I think flow states occur once a person gets comfortable enough with their instrument(s) that they don’t have to really consciously think about their techniques and navigating their gear(s). They can just focus on expression. It’s like that sample from DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing… “The music’s coming through me”.
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It’s quite rare for one person to have talent in multiple areas of music, such as the big four: melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre (let’s rename the last one ‘taste’ and how to get to the sound in our heads). That’s why working with others can be amazing. I have three examples.
My current project, the misses writes 90% of the lyrics and melodies, and then we tend to split the main chords and the basic ideas 50/50, while my forte is the taste, rhythm and silly ideas that might just work department, although some tracks go down a dead end because neither of us are trained.
In a previous jazz rock band, the pianist had perfect pitch and supreme music theory knowledge - he could even tell me the note that the kettle whistles at for example. But he couldn’t write anything from scratch because he tied himself up in music theory and thought everything he did was boring or overdone. Then I’d come to band practice with a guitar riff that broke all the rules but no way to link them to other parts that I had written. This allowed the pianist the freedom to suggest linking sections that worked and to improvise over the technically wrong riffs.
In an old lounge step project of mine, the singer had operatic training and could easily layer harmonies of six or more parts in one take. For her it was just easy to sing perfectly.
So yes, talent helps but by combining your talents with other people’s the sum is greater than the parts etc etc. Plus a strong work ethic, ofc!
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How important is musical talent you ask?
When everyone practices hard to become proficient at what they do, talent is what endows a person with that extra edge.
Yeh Even Dogs have talent. Talent is overrated.
I get annoyed if I happen to see some talent show and the judges makes a big deal about how talented a young person that just did something amazing is. «You’re a natural! You were born to do this!». I think the fact that that person have put in an insane amount of work to be able to do what they just did is impressive and should be applauded, not that they were lucky enough to be born with some special «gift».
That being said, I’m not ready to dismiss that lots and lots of other children have put in the same effort without getting anywhere close to as good.
The Michael Jackson example above was interesting to me. His upbringing was extreme, but so was presumably that of his siblings. I’m no Jackson Five expert, but I would think they all put in the same mind-boggling amount of work, but that he had some natural advantage that made him able to reach a level they could not.
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I like to think of myself as talentless.
Not because I’m self deprecating, but because it allows me to function without ego and realize that only through hard work, practice, drive, and determination will I ever achieve my goals.
I think there is definitely something to be said for innate talent in music. I believe some people are born with natural awareness and ability to create things that are beautiful.
I, unfortunately, am not one of those people HAHA. I just put in the work with hopes that I can do something half as good as those that are way better.
I take a similar approach to other passions in life. You don’t always have to have the “gift” you just need to love something enough to work at it.
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As many said, talent is irrevelent and only motivation matter.
It’s impossible to juge talent about art because it’s matter of taste. The worst case scenario is when you try to copy someone else and you make the same as him but in bad.
As far as you stay yourself, your are forced to be talented person in art.
Not the same deal in sciences, building, farming, etc… Talent is earn by learning and practicing and the result matter a lot because it should fit a precise goal.
Anyone who says talent doesn’t exist has never paid attention to sports. You can practice all you want - all day and night. And you will get smoked by a talented person, who of course practices as well.
As for music, there is definitely talent. At an early age I could see the ones who would pick up things much easier than others. Yes, talented people practice but their progress moves so faster than the untalented. Have Person A (talented) and Person B (untalented) practice the same amount of hours. Person A will be way further along than Person B. It’s remarkable that people actually argue against this.
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Totally agree with this. But there’s a difference between technical proficiency and making great music. Often the two don’t seem to go hand in hand.
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Part of my attraction to electronic music making is you don’t need long or nimble fingers to play a 303 or 606.
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Ronnie O Sullivan springs to mind 
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Talent is real. It’s possible to have greatness without talent, though.
I learnt to read effortlessly, and was chewing through adult novels at 6. I could write stories in imitation of particular styles. None of this required any effort. Teachers would ask what kind of coaching my parents were giving me, and I could only shrug - there was none. I would call that a talent - a natural rather than ‘earned’ ability.
But when I was a teenager I became obsessed with music. I was mediocre to poor for a very long time. My progress was very slow. I was not talented. Nonetheless my fixation on music has led me to (some) ability, by a different route - thousands of hours of experimentation. If I had talent, I would have reached that level of ability 20 years ago.
To answer the original question, I think talent is important, if you have serious artistic goals. You need either talent or great persistence. Genius works appear when someone has both.
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This is Talent to me. Someone who is stone Deaf being the best in her field.
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Since so many Brits seem to be posting, here’s the official definition from a British dictionary (assuming it’s the UK Cambridge, not the one in Massachusetts, US):
people who are sexually attractive:
There was plenty of talent at the party last night.
I’m sure y’all are sexy peeps, so now you know you are talents and can sleep well tonight
I’d say that talent, and in particular musical talent is only useful as a broad catch-all term to describe people that seem to have a particular aptitude for something. The nature vs. nurture aspect is hugely important and the role of nurture the bigger defining factor. @thetechnobear phrased this more succintly than I could. The impact of environment and parenting has an enormous impact on us from a very young age - pretty much as soon we’re born - and whilst I’m not an academic doing the research I am dealing with these things on a day-to-day basis in my work. You also need to take into account just how quickly you learn at differing ages.
I don’t have a paritcularly great aptitude for playing music instruments as I didn’t properly start learning until I was in my 30s and my first experiences would’ve been in late primary school when there were some tokenistic recorder lessons. Conversely, my mum was teaching me to count and read from a ridiculously young age and my dad was always tinkering with technical things and so I was learning that too so when I got to be old enough to want to pursue these things consciously I was just ‘naturally’ pre-disposed to that rather than, say, painting or dancing. Hence, when I wanted to start to write music at 18, I naturally gravitated to using trackers and drum machines because they allowed me to achieve what I wanted to more quickly.
Apart from a few very specific examples of where your DNA affords you certain physical characteristics (e.g. height for basketball), my above ramble about nurture and the environment you grow up in from an early age are just as important for sports. Also important to be aware that not all practice is equally effective. And then there is also sports psychology and how that is such a big factor - having the skills to execute the pyhysical requirements of a given sport is a very different thing to doing it in competition and even more so in elite competition.
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I think more people have talent or aptitude for things than they give credit for, it’s like how millionaires think they earned everything through hard work and avoid thinking about the luck involved. How your talent manifests might not in direct virtuoso like musician ship. I would think anyone who is making music after school has a talent for it to some degree. It’s likely a lot more important than anyone likes to think, and in conjunction with hard work is when stuff actually happens. So I would say talent is important but you just need a little bit.
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What are you basing this on?
The problem with sport as an example of environmental conditioning is for every superstar whose parents provided the right environment and pressures there are more who did the same and didn’t make the grade. Practice and determination get you a long way, maybe even the top in some cases but natural ability/suitability helps.
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Lewis Hamilton springs to mind
Were the Beatles talented? Or just lucky? (trying to stay on topic)
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