⌠who had the confidence to trust the process.
And there were even more beginners who never gave up, but did not become great guitarists due to lack of talent⌠
I disagree with you - what people call talent is just the result of doing the work - most of us who donât become great is because we donât practice for 12 hours a day for years on end - no one arrives on this earth already able to play guitar
I do agree with you, but Iâd add something else.
No great guitarist ever emerged from their bedroom after years of practicing 12 hours a day joined a band and signed a record deal. The great guitarists were playing with other people / bands from a very early stage - certainly before they were great.
Donât wait until youâre âgood enoughâ to play with others - you are already.
Hard Work will out Shine Talent if Talent Doesnât Work Hard.
Talent does exist, example my father learnt to play piano from the age of 5 Hardly practised and passed all his exams played all his life and after the war he played in a jazz band and wrote some of the music, his sister also learnt to play practised every hr she could and struggled to pass her exams unfortunately I did not inherit his talent for music.
He just happened to start early when the brain is much more flexible.
I wouldnât dispute that thereâs some things that come easier to some than others - Iâd describe my brain as more logical than creative - but even though playing guitar doesnât come easily to me, Iâm sure that if I put in enough hours consistently over the coming years, that if someone then saw me play, theyâd say itâs because I was talented. I just find the word âtalentâ as somewhat loaded⌠itâs often a ready made excuse for people who didnât do the work and a way of belittling the work of those who did the work and got good
I first played guitar when I was 12. I had the guitar teacher from hell, the most negative uninspiring guy Iâve ever met. I did 7 or 8 lessons before I quit. I missed my chance to learn music when I was young. Iâm still bitter and twisted about it.
It takes hours and hours and years and years of practice to become talented.
No one is born with talent its all down to hard graft and desire. And drive, be that individual or the parental push, like some of the great classical performers and composers. And the opportunity of being in the right place at the right time, like some many of the session guitarists who became household names, because they put in the time before being spotted.
We all learn and develop at different speeds but without the hard yards, there is no talent. Simples.
#mediocre-sans-talent
#stillgrafting
From my perspective, that makes it sound harder than it is. Putting in daily practice of only 15 minutes a day I was able to play my first song all the way through in a matter of some weeks, it was a simple song (A D and E) and simple strum, but it was a song and I played it all the way through. That was the encouragement I needed to keep going.
There are definitely hard yards, but not such that one shouldnât give it a darn good attempt.
Couldnât agree more Tony, which is why am still pushing myself every day. And yes over the years I have made big leaps and bounds and at nearly 70 will continue in that vein for as long as I can. But shoot I am a long long way from being labelled as talented and I am ok with that. And you know from all your comments over the years here, you have put those hard yards in and have had the motivation to improve and gone to play goodness know how many open mics and weekend jams. That is the desire and passion but we donât aim to become talented, we aim to become good/great guitarists. It is the other folk who label that desire as talent or something we were born with. But at the end of the day that never the reallity.
But to any newbies reading this, yes it does take hours and hours, weeks and weeks and years and years of practice to become a decent player but dig in and donât give up as you will get there. The best part of that process is the journey itself and the path we all travel. Stick to the path and hang in there, we are all on the same path but at different points down the same road. YMMV
Some very relevant discussion regarding this on a thread about Practice By The Pros.
The TL/DR would be: regardless of creative activity you have to put in the work to become truly skilled but thereâs a bottom line that different skills in a specific area (music, painting, etc.) come more easily to some people than others.
We have this talent vs hard work discussion from time to time. Those that marginalize the importance of talent usually lack enough of it, and/or deny the divine. The amount of talent you have going in will determine the results from whatever and how much work you put in.
Yes, I do wonder how many hours Mozart was able to put in between the age of three (when he started picking out thirds on the piano) and five (by which time he was proficient on the violin and keyboard and had already started composing music).
In previous iterations of this discussion Mozartâs talent gets passed off (in some circles) as Mozart being raised in a musical family. If true a lot of musical families would be cranking out little Mozarts. LOL
Then thereâs Beethovenâs Symphony No. 9.
Mozart is in he category genius ⌠not talent
Too bad at the time they wasnt any IQ test
Both parents of one of my class mates in primary school were professional violin players. The kid started playing from a very young age. By the end of primary school, she still sucked. Talent (which is basically genetics) doesnât guarantee success, but it sure makes it less difficult to attain it when you put in the work.
I honestly think age and exposure are the biggest factors. Very many young kids brought up in households speaking two languages becomes effortlessly fluent in both.
I think hard work is a requirement to become truly good at just about anything but also that talent is a ârequirementâ to become greatâŚ
An example:
As a young kid, one of my friends wanted with all his heart to become a professional baseball player. He put in the hours⌠he played baseball year round, did clinics, practically lived at the batting cage, never really wanted to play any other games growing up. He got to be good, really good - for a kid. Went on to play baseball in college, was blessed with good health & never had a serious injury. But he never got quite good enough to get signed by a major league team. The last time I saw him, he was in his 30s & had finally given up his dream to play. He loved the sport, had given it his all, but didnât have the talent to make it big.
Talent + Hard Work + Keeping the End Goal in Sight = Greatness (maybe - good fortune is the unknownâŚ)!!!
Tod