Nature or Nurture

[Ronniejm]

Les Paul Gold Top's recent post about Tommy Emmanual's guitar skills got me to thinking about coversations I used to have with a guitar teacher I used to go to years ago, himself a professional musician.

His theory, and he had studies to back it up, was that anybody could be taught to play any instrument to a qualified professional standard so long as they,

1, starting learning at an early age
2, were dedicated to learning
3, had good teacher
4, put in the vast amounts of time on practice.

in other words he didnt really agree with the concept of "Natural ability"

I always felt and still do feel that some people are born with an extra something that along with the above criteria, enables them to take that extra leap to total mastering of an instrument,

I used to cite Tommy Emmanual as an example, I'm sure he did all the right things as far as practice and tutors are concerned, but I can't help feeing that to get that good, takes that something extra, something in the genes maybe?

of course if I'm wrong, then as Nick Lowe would say "there is hope for us all"........well maybe apart from....learning from an early age..that boat has long gone.

Nature or Nurture??

[Bluesberry]

I think that if a person is so inclined and works hard at it they can learn the mechanics of playing an instrument that will take them to a level where it sounds skilled.  There are intangibles that will take the playing to a higher level that may not be so easy to teach.  I am thinking about timing for one.  Timing is extremely important to making what you play sound good.  It seems you either have it or not.  There are folks that play very simple but their timing is so perfect that it sounds excellent, while another guy plays many notes, knows the right scales, etc but has poor timing and it sounds not so good.  Hard to teach the concept of timing.  There is also the emotional aspect, some play with so much emotion, other guys play without.  The same notes the same way but the guy who is really translating emotion sounds way better.  Hard to teach that also.  The third thing is love for music.  Some people do not get into music in a deep way at all (it is all on the surface of their experience) while others get it so deep that it is a part of their way of interacting with the world around them.  If you only get music on a superficial surface level you can certainly put the time in to learn to play, but that music will be lacking something (elevator music, Barry Manilow). 
I believe that anybody can learn to play music given enough practice, but I don't believe that just anybody can learn to make music that reaches other people.  I don't know though, really intersesting question.

[FuzzFace]

Dude's theory may be true but those are some really big Ifs.

[Ronniejm]

youve raised a couple of great points there.

I can relate to the timing thing from my own experience. one of the guys who plays in our little get together group, freely admits he has no sense of rythmn/timing, we can play together for hours at a time and so long as there is someone else playing or a metronome ticking away, everything is fine, but on his own he drifts off to his own unique time sig, he can hear it happen, but cant stop it.

begs the question though, why do some people have this "natural" sense of timing and others don't?,......maybe getting too deep on this now.

the other big point for me, as you rightly say, is the emotional side of a persons playing/singing, this for me is where good lyrics can make a huge difference, and if the performer has some emotional attachment to them, then i think you have the recipe for great music.

I listen often to farmjazz' song bury me in blugrass on here, you can tell by just listening to the mans voice, he has a lot of emotion invested in this story....and for us the listeners, well for me anyway, that emotion, the great lyrics, and great melody makes it the perfect combination.    theres no way that emotional side could be taught.

I think we all have at least a couple of songs in our song books that mean that bit more us than the others and probably Unconsioussly  put that bit more into them when we play/sing them

[Greeny]

I think you can teach most people some technical skills on a musical instrument. But that's only a fraction of what real music is all about... i.e. emotion, feeling, and a raw desire to create / play. Good songwriting also has very little to do with technical ability, and in my opinion, is something that simply can't be taught. It comes from somewhere else... a place far away from tutorials and guitar teachers etc. Having said that, I've enhanced my songwriting potential every time I learn a new chord or lick. So maybe the two need to go hand in hand: learned technical ability plus natural inspiration.

This is a really tough question!