Friday
Aug192011
• The myth of the talent myth.
Friday, August 19, 2011 at 1:06PM 
Right now, I’m about halfway through Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else and on every page, I feel like the book is fighting itself. On the one hand, it wants to simply support its title, but on the other, it wants to debunk the notion of talent. I get emotional about the concept of talent, because I have always felt that I have little to none of it for much of anything. I was no prodigy on the guitar. I was not speaking multiple languages by age three. Ask me a math problem and I will visibly panic. Worse, I feel like most arguments against the concept of talent are feel-good arguments. Anyone can be president! Well, I like your drawing! You did it the hard way, but you did it! Most painful of all for me is to be cheerily told that my lack of rhythm is a myth of my own creation. It’s not. Ever since I first picked up a guitar, I have struggled to play in time. I can do it for a few measures, even groove a bit, then I loose the beat. It’s maddening. “Talent Is Overrated” suggests that a regimen of deliberate practice would allow me to groove like Keith Richards, but I have deliberately practiced groove for way more than 10,000 hours and nada. I still struggle. In fact, it’s such a problem that I hardly play guitar on my album; instead, I work out what I want the guitar parts to be, then I have Tim Young play them. Were it not for this deficiency of mine, I would most likely have taken music far more seriously far earlier in life. I hate that I have this problem and cannot seem to overcome it.
So, what’s going on? Is this a lack of talent? Maybe, but I prefer to think of it as a DNA deficiency. Somewhere in my genes, the necessary stuff for my being able to develop a killer sense of musical time is missing. Now, if I had this potential, it’s certainly possible that I would not have done much with it. Instead of being a bad guitar player who can think up good rhythm parts because I have thought so much about rhythm over the years, I would be a good guitar player who thinks up boring rhythm parts. I dunno...
Bottom line, if talent is defined as a natural potential, then it’s no myth, in my opinion. It’s very real, at least in my case. Which means that no matter what I do, I will never be able to overcome my groove limitations. So instead of beating my head against a wall, I’m working hard on all the other things I can do and seem to have some natural potential for. And I think this is important. I mean, if you’re 5 foot 2, you probably don’t want to spend too much time and energy on getting into the NBA, John Stockton excepted. Whereas becoming a fighter pilot...
Reader Comments (7)
Very interesting post Jeff!
First of all I love that book and I prefer it to the similar but more sociological Outliers.
I take you point though about the basketball player illustration, the president could be anyone, but anyone can't be president (I like watching The Incredibles as an antidote to this).
However I would say I think his basic point is true. In that a lot of people we would perceive as innately talented have just worked really hard and been nurtured from a young age.
I also think your point about compensating is interesting. A lot of great people in their field found ways round their obstacles as you have. Maybe 'having a great sense of rhythm' is more narrow an area than books like this focus on.
Matt, glad you enjoyed the post. I, too, prefer this book to Outliers.
I agree, the basic point of the book is true -- the best work harder -- but the secondary point -- that talent is a myth -- I don't buy. Will think on this more. Hope more people comment!
Good insights. You can say that talent is necessary, but not sufficient. You can't say talent is 100 percent unnecessary.
Out of curiosity, what happens when you practice to a metronome or with a good drummer? My sense of rhythm remains underdeveloped, but I can keep from speeding up or slowing down when I'm following somebody.
Thomas Edison said, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." I think that's about the right ratio and I also think that most people have the necessary inspiration or talent for many things. Sure, a 5 foot person will have a heck of a time being a great basketball player, and maybe not every person can be a great guitarist.
I find that the whole ability thing is often very non-linear. For example, if it were to take me 10,000 hours to be a virtuoso at something, I might still suck at the 9,999th hour, and then suddenly, I get it.
Learning guitar was very much like that for me. When I recorded my albums, I simply didn't have access to a guitarist so I had to play the rhythm and lead guitar tracks myself. I had sound-proofed one of the room in my house and had ADAT's and I would just keep playing a part over and over until I liked it. Some of the bits on the first album literally took 500 takes. After each take, I'd listen carefully, figure out what was wrong, and strive to get it better the next time. Eventually, I'd get it good enough. I went from a pretty crappy guitar player (even though I had been playing many years at the point) to a much, much better guitar player. Same process for the second album, and by the end of recording the guitar tracks, I was very happy with my guitar playing and in the ten years that've passed since I recorded it, I've gotten substantially better still with not that much effort. I can't play like a Carlos Santana or anything, but at this point I feel that if I played as much as Santana, I might not be that far off, at least in the studio.
Like you, I had a terrible sense of rhythm. Recording the albums helped that greatly as well, because you have to hit the notes at the right time - it forces you to get it right. When I hack around with my amateur friends, I still fell bad about my rhythm because they're all over the place and I don't have the ability to help keep the rhythm. But when I get a rare chance to play with a really solid bassist and drummer, it's just heaven because they just pull me into the groove without any effort on my part.
Susan, when I use a metronome I can stay in time, but time is not the same as rhythm or groove in my book, and these are what I struggle so much with. When I play with good people, it's easier, but I still feel like I create a bit of havoc for them!
Bret, man, you sound like me. When I play on my demos, the number of takes is plum stupid. And I once had an ADAT, too! I wish I could say that all my practicing had allowed me to overcome my rhythmic deficiencies, but it has not. I even hoped my brain injury might do the trick, nope. In the end, I've spent so much time thinking about rhythm guitar and studying masters like Keith Richards that I have developed a good sense of what should be played, I just need someone else to play it if it's gonna rock. To hear me playing, you can listen to Demons and Saints on the player to the left. It took me a few hours and a lot of coaching and encouragement from Jaime, but I got my parts down and we only had to make a few teensy tweaks in Pro Tools. (Toby is on the acoustic).
Precise rhythm sounds like a machine anyway. Which is why I hate so much pop music these days. Natural stretching of a rhythm or anticipation of a beat make music sound human. And the more you worry about being dead on the beat the less you think about the music. Groove is something you feel...and you have to free your mind and your hands to feel it. I think, Jeff, that you may be in danger of convincing yourself that you lack something thereby perpetuating it. I'd advocate forgetting about it and you might find it. And then you can write a book - How Jeff Got His Groove Back!
Dave, I like your optimism.