You don’t need musical talent
Orpheus was a pretty talented guy, but I bet he practiced a lot, too.
You don’t need musical talent
“You’re so talented!” Most musicians have been given this compliment. I have a lot of thoughts on the subtext of compliments for musicians, but for now, suffice it to say that I think this one is a double-edged sword. It’s an affirmation of the success of your musical performance, but at the same time it creates this pressure to live up to something beyond your control. It also takes credit away from you and your hard work and gives it to this fictional force within you that creates your music.
Yes, fictional. I don’t believe in talent. Or more accurately, I don’t believe talent is necessary or essential to becoming a musician.
Let’s have no illusions that all musicians are equal, though. It’s totally obvious that some musicians make music better than others. Every excellent musician worked hard to gain their skills. But some people seem to have an easier time learning, don’t they? These are the people we call talented. There are so many ways to be “talented” at music: There are people who reach a really high level of technical and artistic expertise, and people who achieve a lot of progress in a short time. There are people who grasp musical concepts and techniques more easily or at an early age. There are people who figure out by intuition how to make music.
The intuitive ones in particular are the ones I want to focus on as the biggest source of this myth of talent as the sole source of musical ability. They haven’t been taught and yet they understand. On the surface, it doesn’t seem as though they learned their musical abilities but rather that they were born with those abilities ready and waiting to be accessed—in other words, they “have talent,” which is assumed to be the only possible source of music.
These “talented” people themselves often feel as though music comes out of them or through them by a process that they don’t understand or control.
This isn’t what’s happening, however much it may seem like it.
Making music isn’t a mystical revelation of an inborn quality, it’s a skill people acquire. It’s a learned ability. Humans don’t always need to be actively taught in order to learn. We learn the vast majority of what we know and what we do from observing the world around us and the behaviors of other humans, and from reasoning things out in our minds. Intuition is simply learning through observation and reasoning, but below the level of conscious awareness.
Consider social situations, like striking up a conversation with a stranger at a party. If this is something that comes naturally to you, you probably think the question of HOW to make conversation is a bit silly because the way to do it seems self-evident to you. You might say, “There is no how—you just do it!” Lots of people are natural socializers. There are, however, rules that govern human social interaction, and you natural socializers know them even if you can’t explain what they are. You may never have been told how to behave, but you weren’t born knowing; you figured it out through experience without ever thinking about it consciously.
For other people, the question of how to chat with strangers is one that they would love to have answered! It’s just as likely that you’re reading this and thinking of all the effort you put into learning how to make small talk. Many people don’t instinctively understand how to do this. Google “how to make small talk” and see how much advice comes up.
In the end, making casual conversation is something most adults are able to do. You can’t really tell the difference between people who have consciously learned and developed this skill and people who figured it out on their own. You probably can pick out the people who neither intuited NOR consciously learned this skill, though—people whose inappropriate or offensive comments make others uncomfortable. And you might notice other people who are skating by on intuition without investing any additional effort—they’re pleasant enough to be around, smiling and making charming or witty remarks, but they don’t remember your name or anything about you. Someone’s level of intuition about social skills isn’t the determining factor in whether you enjoy chatting with them. It’s all about how well they engage you in conversation, regardless of whether it’s easy for them or not.
Music is the same way. It doesn’t come from some mystical source within certain special people. It can be learned, and it can be learned by anybody. You can’t tell from the end result—someone’s performance—whether it took a little effort or a lot. You’ve probably been told the exact opposite, that without a natural intuitive ability, you can’t excel at music. But I’m happy to tell you that you DON’T need to be “talented” like that to learn musical skills. It’s such a shame that so many people quit lessons or never try to learn because they think they need talent before they can even start. This might be another reason why we believe that only the talented can succeed: because often only the talented are encouraged from the beginning.
Actually, I’d argue that there’s an advantage to not being a natural when it comes to mastery of a musical instrument.
Naturals—people who develop an ability through instinct—run into three potential roadblocks to excellence:
One, because they never needed anyone to help them with explanations or instructions, they are often unable to analyze exactly how they’re doing what they’re doing, which leads to difficulty refining their abilities through instruction.
Two, being considered “a good singer/player” can quickly build itself into a young person’s identity, which makes it feel risky to them to attempt new techniques or change what they’re used to doing.
And three, easy early success can create the expectation of not working very hard to play or sing well, which is, to say the least, an unrealistic expectation at higher levels of mastery. All of these factors impede further development of musical ability.
I’ve seen the struggles of “talented” musicians first-hand in school environments. Singers with “natural” voices—in other words, people whose instinctive, untrained way of singing sounds very nice and who never encountered difficulty learning the technique of making sound—often show up on their first day sounding awfully good already. After a few years of training, some of them don’t sound much different than they did at the beginning.
I also remember quite a few cases of natural singers who had never been taught to read music and struggled to ever acquire this skill. Of course, for anything that can be learned, there are people who manage to figure it out unassisted, but advanced music reading can’t usually be intuited the same way singing technique can; it requires a more analytical style of learning. Singers who rely on their intuitive talents have to adapt to this mode of learning, which is essential for success in many areas of advanced music study. At the same time, they’re facing the new and unsettling experience of struggling or working to learn something musical. It’s an emotional adaptation, as well as a mental one, and it takes time.
By contrast, many singers who are NOT naturals can make a great deal of progress in advanced instruction. Non-naturals, because they have to learn analytically and get used to frustration from the beginning of their music studies, are more receptive to instruction and less deterred by the prospect of hard work and the fear of failure.
I know this is true of my own journey as a singer. Even though matching pitch and feeling rhythm came naturally to me, vocal technique didn’t. I’m a very analytical person who needs to understand things before I can do them and who needs explanations and diagrams to feel I truly understand. I was lucky to have voice teachers knowledgeable enough to give me those explanations and help me achieve a deep and nuanced understanding of singing technique. I think I’m a much better teacher for having learned “the hard way.”
The paths we take may be different, but one way or the other, by the time musicians reach a high level of technical achievement, and certainly in the professional performing world, the intuitive learners and the analytical learners are impossible to tell apart.
Is there a limit to what someone can achieve through hard work? Sure. Each person’s potential for physical and mental music making is unique to them. Musical intelligence is identified by psychologist Howard Gardner as one of eight types of human intelligence. (Another type, Interpersonal Intelligence, corresponds with the small talk metaphor I used earlier.) One’s musical IQ is part nature, part nurture; IQ is now known to be something that develops over the course of someone’s life, not purely a fixed inborn quality. Learn more about the theory of multiple intelligences here.
So yes, everyone’s musicianship will have limits, but I must stress that those limits can only be discerned when we reach them! Early manifestation of natural ability isn’t a sure indication of great potential; lack of intuitive talent, likewise, isn’t an indication of limited capacity for musical learning.
If you think you “just don’t have an ear for music” or your voice “isn’t good,” don’t let that stop you from taking lessons and practicing! You don’t need talent to succeed, but you do need effort, time, and an open attitude toward learning. You never know how far you might be able to go until you try.
It really doesn’t matter HOW you learn something. If you’re a natural, good for you! Build on your natural advantages with humble hard work. If you’re not a natural, don’t let yourself believe that being taught makes your ability any less valid. Free yourself from the concept of talent and give yourself a fair chance to develop your own unique musical abilities.
