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Were grande maestros of flamenco guitar prodigies? To me there's no prodigy. It's said maestros had the best teachers and practiced many hours a day from a young age. No wonder they became so good at an early age.
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to devilhand)
its easy , when you have many of the pop. of a particular country doing something it will increase the level , the competition etc...
you have a lot of good , great , awesome players in spain , like you have in France for jazz or jazz manouche for example , its years and years with culture and many many people practice
you can apply this to math (india , china) , sports (usa , spain etc)
So imagine , if theres a high level , just imagine the top dogs...
Its just many many people pratice something and years of evolution , the rest appears natural
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
Do you know magnus carlsen? Magnus was also a genius prodigy. It is difficult to say whether Bobby would be even better than Magnus had he grew up in the age of computers
To the original question, yes, prodigies do exist, however a better term in place of prodigy is i think talent. Some people do have a natural talent for something by birth that gives them an advantage
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to metalhead)
Dunno ernandez. Maybe it came off as trying to insult a fellow foro member? Definitely wasn't the intent (I was just messing around with alliterations as per usual ^^), but I'll trust the moderator's judgment.
Anyway, no particular opinion on prodigies. Except that early education seems to be crucial.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to metalhead)
Are you updated to Magnus vs Hans nieman beef? a lot of issues going there , nice novel... around hans (not new) but the beef has increase a lot with Carlsen
its so weird , that i might guess that its all fabricated do give chess some boost , marketing stuff
so , is Hans a legit great player or is he cheating somehow with perfect plays? notice that hans cheated on online chess , and have been banned in the past , but no one can explain his winings on presencial playing and wining from the top dogs , like carlsen , hikaru. he was also banned from the famous chess club Saint Lois , but had his Chess.com banned lift Carlson thinks that hans is cheating somehow
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to metalhead)
quote:
ORIGINAL: metalhead
Do you know magnus carlsen? Magnus was also a genius prodigy. It is difficult to say whether Bobby would be even better than Magnus had he grew up in the age of computers
To the original question, yes, prodigies do exist, however a better term in place of prodigy is i think talent. Some people do have a natural talent for something by birth that gives them an advantage
No. It is beautiful movie/story, somewhat based on fact but that is beside the main point of the film, which is about the power of artistic talent, and nothing about winning contests or money. Some have to work harder for it than others, and there can be a fear that develops around those that are way ahead of the curve. The best part of the movie is how you can feel this tension in the air when you have a room full of artistic talent…the hidden “competition” that is felt, even when there is no game or prize to be had. The OP has this ridiculous insinuation that the young prodigy and this whole phenomenon is a “non-issue” (only about education “options”) which is preposterous.
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
well , talent in chess ? or talent in math or memorization (like counting cards)?
When fisher appear the chess wasnt that developted , of course they had many plays studied even fischer , but maybe in that era was more difficult because they had do developed plays , so , chess.. . They had more skills , fischer at some time (if i can remember) had to study more and thats when he started to leave chess, that became a memorization game
When Carlsen appear the chess whas allready ful studied and all plays avaiable , so allready become a memorization game , a game that who knows all the plays (from memory) and derivations , wins. This **** killed chess
Some have other aproaches cant remember who , maybe kasparov against the cpu. The tactic was to make rookie or inexpected mistakes to fool the opponent that plays from memory .
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
The OP has this ridiculous insinuation that the young prodigy and this whole phenomenon is a “non-issue” (only about education “options”) which is preposterous.
Personally I do think learners should think of it as a non-issue. Self-limiting beliefs are a far more common problem than people banging their heads against a wall because they think they should be able to achieve X level but can't. So, as a practical matter, it's usually best to err on the side of "There are no prodigies. I can do this too if I just put in the work" rather than "He's a prodigy. I could never do this".
As an example, in adult second-language learning, the two main variables explaining differential outcomes are motivation and talent. There's disagreement on which is the bigger variable, but either way, the point is that motivation is also one the main variables, and beliefs about talent (or lack thereof) can directly impact motivation, so there's a very real risk that it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe you can't do it, so you're less motivated to try, so you don't get there. And since you didn't get there, this then turns into evidence that you couldn't do it all along.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
To me there's no prodigy. It's said maestros had the best teachers and practiced many hours a day from a young age. No wonder they became so good at an early age.
There are prodigies in every field. To use the example of classical music, Mozart created his first composition at age four. Prokoviev created his first at age five. There are examples in other genres of music, as well as science, mathematics, chess, linguistics, etc. Prodigies have a gift that most do not have. That doesn't mean they don't practice and study, but they have an inherent ability lacking in others.
