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.

Not true at all. There are a lot of talentless hacks making a fortune in the music industry right now.

"hard work alone" is a pretty vague description. it could very well include going to school at juliard for 10 years, which would take him (Joe) doing some seriously hard work to begin with just to get in, which, when all was said and done, would make him not so average anymore. i suppose the question then becomes whether or not people who don't work hard can be anything more than average... or perhaps it's just that we're all average.

I think you need both. Sometimes hard work alone doesn't make you great at something. And if you have talent alone, it won't get you anywhere unless you put work into making something out of it.

Well said, but speaking strictly from my experience, I really don't know if I had an in-born talent for music to begin with, because I started playing at such an early age. And I have abilities and skills as a result of hard work on my craft.

Something I do have besides these skills are ideas. It usually starts with a rhythm that I hear in my head, and then once it doesn't leave for however long, its only a matter of time until I find a melody to put to it. I don't know if that's a matter of talent or experience.

And I completely understand your "Field of Dreams" theory. You can't expect anything from anyone. Anything you get as a result of your efforts is really a matter of how hard you push and long you can keep pushing. But there's other issues such as luck and who you know that can also either make you or break you.

Some people get everything handed to them on a plate. Talentless little girls who have famous daddy's usually.

to me that's the definition of innate talent. it's there within you, you just needed a way to express it and let it out, you just happened to be a lucky one who was given those opportunities at an early age.

that last part is also spot on. especially when you're starting out, who you know will get you a show way faster than what you play.

You can have all the talent in the world but if it's not heard by enough people then you can fall by the wayside.

Some metal bands could be classed as having less talent than other musicians yet even after 30 years they can pull crowds in their thousands due to their hard work and enthusiasm whilst more talented bands fade away.

I have heard many talented musicians and bands that don't receive decent exposure whilst other bands with average musicians garner much more success. Voivod are one of the most talented, unusual and innovative metal bands on the planet yet most of the kids these days are far more interested in bigging up bands such as Between The Buried And Me as the most innovative Metal band around.

Talent is for n00bz.

Awesome post. Please post more so I can learn more about music and it's fans.

That's the troof.

I say yes because there are plenty of talentless hacks out there who got where they are because they worked hard got lucky.

http://www.hempola.com/Chad1.jpg

hold on dude, it takes TONS of talent to blatantly suck that much without imploding or getting sued for plagiarism.