are qualities that improve with practice and experience. (Except maybe the third one; I have no clue what it means.)

#58

I love-hate that one. It’s an excellent short magazine article on how to practice, wrapped up in enough woowoo to fill out a short book.

#59

:slight_smile:

I love Noisecore for this anti-talent ethos :slight_smile: Some years ago friends and I had lots of fun applying the same to lounge jazz

Sometimes I want a ‘noisecore’ version of every musical genre, not just punk/grind

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#60

In a kindness to myself, I’ve become convinced to think “talent” is a too reductive way of thinking about the pursuit of music. It’s a spectrum, I think most people understand this intuitively if they’ve engaged with music even for a little bit. It holds true for many kinds of skills. I have favourites who demonstrate high technical caliber and don’t appeal to me emotionally or the opposite (lots of punk and black metal) There are a few artist that appeal to me on both spectrums (I think of artist like Lubomyr Melnyk)

I think the most alienating music is that which is technically complex but emotionally shallow (the steve vai’s, yngwie malmsteens of the world)

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#61

I have been having thoughts along these lines too. And I keep thinking about the literal meaning of “amateur” – “lover of”.

Some forms of art have a hard requirement of skill or virtuosity. Even in those, a rote demonstration of technical competence is not great art.

But there are other forms of art. There are forms of art still waiting to be invented.

Talent, skill etc. doesn’t necessarily make art good. Judgement does – and I don’t mean being judgemental, I mean interpretation and receiving something from the art. That’s a burden shared by the viewer/listener, and the artist who has to be a listener/viewer when they make the art.

And music doesn’t have to be art… even painting doesn’t have to be art. It can just be fun. When I noodle on a bass or uke or hand drums, it’s not art. I have no motivation to entertain or illuminate or move people, to be “excellent” or “productive” at it. It’s just fun!

I take the electronic music I create more seriously, and consider it something more like art. But though there are some sub-skills I work on intentionally – like not rushing endings when I improvise, or solving some specific technical problems in recording/editing/mastering – I still find questions like “How good am I? Am I improving? How good is this music? Is this is as good as (some other musician’s work that I like)?” to be the wrong way to think about it.

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#63

Thank you for expressing this.

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#64

Funny, because Mahler symphonies are an endurance test. Have you seen Abbado conducting 9th in Lucerne?

Haydn is the opposite. Short and to the point, like the Hornsignal or even 95th.

Or Frank Black Teenager of the Year.

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