Bill
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Manitas de Lata)
quote:
knows all the plays (from memory) and derivations , wins. This **** killed chess
So you did not see the movie. Thanks for not helping my point. So when you have learned all the techniques on guitar, and memorized all the cantes and possible compas patterns, flamenco is over. Great analogy.
quote:
Personally I do think learners should think of it as a non-issue. Self-limiting beliefs are a far more common problem than people banging their heads against a wall because they think they should be able to achieve X level but can't.
Honestly thought it was settle science regarding how the brain grows after they discovered the extremely fast communication glial cell matter provides. What ever skill gets “locked in” by mid 20’s is what you have got to work with, trying to fight that physical fact is in vain. Hence, developing that natural speed ability in later years, no matter how efficient your path way, is not comparable.
And that is just the technical aspect, not getting into the love of creativity and working within limited parameters that might drive individual progress.
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
Honestly thought it was settle science
Much about motor control and movement is not settled. Not even basics like how does the nervous system control movement (my bias is for the uncontrolled manifold hypothesis, a dynamic systems model where movement emerges from the system as a whole).
Lots of good research evidence showing that starting music/sport young is associated with higher performance, but the why is still not completely clear.
E.g. Here's an open access research paper looking at age of onset of training and musical aptitude and achievement (not motor skill directly).
"The present study is, to our knowledge, the largest and only genetically informative study to focus on whether starting musical training at a younger age leads to higher levels of musical expertise...
...Thus, our findings provide little direct support that early training has a specific, causal effect on later performance and achievement; rather, they highlight the importance of taking into account cumulative measures of practice as well as genetic and shared environmental factors when studying sensitive periods and effects of an early age of onset of musical training on expertise in later life."
Wesseldijk, L. W., Mosing, M. A., & Ullén, F. (2021). Why Is an Early Start of Training Related to Musical Skills in Adulthood? A Genetically Informative Study. Psychological Science, 32(1), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620959014
The paper below includes an interesting literature review. Maybe they are showing their bias when the call the golden age proposal a "neuromyth". "The exact origin of the concept, or the precise mechanism underlying it, remains unclear, and few of the sources present actual data or cite others that have presented data. Regardless, the term has been reiterated to the extent that it has become something of a neuromyth"
"Together with the reviewed results from previous studies comparing motor skill learning across different age groups, the present results lend no support to the argument that there is a golden age for motor skill learning which includes 10-year-olds."
Solum M, Lorås H, Pedersen AV. A Golden Age for Motor Skill Learning? Learning of an Unfamiliar Motor Task in 10-Year-Olds, Young Adults, and Adults, When Starting From Similar Baselines. Front Psychol. 2020 Mar 25;11:538. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00538. PMID: 32269545; PMCID: PMC7109330.
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
Could be, but that's not really the point I'm making. I'm not questioning whether there are genetic differences, maturational effects, etc. I'm saying that even if all of those things are true, for most learners most of the time it's best to just ignore those questions altogether.
Put it this way: you could start telling all your students who start in their early 30s that for biological reasons they'll never be able to do a picado run in 4s at faster than 100 bpm. Presumably for most people that'll be below their actual limit. And yet I'd predict that if you start telling them that you'll see a decrease in the amount of students who break the 100 bpm mark, and those who do break it might take longer to get there than they otherwise would have.
I guess those questions can serve as a sort of consolation for those who are confident they've already gone as far as they're going to go but still lose out in a comparison with some other person. But most learners aren't in that position. And for them I think they're better off just ignoring those issues altogether.
It's a limited parallel, for sure, but in second language learning there's the whole issue of whether you can reach native-like fluency past a certain age. My own stance is that for students it's best to leave that as an open question, to treat it as a "non-issue". If you answer "no", then that might turn into a self-limiting belief which negatively impacts their outcomes. But if you answer "yes" (which might be a bit what devilhand is doing here), then there is a risk that it comes to bite you in the áss later on if they run into a wall and experience failure after failure but have no way of explaining it. The amount of students who go far enough to run into that wall is tiny. So, all things considered, if we're going to err one way or the other, I think answering "yes" gets you better outcomes than answering "no". But preferably we would just ignore the question altogether, in that specific context of learning that is. That's a very different situation from learning a musical instrument for the first time, but I think that point of bypassing that question altogether still applies.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
What ever skill gets “locked in” by mid 20’s is what you have got to work with, trying to fight that physical fact is in vain. Hence, developing that natural speed ability in later years, no matter how efficient your path way, is not comparable.
