Talent
 

What the **** is it exactly? What makes a talented or untalented musician in your eyes?

Discuss

You're very talented.

There is so much that goes into it, it's hard to say. I see people equate talent with playing very complex and difficult pieces perfectly as talent, and that's one aspect. Good musicianship comes from putting in enough time into practicing and playing figure out all the mistakes that can be made, and correcting them, always become a better version of oneself than the day before. Jerry Garcia said something like if he knew there was so much to learn on guitar he would reconsider another occupation if he had to choose over again. I think the mark of a good musician is being aware of your limitations, using what you have but at the same time pushing yourself to improve. Peter Buck said he never play anything that beyond his ability. (paraphrasing what they said) But it's not about just how or what musician plays, it's about what the musician conveys emotionally too. I think it takes certain je ne sais quoi to convey emotion through music. Music is a never ending learning curve.

It's an old Greek or Roman coin, isn't it?

Not a word I usually use when discussing music.
When I do, it's interchangable with technical and/or compositional proficiency.

I guess it equates the ability to create with the value of money. Since most people make their livelihood off their abilities. In most cases the greater the ability to create something the more money one makes... more talent. Art and music is the one area where it's backwards, where you can have talent but not be recognized or make a living. Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Rembrandt all died poor.

I think it's more of a songwriting thing. If you're good at your craft and you can make songs with some substance, you're talented in my books. This rule can apply to stuff I don't care for too. Even if I can't feel the music, I can understand what kind of work goes into creating it.

Isn't being talented just having an inherent technical skill at something, that wasn't learned beforehand?

I think talent is more than having just the skill to make music, it's showing your unique point of view through that skill. it's creating something no one could've done except you while having a quality alot of ppl will relate to, something that becomes your signature and makes you stand out from other talented musicians or your very influences.

And untalented musician is one that plays music for all the wrong reasons. egotistical and pretentious reasons. thankfully the road to being a musician is a never ending and arduous one that weeds out the poseurs.

But how then do you account for the likes of classical pianists or violinists, or those in an orchestra even, who never write their own music (or at least, never perform it in public if they do write it, so it remains unheard which is kind of the same end result) but can lovingly interpret Chopin or Bach or Dvorak? Surely they have to be rated as talented, even if they never created anything themselves?