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It bugs me that some guys can be so good. It really does. I guess they have raw talent, natural skill, call it what you want,

Can you peak? Or is there no limit to one's potential? And are people born great producers or do they get there by hard graft etc?

Discuss.

jaydot wrote:It bugs me that some guys can be so good. It really does. I guess they have raw talent, natural skill, call it what you want,

Can you peak? Or is there no limit to one's potential? And are people born great producers or do they get there by hard graft etc?

Discuss.

The people that really do well (depending on your personal definition of success) usually find the right balance between talent and hard work...and is true in just about any musical discipline.

I can't think of ANYONE who didn't at least least have a generous helping of one or the other... and I can only think of a few people who only relied on *either* talent OR hard work (i know of maybe a couple of musicians so talented they never worked hard, but they still fizzled out in the end... and i know one musician with literally NO talent, but through insanely hard graft and will power of iron still turned herself into an accomplished musician). Most people have some talent, but also have to work.

Luckily, I find that most people have at least some natural aptitude (it is very rare to be completely talentless)... but that said, some people will always have to work harder than others either due to natural ability or background knowledge. For instance, when I first started making, some of my friends were frustrated that I was able to do some things much faster - and often it wasn't a case of talent, but rather the fact I had been a musician for 14 years before I started making beats... so I already had a lot of hard work already laid. I wasn't having to figure out everything from scratch.

My best word of advice is that you can't do anything about talent (yours or others)... all you can control is how hard you work. If you feel you aren't good enough yet, work harder. All anyone cares about is the final product - how good a track is. When someone hands me a track - they don't get extra points (nor do I like it more) if they whipped it off in 10 minutes and never tries hard. What it takes to make it good is our individual jobs as producers, whether it it takes 3 years or 3 minutes to make a really good track... so at the end of the day, don't worry about others and just get to work.

if you have red hair wear nikes and stay close to trains you win

BudSpencertron wrote:if you have red hair wear nikes and stay close to trains you win

dont forget the dog too!

just a thought - do you think that musical talent correlates to general intelligence, reasoning skills, logic, talent in other aspects of life, etc? Which ones specifically? I'm not sure if I have an answer myself, but I'd be interested to see what you guys think.

dubunked wrote:just a thought - do you think that musical talent correlates to general intelligence, reasoning skills, logic, talent in other aspects of life, etc? Which ones specifically? I'm not sure if I have an answer myself, but I'd be interested to see what you guys think.

definitely not

the most insanely talented musician i know got like Es and shit at school and was generally pretty dopey when i knew him. it wasn't that he wasn't intelligent, just not really in the way exams tend to test if ugetme

I don't believe in talent. 10,000 hours is the rule.

dubunked wrote:just a thought - do you think that musical talent correlates to general intelligence, reasoning skills, logic, talent in other aspects of life, etc? Which ones specifically? I'm not sure if I have an answer myself, but I'd be interested to see what you guys think.

Interesting question. I guess there has to be some logic or something similar to apply when making a tune, putting the beat together, choosing samples etc and sometimes you're choosing these consciously but there's got to be some sort of subconscious logic applied. If that makes sense?

chekov wrote:

dubunked wrote:just a thought - do you think that musical talent correlates to general intelligence, reasoning skills, logic, talent in other aspects of life, etc? Which ones specifically? I'm not sure if I have an answer myself, but I'd be interested to see what you guys think.

definitely not

the most insanely talented musician i know got like Es and shit at school and was generally pretty dopey when i knew him. it wasn't that he wasn't intelligent, just not really in the way exams tend to test if ugetme

There's different types of intelligence and this goes to show. Some people would call Wayne Rooney "thick" but he has an amazing footballing brain. Same can be applied to most footballers although they're not particularly academically intelligent they can read the game far better than their peers.

chekov wrote:

dubunked wrote:just a thought - do you think that musical talent correlates to general intelligence, reasoning skills, logic, talent in other aspects of life, etc? Which ones specifically? I'm not sure if I have an answer myself, but I'd be interested to see what you guys think.