Speak for yourself. Are you really telling us developing fine motor skills is like learning the first language?
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
People with autism?
Not necessarily, although that might be the case in some.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Piwin)
To answer Devilhand's original question: Prodigy or no prodigy? I don't know if any flamenco guitarist can be truly called a "prodigy." Most of the well-known tocaors started out young and had excellent teachers and mentors. It might be difficult to tell if any were truly prodigies or not. But if the question is applied to any number of other endeavors, the answer clearly is yes, there are prodigies, as I noted in my comment up thread. There are individuals with innate ability to perform or engage in activity at a far higher level than others.
Regarding language learning, one of history's most interesting linguists was the British explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. I devoured Burton biographies and always found it interesting that he translated The Thousand Nights and a Night," "The Kama Sutra" and "The Perfumed Garden" into English. Burton was fluent in 29 languages, and if distinct dialects are included, 11 more, for a total of 40. I think Burton would fit the definition of "prodigy" in linguistics (which is more than just "language learning"), but he had his own method for learning a language, and I have quoted his own writing on the subject below.
"I got a simple grammar and vocabulary, marked out the forms and words which I knew were absolutely necessary, and learnt them by heart by carrying them in my pocket and looking over them at spare moments during the day. I never worked for more than a quarter of an hour at a time, for after that the brain lost its freshness. After learning some three hundred words, easily done in a week, I stumbled through some easy bookwork and underlined every word that I wished to recollect, in order to read over my pencillings at least once a day. Having finished my volume, I then carefully worked up the grammar minutiae, and I then chose some other book whose subject most interested me. The neck of the language was now broken, and progress was rapid.
"If I came across a new sound, like the Arabic Ghayn, I trained my tongue to it by repeating it so many thousand times a day. When I read, I invariably read out loud, so that the ear might aid memory. I was delighted with the most difficult characters, Chinese and Cuneiform, because I felt that they impressed themselves more strongly upon the eye than the eternal Roman letters. This, by-and-by, made me resolutely stand aloof from the hundred schemes for transliterating Eastern languages, such as Arabic, Sanscrit, Hebrew and Syriac, into Latin letters, and whenever I conversed with anybody in a language that I was learning, I took the trouble to repeat their words inaudibly after them, and so to learn the trick of pronunciation and emphasis."
As I stated above, I would call Burton a prodigy, but I also appreciate his adherence to a routine that suited him in learning various languages. It required diligence and extreme concentration.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to BarkellWH)
quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH I don't know if any flamenco guitarist can be truly called a "prodigy." Most of the well-known tocaors started out young and had excellent teachers and mentors. It might be difficult to tell if any were truly prodigies or not. Bill
According to the generally received accounts, Sabicas qualified as a prodigy.
He never acknowledged a teacher, nor have I heard of one attibuted to him.
Accounts of his first public performances vary, but all agree that he began performing in public at an early age. He appeared at the Villa Rosa in Madrid somewhere around age 10.
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to BarkellWH)
What an interesting post. I might give my Spanish a revive after reading this. Why not?
Jeronimo Maya also was some kind of prodigy. But as mentioned above his father, a flamenco guitarist himself, taught him well and made him study several hours a day. I also think his early developer thing helped too, and helps other kids learning instruments too. He was quite tall even at a young age. His first question when I met him was how many hours a day I study He was quite proud of his father playing guitar almost 8 hours a day still.
But most of all I feel that talent has a lot to do also with interest that comes from the kid itself. I sometimes teach kids that have strong hands and good perception but have no interest in playing guitar through the week until our next lesson. And others that have poor nails and weak hands, with little understanding of music in general but really put the effort and come around to be very good players.
My son has perfect pitch diagnosed by me when he was very young (2 and a half I think), but he has no interest yet (9 and a half now) of learning any musical instruments. At least he likes listening to music that any time he finds himself on the internet, not bad music, quite nice, and also appreciates classical or flamenco I play studying at home, or old songs me and his mother listen to.
What the perfect pitch has helped him to do, I prefer thinking of it as sound memory or musical memory, is to learn to speak and write fluently english from the age of 8 without any lessons or prompts from us, his parents. He can remember sounds easily and accurately so just by watching YouTube of english speaking videos and trying to read and write in english in Roblox (famous computer game among 8 to 15 year olds) he can speak English better than me and his accents are excellent. He mostly likes to speak with American accent and words used in the US rather than the British accent that he used the first months he started to talk 2 years ago.
