Quality Music - Skill or Talent?

S

sweetrelease

New member
Ive been thinking about this lately so i figured i might ask this question on the board to see what all of you guys have to say...

Do you think that making good music is a matter of being born with talent or is it a learned skill? Is it a combination of both? Are many people just not blessed with the ability to create good music?
if not physically through an instrument or playing synthesizers and creating from their sampler/ computer?

I dont think anyone will disagree with the fact that some people are born musical geniuses mozart etc.
But what about the many people in the industry who may be considerd exceptional composers/producers who have learned their skills?
Are they simply tradesman like plumbers or are they something greater?
Are there things in music that you believe is inheirent and that cannot be learned?

I just want you to think these questions over if you can and respond to whatever you choose, persue them in that direction. I am very interested in seeing peoples opinions on this subject.

I personally have been looked at with a kind of disdain because i cant play a 'real' instrument, i only arrange them. I am in most terms a Producer maiking my own beats but ive never been looked at as a composer a similar name for someone who did the same thing 50 years ago....

sorry im rambling agian, but please conside, compare contrast
Im feeling a litte verclumped, music skills talent thats the subject, discuss

Coffe Talk :p
 
Hi Sweetie,

Firstly, the adjectives 'talent' and 'skill' are pretty much the same according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Both words relate to an aptitude in something.

I think that having natural ability to compose is what for the most part results in 'emotive' music.

I am a great believer that anyone can be taught to play an instrument or to read music or indeed, the fundamentals behind pitch, arrangement etc enough to sit down and 'create' music, but only in the same way that one can say programm a computer to do the same.

Some of these 'taught' individuals will have some previously unearthed natural talent in music and will therefore be able to put emotion into anything musically they are involved in whether it be playing a piece of Mozart or composing their own score or whatever.

Then there are the others who can learn regimentally but that will never be able to 'feel' music when playing.

My brother is a great example of the latter. 10 years ago, he was well into Pearl Jam/Counting Crows etc etc and wanted to be a lead guitarist in his own band so he bought a book and between that and the guitarist in the band I was in at the time, he learnt to play chords.

I lose count of the number of times my mother insisted that I 'go upstairs and tune that bloody guitar in!'. Bless him, he knew the finger placement for all of the basic chords but just could not tell whether the damn thing was in tune or not. I remember him once asking whether he could use one of my synths to tune his guitar in but when he tried, he just couldn't tell whether the top 'E' string was in tune with the 'E' note on the synth.

He gave up playing shortly after this incident!

My 2 cents...

Incidentally, just because you cannot play a 'classical' instrument, does not necessarily mean that you have no musical talent.

Can you sing?

If yes, then your voice is your instrument.

Do you arrange using a computer?

If yes, then your computer is your instrument.



:cheers:
 
I don't think you need talent to make good music. It can help when you want to make music, so you can learn faster to make what you want to make. But it isn't nescesary. The only thing you need to have, is a lot of discipline. Everyone can learn to make music. The only way to achieve this is to practice a lot with music. Play with it. You can learn to play an instrument. Just try playing the piano. Maybe you need to have a little book with some basic info, but from that point, you are able to play the piano. Just press some buttons and you will hear if you like it or not.
That's also one thing you need to develop. Your ears. Try to find out, what sounds right and what not. If you can hear that, you won't need any talent. You can train your ears just by listening a lot of music. Try to figure out what kind of roles the instruments/samples play in the song. If you can hear when something sounds exactly the way you want it, then you don't need any talent.

Look at Madlib (www.stronesthrow.com) for instance. He is one of the most musical producers in the hiphopindustry. Though he is talented, I believe that his power is his strong discipline. He makes beats 15 hours a day. He has learned himself to play a lot of instruments, just by practising and listening.
So believe me, you don't need talent to make good music.
 
skill. really, experience.

creativity in general is a skill. most of western civilization doesn't understand this yet however. they think that they have no talent when they pick an instrument for the first time and can't play it.

our institutions reinforce this everyday in every possible way.

i've been around musicians my whole life, and the most talented were always the ones who secretly spent hours *listening* and training their ear, instead of just mastering that hard lick for an hour a day, like so many other musicians.

intuition is critical in creativity, and intution needs to be developed like a skill as much as any other skill we might think of. but we don't know how to even work these dynamics, or when we do we put it down to "magic".

imho. :monkey:
 
creativity is definitely heritable (genetic). it's like IQ, you can't change your IQ. you can learn more, and become well-educated, but that damn IQ isn't going anywhere. However, learning helps you to know how to apply your intelligence. The same thing holds true for creativity in music. You are born with a certain level of creativity. Your surroundings may change how much of it actually comes out, but you are either predisposed to be creative or you are not. However, the more music you learn, the more creative you can be. Hendrix did not know how to read music, and had a very limited knowledge of music theory. was he creative? hell yeah. On the other side, Yngwie Malmsteen is one of the most amazing guitarists ever, but if you walk down the street and ask people to sing you one of his songs, they can't. that's because they're absolutely horrible. the only creative thing that tool ever did was scallop the frets on all 100000000000000 of his fender strats.
 
sometimes we don't realize how hard these so called geniuses had to work in order to reach that status, mozart had a very strict father that shoved music down his throat 24 hours a day, the younger you start learning music the more you will learn because your brain will absorb more information, that's one of the reasons why guys like mozart were so skilled
 
MusikMan, you're dead on. Thanks for bringing that up. No matter what talent you have, it all takes work. At least that's my opinion. :)

oblique, I assume you're referring to Marud_II, in which case I would say it looks like a mix between IMing language patterns and general slang. Pretty good English through and through though (deciphering excluded). ;)
 
Neither... its all about luck.

