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ToddK -> Talent and Potential (Mar. 8 2006 23:23:15)
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This is great stuff. Found it at the classical forum.
Figured you all might like to read it.
What About Talent??
I have a particular distaste for the idea of talent. Students should never focus on how talented they are or aren’t. Please don’t misunderstand—I’m not saying talent doesn’t exist. What I’m saying is that, for anyone learning to play the guitar, talent (or its absence) isn’t a productive focus.
For those who believe they lack talent, it can become an excuse for accepting mediocrity. For those who believe they have talent, it can become an excuse to cut corners. Talented students often find themselves outstripping their less talented peers. This can lull them into believing they don’t need to work as carefully or intelligently as other players. Talented students who succumb to this error seldom become great players. Having failed to cultivate an honest and uncompromising sense of craftsmanship, they eventually reach a point beyond which they can’t progress.
Talent is something we can judge only in retrospect. So students who dwell on how much talent they have are putting the cart before the horse. It’s as though they’re deciding how far they’ll get before they’ve even started. Instead, why not aim high and see how far you get?
We tend to see great players as an alchemic miracle, and often overlook more prosaic reasons why they’re better than the rest of us:
they practice more
they practice consistently
they practice smarter
they refuse to settle for mediocrity
In fact, what many call talent is often in large part the capacity for taking infinite pains. I remember hearing a guitarist extolling how talented Manuel Barrueco is. When it was suggested that someone who practiced exactly as Barrueco does could become as good a player, this guitarist dismissed the idea out of hand. Barrueco is talented—that’s why he’s a virtuoso.
But consider for a moment what it means to practice exactly as Barrueco does. You wouldn’t accept sloppiness in your playing. Buzzing a note or snapping a string would be unthinkable. I’ve seen Barrueco in a master class almost wince when a student makes an ugly sound on the guitar. Such sounds have a nails-on-chalkboard effect on him. If this were your attitude it would drive you, as it does Barrueco, to eliminate these sounds from your playing. Consider also that you would be disciplined in your practice. Your attention would be fully engaged on the problem at hand. Mindless finger wiggling while staring out the window at the squirrels would have no place in your practice time. (It’s surprising how many concert artists neglect to practice intelligently: one well-known guitarist claimed to have practiced scales while watching the Johnny Carson Show.) You would also consistently put in the necessary practice time. Be honest, how many of us really do that? Perhaps most importantly, you would be passionate not only about music, but also about the process of learning to play it. Practice wouldn’t be a tedious chore tolerated only for the end result of making music. Rather, it would be an infinitely variable exploration of the entire music making process. Practice itself would have an intrinsic value, and you would have a deeper understanding denied to those lacking your passion and resolve.
I recall someone who likened such attributes to madness. But if you think about it, it’s a perfectly sensible way to approach music. Imagine a virtuoso looking at mediocre players who year after year display the same fundamental flaws. The virtuoso must wonder why these players continue to wallow in mediocrity rather than buckle down and resolve their flaws once and for all.
What concerns me most, however, is that the idea of talent often short-circuits any further discussion of how great playing is achieved. For example, consider the following statement: “Manuel Barrueco is a virtuoso because he’s talented.” What does this tell us? Nothing. Indeed, it has the ring of a tautology. Further, it suggests that great playing is a mystery—one we shouldn’t try to understand. It also suggests the potential for great playing is something you either have or you don’t. This is a hopeless and unproductive way of looking at guitar playing.
A more positive approach is to define what talent actually is. Can we systematically identify factors that, when brought together, define talent? I believe so. I don’t underestimate the difficulty of doing so, nor do I believe we can pinpoint every element of talent. But there’s much we can understand, and we should approach great playing with a clear-eyed passion to discover its inner workings.
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