He can perfectly imitate accent as his memory never fails to bring him the exact sound he heard.
But again, it is very much a matter of likes and inherent interest, and of course training with attention and purpose.
Not to get started with friends of mine coming from the former Soviet Union, where their parents used to make them study 10 hours a day the violin and started to really hate it when they became adults, so became dancers or tour guides and translators.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to orsonw)
quote:
Thus, our findings provide little direct support that early training has a specific, causal effect on later performance and achievement; rather, they highlight the importance of taking into account cumulative measures of practice as well as genetic and shared environmental factors when studying sensitive periods and effects of an early age of onset of musical training on expertise in later life."
Hmm. I guess since they don’t mention anything about the brain there, the thing I saw about brain communication is not yet accepted mainstream. It could be disconnected pockets of literature. The thing I understood is not about genetics, environment, etc. It is more generic. Of course those matter in detail, but the idea of riding a bike, swimming, speaking, etc., that is fairly universally understood to be “easy” to make a natural ability, and happens pretty quickly, in young people, becomes fantastically difficult for adults beyond 25 years.
What it comes down to is how the repeatable skill (motor or not, meaning, math, chess, music, singing, puzzle solving, etc), is compartmentalized such that it becomes natural and unbreakable as a task. For example Old people dying of Brain deterioration can’t understand what is going on, having lost memory and ability of recent events, can execute clean music pieces learned as children.
The neurological network being too plastic, dies quick, making things much more difficult (not necessarily impossible) to develop to a “natural” ability that doesn’t need constant tweaking. Further, the retraining of very “set in stone ability” being very difficult, even impossible in some cases. These supposed case studies concluding they can’t correlate specific training to anything seem to be missing the mark. Where are the cases that involve people that have systematically forgotten how to ride a bike or speak? Stroke victims remember how but physically can’t do it which is different, so there is a wrong focus on the in between situation (the thought of the action and the actual action), which makes people wrongly believe that the difference between a prodigy (or whatever you want to call them) lies with the transference of a similar thought. “Oh, in my mind I am executing picado at 200, but my fingers only go 110. So the only difference between me and PDL is our wiring”.
So the simple situation about the brain and how it communicates explained the discrepancy very succinctly, to me anyways. Fine if the science is not settled on it, but the gist is that somehow the glial packing cells are communicating, and FAST, and much more “locked” in and faultless than the neural network, and completely independent from it. At some point during learning, as the brain is growing, repeated actions that require quick thought and transference to motor or vocalization what have you, are transferred from the throw-away neural paths, up into the fat, and replace permanently the learned skill. As soon as I heard about this, I could literally feel it in a frustrating realistic way. The guitar skills I learned as a teen, in some few short months or whatever, are so permanently locked into my natural tendency, and the new skills I have tried to develop as an old guy so not secure by contrast, it is literally black and white. It is not due to “time” or repetition either, I mean things I learned and did and no longer work on, are still there. Once I understood the limitations, working on new things in a manner such that I knew they would not imprint the same way as I thought they should developing similar skills as a teen, the learning became so much easier. Things like my 8 minute tomatito video are exactly the type of thing I am talking about that have to be utilized by the developed plastic mind that as a kid I would not really have had to do. Young people end up with this physical “helmet” of fast action thought processing that they developed from birth into their 20’s, and it doesn’t care what you spent your years building that thing up with (it grows back to front). Whatever it is, it is locked in, a natural tool bag of the go to items. Go ahead and test it yourself and you will see it is real (I can still do a kip up from my back, even with decades of no training and being out of shape physically).
If there have been legitimate tests that refute this, I digress, however, to be objective truly is impossible (you can’t redo the process in a single individual). Separated twins would be the best you could try with. In fact knowing it, it sort of pisses me off that the tests mentioned above were potentially interfering with the glial building process in potentially negative ways (kids don’t get to go back and do whatever they wanted or needed to do uninhibited).
From wiki, explanation of white matter insulating and increased efficiency: “Myelin also increases impulse speed, as saltatory propagation of action potentials occurs at the nodes of Ranvier in between Schwann cells (of the PNS) and oligodendrocytes (of the CNS). Furthermore, impulse speed of myelinated axons increases linearly with the axon diameter, whereas the impulse speed of unmyelinated cells increases only with the square root of the diameter. The insulation must be proportional to the diameter of the fibre inside. The optimal ratio of axon diameter divided by the total fiber diameter (which includes the myelin) is 0.6.”