definitely not

the most insanely talented musician i know got like Es and shit at school and was generally pretty dopey when i knew him. it wasn't that he wasn't intelligent, just not really in the way exams tend to test if ugetme

in other words you're saying that this guy was intelligent, but he didn't try in school. so you're kinda undermining your point, no?

anyway, I think that an understanding of music theory and of the technical aspects of production probably has some correlation to general intelligence. not to brag, but I get pretty good marks in school and I know some people IRL that have taken a shot at music production and didn't last 10 minutes before getting frustrated, quitting, and never opening up their DAW again.

also most people on here are pretty intelligent (save Soiree and some others....)

subfect wrote:I don't believe in talent. 10,000 hours is the rule.

oh i thoroughly believe in talent. Regardless of how much you start with, hard work is non-negotiable if you want to get any sort of success, but i've done plenty of collabs, or worked with, lots of people who have no musical training but an innate sense of what works and what doesn't. It's never the same sense, and its usually really specific based on genre, etc, but some folks just have it-- IMMEDIATELY.

IME it's also one of the traits you find in a lot of successful DJ's. Let's be honest, the basics of DJing are not the hardest things in the world to get competent at-- but DJ's who don't know anything about the mechanics of music but can rock dancefloors night after night, build 4 hour sets, make things sound fresh time and again and think about songs on that level-- thats a very, very serious talent.

Let alone the few students of mine who can sit down at drumset or tabla and just instantly get it, from the first minute of the first lesson. Always bowls me over.

Talent is a very real thing.

Do you reckon you can "peak"? Or is the talent limitless.

jaydot wrote:Do you reckon you can "peak"? Or is the talent limitless.

I think you need look back no further than 100 years into music history. I feel like lots of artists peaked. There are even artists IMO that seem to have ups and downs as far as the quality of their output. I'd cite Lou Reed as an example there. He has some brilliant stuff and some stuff that's pretty shit (subjective of course) and both these types of work are scattered all over his career.

well i have 0 raw talent so everything is hard work for me. i have never played an instrument and i can barely dance without making a fool of myself. but production is the first thing in my life where i couldn't master it within a few months. so i keep coming back to it. i hope i never feel like i've peaked because then i'll probably lose interest like i have with skateboarding and video games in the past

mtl6 wrote:well i have 0 raw talent so everything is hard work for me. i have never played an instrument and i can barely dance without making a fool of myself. but production is the first thing in my life where i couldn't master it within a few months. so i keep coming back to it. i hope i never feel like i've peaked because then i'll probably lose interest like i have with skateboarding and video games in the past

Everyone has a degree of raw talent no matter how small. It's just nurturing that talent with practice to get to the level the next guy is at, and so on and so forth.

subfect wrote:I don't believe in talent. 10,000 hours is the rule.

yeah i dont get how you believe in talent tbh- especially in regards to just sitting down at a piano and jamming out tunes- I'm dreadful at it after practising for years but i've got friends who (with no formal lessons or anything) can just play things which sound amazing.

As it is i'm not too sure these same talents translate all that well to making the music we tend to make on here- like, for example i think ive got a decent ear for a sample and what'll fit well in my tunes- which i suppose is a natural talent, and others will have an instinctive ear for mixing, be able to do it really naturally,

My girlfriend recently read a book called 'bounce' and the whole thing was study into people with perceived 'talent'. Long story short, the book sets out that this is utter bullshit and it's all about practice - and efficient / effective methods of practice.

So set out a good plan of what you want to learn and the best way to do it, then spent a fuck tonne of hours practicing. That includes practicing the non-obvious elements (such as networking / meeting people, if you were a producer).

peace

jaydot wrote:Do you reckon you can "peak"? Or is the talent limitless.

talent is a starting point.

For electronic music production you don't need talent. You need logic and kickass creativity.

Isn't creativity in itself a talent though?