You have to be in the right place at the right time... accidentally create all the sounds in the right span of time (before you get bored of what you're doing), and then sequence them all in the right order.

:p

The only thing you can do to increase your chances of being lucky is to speed up your production process. That's where skill and talent come in. Skill allows you to take shortcuts (because of tricks you learn over the years), and talent allows you to do things by ear without needing to work things out. manually.
 
There are a few things that make a musician a "great" musician: creativity, patience, determination, a good ear, music in their heart, and being able to make something that people can feel. If you can truly touch someone with your music, then you are a "great" musician.
 
I also think a good musician doesn't limit themselves to one particular style. Don't be afraid to try things out of the ordinary. Borrow from here and there and add your own bit in as well.
 
LOVE!

The root of it all is the love for music!!
Once you've had moments where music drove you to tears, made you laugh out loud or pulled you through hard times...you'll really love it. The love then makes sure you can spend that hours, days and weeks to learn how to make music a vehicle for your emotion. (whether it's learning to play 'analog instruments' or make music digitally)

It usually takes years and years of practice and experimenting before you can make music that's totally you!

(on the other hand, you can learn the box of tricks that are used in a certain stereotype music style and copy that and make it sound phat ;)).
 
To rise above the average, you need to have motivation, dedication to hard work, & talent. You can learn all the nuts & bolts, but you have to feel the passion to convey that passion back to the listener. However, I'm not necessarily saying you have to be a great virtuoso instrumentalist - you may have talent in other areas (arranging, programming, etc).

Luck? - forgettaboutit. It takes talent to instantly recognize that some wierd sound or idea you stumbled across while fooling around is cool sounding, and inspires you to incorporate it into your music.
There are many folks that feel the passion to create music, but don't have any experience of playing an instrument or creating tracks via modern electronic tools. Does that mean that they don't have talent? I don't think so. It's just that they haven't yet put in the hard work that it takes to explore your level of talent, and to finally discover that you do have what it takes.

It takes hard work to merely stay the same.
It takes desire & trenacious effort to continually improve.

:cheers:
 
Ok, im going to finally put in my 2 cents here about what I think. I think that yes it does take a certain level of talent to create good music but that could just be described as an ear for what sounds good.I think that the truly musically talented are people who can hear the finsihed product of their music before they ever get to put it down on paper, tape, sequencer., etc.

I think it is possible to make good music through experimentation of sounds without any formal musical training or knowledge. What you do need in this case is an ear for what sounds good. Often times these type of people are the ones pumping out our Top 40 hits.

There were many people who were talented and even gifted with music from their souls who were never recognized until after their deaths. One example of this would be Schubert a composer at the time of Beethoven who was never recognized as a great composer until after his death. He is today recognized as one of thegreatest classical composers of all time. Most artists paintings arent given a second look until after they die.

well i wish i had more time to finish this post but Sat. night calls.


SweetRelease
 
imho:

i'm sorry but i strongly believe the concept of inherent, natural talent a complete myth, and one that i feel does much damage to large parts of our society.

i think creativity is a skill as much as any other, and think it is also one that is the most exposed, the most difficult to master.

and like any skill, creativity can be measured in various ways, or left at some understanding of the great difficulty of measuring it at all.

music is merely a language, a form of expression, and like any other can find it's roots in the fundamentals of our world: time, mathematics, human expectation, etc.

the key to 'talent' is one's relationship to those fundamentals. how conscious they might be of these concerns, and how hard they apply the principles they know, or need to learn, or need to invent, to achieve the lateral goals they set out to achieve in the first place.

sadly too much of the product of our current concept of how to teach creativity is based on something completely counter-intutive to this simple reality, akin to requiring someone to spend years learning the depths of physics, before they can ever try riding bike for the first time - putting many potential bike riders in our society in a position where they never get to ride the bike in the first place.

technology over the last couple decades has put many people in a position of being able to ride the bike, without ever learning the physics - but eventually, the bike rider who seems to have an intuition for riding the bike, will want to learn those physics so that they can do even more.

at this point, the rider will seem to have more inherent talent than ever before. but it still requires all those foundations, foundations of what tehir psyche was focused on when they first got on the bike.

if the first time you tried to ride a bike you were too busy being worried about falling, you probably didn't fare too well. or perhaps you had a lousy teacher too authoritative to command simple respect and focus. maybe you didn't care.

these are all typical problems in the learning process - the inability for the mind to simply focus on the task at hand through the unfortunate influence of too many outside factors.

these things are often never consdiered - eg when we evaluate education process based on simple exam results averages.

we lack the authority in the right places in our soicety however for anyone to really give this the attention it deserves int he process of design.

:bat:
 
Does it Matter

Being taught music skills isn't always a good thing. Micheal Cretu said he went to school to learn music and when he got out into the real music business it took him a few years get those things he was taught in school out of his head. It's not what they were looking for or wanted. You need some talent. The work you put into your music helps your talent more and more. People think writting music is a software or a keyboard you can buy. Try telling that to anybody in the music business and you'll get laughed out of the room. I think you should learn basic music principels and go from there. Everybody has talent, it just takes some people more time to find it and turn it into something.
 
by birth talent?

hi
all Djzz here on the bench.i'm Mani from Pakistan and new here as a member i think.i'm answering that question
(quility music skill or talent)
well i think its the matter of how much u r desprate to create any thing.good or bad thats not the decision of creator. AGREE?
but thats reality the some ppl r gifted>
chao
Dj NoThInLoVeR
and tell me how to share my stuff with other members .thx
:confused:
 
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