Perhaps the important connections are preserved and enhanced this way in youth? So, no picado won’t be as easy as an adult. You are literally trying to achieve something that was learned “linearly” vs a skill being learned via square roots
But the other glial even communicate and control synapses geographically in coordinated effort. Watch from 43 min. On.
According to the generally received accounts, Sabicas qualified as a prodigy.
If any flamenco guitarist qualified as a prodigy, I suppose it would be Sabicas. I have a personal stake in that opinion, though, as Sabicas has always been my favorite tocaor. He was also different in that, although a gitano, he was born in Pamplona, rather than the usual Andalusia or Madrid.
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
I guess since they don’t mention anything about the brain there, the thing I saw about brain communication is not yet accepted mainstream. It could be disconnected pockets of literature.
Sorry this isn't the forum for me to get into a discussion on motor learning literature. Except to say that in this area as with pain, consciousness, cognition etc.. not much is settled or known.
In a few hundred years it's highly likely that people will look back and think how primitive (and likely wrong) our understanding is now! E.g. Your reference to glial cells, which are now accepted as likely having a functional role e.g. in learning, cognition, motor control, memory. 30 years ago they were thought to only have a support role to neurons. But still cellular mechanisms underlying cognitive processes remain unclear. There is nothing settled.
This review paper might interest you. If you can't access the full paper I can send it to you if you would like.
Tian W, Chen S. Neurotransmitters, Cell Types, and Circuit Mechanisms of Motor Skill Learning and Clinical Applications. Front Neurol. 2021 Feb 25;12:616820. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2021.616820. PMID: 33716924; PMCID: PMC7947691.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to orsonw)
quote:
This review paper might interest you.
Thanks. I was still editing my post, sorry. I will check it out. What I am really after is refutation to the guy’s claims in the video I added. Mainly about impulse speeds, controlling of regions, etc., tied to the “window of opportunity” provided by the physical growing process.
RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
Thanks. I was still editing my post, sorry. I will check it out. What I am really after is refutation to the guy’s claims in the video I added. Mainly about impulse speeds, controlling of regions, etc.
Just saw your edited post. I will check out the video later.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to orsonw)
quote:
Back to flamenco on the foro. Here's a recently uploaded video of human consciousness in action.
About “consciousness” vs conscious decision making in the moment…perhaps you have heard singers that can imitate other singers to a T such that you can’t tell the difference? They dress and act and put on a show, much like a cover band but the unique aspect is the singer’s voice. There is such a guy named Brody Dolyniuk (check his videos), and he has a vocal technique where he can change his voice like a ventriloquist and imitate almost any singer. The thing is the actual technique itself to make a certain sound is totally involuntary…meaning no conscious effort to position the layrynx, move the tongue to correct position, control breathing etc. The conscious part is simply visualizing the “sound” then the brain accesses the memory of the sound and involuntarily forces all the physical things to align such that the sound goes out. Cante gitano like that, by these people that learned this as children, is the same thing. Mostly unconscious. Only the decision of the actual sequence of delivery of those learned sounds and letras are “conscious” actions. Prodigy.
"Musical prodigies reach exceptionally high levels of achievement before adolescence. Despite longstanding interest and fascination in musical prodigies, little is known about their psychological profile. Here we assess to what extent practice, intelligence, and personality make musical prodigies a distinct category of musician."
"None of the psychological traits distinguished musical prodigies from control musicians or non-musicians except their propensity to report flow during practice. The other aspects that differentiated musical prodigies from their peers were the intensity of their practice before adolescence, and the source of their motivation when they began to play. Thus practice, by itself, does not make a prodigy. "
"The results are compatible with multifactorial models of expertise, with prodigies lying at the high end of the continuum. In summary, prodigies are expected to present brain predispositions facilitating their success in learning an instrument, which could be amplified by their early and intense practice happening at a moment when brain plasticity is heightened."
There's more at the link.
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RE: A prodigy or not a prodigy (in reply to devilhand)
The fish trap is for the fish; once you have the fish, you no longer need the trap. The rabbit snare is for the rabbit; once you have the rabbit, you can throw the snare away. Words are for meaning; once you have the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I may speak to him? -Zhuang zi
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He was quite proud of his father playing guitar almost 8 hours a day still. 
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