MORE TALENT FOR SALE

 Human abilities fall across a bell shaped curve with a group of about 10% at the top and 10% at the bottom but the vast majority falling in a band in the middle. 

  

It might surprise people to learn that ability is closely clustered around the centre not evenly distributed across the range from “seriously challenged” to genius.  (I know this is an IQ graph but you will get the same sort of graph for musical talent.)

If you are in the top 10%, luck you.  God played favourites when he was giving out attractiveness, talent, intelligence, athletic ability etc.  However, if a genius like Mozart or JS Bach was born today there is no guarantee he would be especially interested in music.  He may channel his talents into computers and be a computer genius.  A person with the potential to be a musical genius may focus their talents in a completely different area.  High levels of natural ability don’t mean that you don’t have to work, so if you are a genius do the work knowing the road will be easier for you and you can go further.  You still have to do the work!  Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor of the light bulb and heaps of other stuff, said  "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration."

If you are at the “challenged” end of the spectrum then just try to get as good as you can be at simple music.  As an example the bass guitarist of a Country & Western band (or a punk band) normally has unchallenging parts to play.  Most other musicians will know you have limited talent; but try hard, be reliable and develop your emotional intelligence so you are a nice person to be around.  You can get and keep a gig because you are nice person who is not competing with the ‘stars’ of the show for the 'limelight'.  (Just do lots of metronome work as bad timing is the one thing that is unforgivable.)  Perhaps there are other areas of the music industry that you will find more satisfying?  The highly successful manager, John Watson, tells a story about how he was a failed bass player.

Remember that you don’t have to be an especially talented or proficient musician to be a successful rock star.  Excellent self promotional skills will go a long way to cover for average ability.  It was never just about the music.

THE REST OF US

That is probably you and me.  For 68% of us there is not much difference in our natural ability, we are average.  So what separates the hack player from the wizard you really want to work with?  The two terrible twins: training and practice.  Training and practice pop up everywhere from the music room, to maths class, to the basket ball court.  If you want to be good at it you have to do the work.

TALENT FOR SALE

Here is a rough guide on how many hours you need to pay and what you may expect to get for your time.  (Figures based on Harvard research and opinions from experienced music teachers.)

PRICE IN HOURS OF PRACTICE	EXAMPLE	ANTICIPATED RESULT
1,000	1 hours per day for 3 years	Average local musician in a non-professional band.
3,825	2½ hours per day, 6 days a week for 5 years.	Competent professional musician.
10,000+	3½ hours per day, 6 days a week for 10 years+.	World class musician

So you can buy the level of talent you want and the price is not in $ but in hours of deliberate practice. 
How much “talent” do you want?  What price are you prepared to pay?  

If you are going for a high end result part of that time will be spent going to a Conservatorium as this has a profound experience on musicians.  At a Conservatorium they have quality training, expand your musical horizons and you make contacts with quality musicians like yourself.

{Just a small note here:  Be careful of RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) as it can destroy your career.  Take breaks, do stretching exercises and seek advice from suitable qualified teachers and medical professionals.}

For more information on building professional skills see:
http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1142

WHAT IS EFFECTIVE DELIBERATE PRACTICE?

Playing over a bunch of songs you already know every day is not effective practice.  You need deliberate practice on things that are progressively more difficult.  Every day you should be stretching yourself to expand the limit of your abilities.  Work on things that are a bit beyond your current skills and outside your comfort zone.  Your practice should stretch your mind more than your fingers.

Taking too high a gradient is only going to cause you frustration, so you should not be trying to learn Chopin after 3 months playing piano.  Going too slowly will get boring and will take too long to become a good player.

THE ROLE OF THE COACH/TEACHER

A coach gives constructive feedback,  A coach is your guide.  Your coach will provide training that stretch your abilities.  A coach has perspective on your progress that you are too close to assess for yourself.  A good music teacher is likely to be conservatorium qualified.  For a musician weekly lessons from a  good teacher (there are plenty of bad ones) is very useful.

A good teacher will know the road ahead of the student and what he or she has to do to get there quickly.  If you are self taught you will always be searching for that road ahead and wasting time on dead ends.  A good teacher guiding you through towards the best use of your time will get you to where you want to go more quickly.  When you think about the thousands of hours practice time, if a good teacher can speed your progress by just 10%, and perhaps much more, then that is money well spent.

START YOUNG

Training is about making connections in your brain.  Your brain has lots of connections that if they are not used they get pruned back to what you do use.  Have you ever notice that people who learn a new language before puberty are able to speak it without an accent?  If they wait until after puberty they will always have an accent.  You can often see this accent difference in siblings who have come to Australia while some are before puberty and some are after.  Using this principle it makes a lot of sense to learn as much music as possible before puberty.  (I started my daughter on piano lessons at age 6 and now think we should have started her earlier.)  If you have children you want to introduce to music I would recommend having a wide variety of music playing in the house, for at least 5 hours per day, from 3 months before birth and onwards. 

Use it or lose it.  If you are a couch potato during puberty then you will lose a lot of brain function and it will be a lot of hard work to get it back.  If you do a couple of hours a day practise during this time you will benefit from this for life.  Bits of your brain “freeze” during puberty and can no longer learn.  Future learning has to be done with other parts of the brain.

Learn the language of music while your brain is still young.   (But it is never too late if you are prepared to do the work.)

Well meaning parents and teachers often tell young people to "keep your options open." "Have balance in their life." etc.  Fill your days with one afternoon of music, one afternoon of football, scouts etc. have a full and balanced life.  My advice is start young, go hard and go far.  If you dabble in everything you will be a jack of all trades and master of none.  If you find 'your thing' and attack it with a single minded obsession from an early age you may achieve amazing results.  (If you change your mind every 2 years about what 'your thing' is you will never get anywhere.  Of course you will make shed loads more money if 'your thing' is maths, programming and commerce (or the building industry and property development) than you will ever make as a musician.  Before you make that big investment of time on music make sure that it is the right place for you.

TEACHERS

If you are a keyboards player you have the advantage of a well established training methodology.  There is a large pool of teachers who are well trained in how to teach people.  You just need to find a teacher with a compatible approach.  This is something the classical music world has really well sorted out - teaching methodology.

Unfortunately there are a lot of dodgy guitar, bass and vocal teachers around.  This fact is not helped by lots of dodgy students too.  Guitar lessons should be a lot more than the teacher working out songs the student wants to learn and showing the student how to play them.