Talent vs hard work
 

Do you think any average joe could become a great artist like Beethoven or Mozart or Bob Dylan etc. based on hard work alone, or does it require talent? Speculation.

In my opinion, talent is garnered through hard work. It's kind of a "chicken and egg" question.

I think it actually takes both. You're not going to get anywhere in the music industry without having talent. Furthermore, even if you do have talent, you're not going to get anywhere without hard work and determination. They go hand in hand.

It's funny you mentioned Beethoven and Mozart, because in the classical world they are perfect examples of talent vs hard work. Mozart was a prodigy, his work had no revisions, making music was just something he did for money that he found easy. Beethoven on the other hand slaved away at his music doing countless revisions and having a substantially smaller musical output. yet nowadays i think most classical music snobs would tell you that beethoven was the better composer. more feeling in his work i think.

Practice makes perfect, when I started writing songs a while back, I thought they were good, then I saved them and came across a couple of them recentely and they're a bit cringeworthy. Now I feel what I'm writing is much better, but no doubt in a while I'll write even better stuff.

So hard work does pay off.

while i mostly agree with your assessment here, i think there has to be a modicum of talent to be developed through the hard work. even with talent and hard work, luck is still a big factor in 'making it'.

although it seems that there's a shift towards the ideal that because an individual puts hard work into something (or what they call 'hard' work) that society should reward them. i hear it all the time, 'it's not fair! we worked so hard to get our band going and we're not getting anything! stupid jobs and having to pay to live! we worked hard, we should be able to play our music for a living!'

i call it the Field of Dreams effect; but in the real world, just because you build it doesn't mean they will come.

Beethoven had tons of talent, too. His well-documented improvisational abilities attest to that.

Hard Work and Knowing the right people make you a Pop Star.... This is proven by how many ****ty pop singers who use sound like **** unless they are digitally enhanced and don't even write their own songs.

But to be a classic like the people you listed you gotta have hard work and talent.... but ya like elephant sack said, you can be born with natural ability to have talent but it takes hardwork to make exceptional Talent.

i have to say yes and no because it really depends on availability of supplies to make music. luck of being able to.

i'll make an example i only started loving music when i was 11 i started making music age 12 (writing and playing music happened at the same time), i really struggled for a long time to even make an "E" chord, i could barely play an "Em", when mixing i would (past-tense) always turn up the bass and add an excess of reverb ("Zenith Observer" was one of my first recordings), i slowly become the talented singer/songwriter/producer/Mixer that i am today.

I pretty much agree with all of this.