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"The Talent Code" documentary on ABC News - A MUST SEE!

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mpropelus

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This is a video about what "talent" really is. This is definitely one of the most important videos that you will need not only for your singing career, but in all aspects of your life. Enjoy and post your comments below to start a discussion about this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vV6nM90J8

link if video above is not working:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vV6nM90J8

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That was pretty interesting. :/ Who knows, with the right training maybe I could have been a contender. I think it's missing part of the formula, which is some type of reward for your achievements. Are you going to keep on putting in that effort if no one seems to care?

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What's missing there is that some people seem to learn faster than others and usually those people are considered to be "talented". I wonder what that guy in the video would have to say about that.

Yes, that's no doubt true, but I'm not sure that it would matter, as the point seems to be that talent is not as magical (to use the word in the video) as it is usually taken to be. Would-be singers are particularly vulnerable to this kind of criticism. Nobody ever thought (I imagine) that somebody like Tom Brady would be where he is without training, coaching, practice, experience, etc., but we hang on to the myth that singers are different. This doesn't mean that anyone can become Tom Brady, only that it's a big mistake to cut short a goal because someone says "kid, you just don't have it."

By the way, the argument in the video is lifted from Malcolm Gladwell's great book Outliers. Gladwell calculates that every great achiever (he specifically writes of The Beatles, Bill Gates, Mozart, and Michael Jordan) puts in a minimum of 10,000 hours before they achieve greatness. The greatness of the Beatles, he argues, was forged by the experience of playing 7-8 hours a day for months at a time in Hamburg. I find the argument compelling. I highly recommend Gladwell's book for anyone interested in this topic.

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Great post Jersey Jack.

I would also recommend "Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within," by Kenny Werner. I would count it a must have for musicians. It ties in exactly with this video.

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What's missing there is that some people seem to learn faster than others and usually those people are considered to be "talented". I wonder what that guy in the video would have to say about that.

jonpall: he would say that the faster learners have already benefitted from some of these activities in their early lives :-)

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When it comes to singing, I always thought that the people who can sing without ever taking lessons, the people with "talent," randomly discovered how to use the voice in such a manner that is beautiful. They weren't born with the ability to sing beautifully, but perhaps they have experimented with singing and had a eureka moment one day. Then because of that moment, they wanted to use what they have discovered and practiced and practiced...

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Good ideas but, yeah, it's practice. However, with a puissant bit of Puissance, if you will pardon my play on words. Practice is the key but it must be good practice wherein mistakes are stopped. I've seen this principle in playing guitar, as well. Playing for 3 hours doesn't always make you better, per se. You could end up with some well-rehearsed mistakes. One hour of good practice in forming the right muscle memories, as it were, will do far more good.

I'm not sure there's a way to total up all the hours one spends on an actiivity before becoming a success. For a lot of us, we sneak in some singing here and there throughout the day, as well as structured activity.

And I've never had a vocal lesson from a live person. Though my step-grandfather would try to teach me to sing bass. But that was standard in my family. I'm a tenor, so teach me bass. I want to play guitar and sing, so give me books on electrical theory and Einstein's theories of relativity. But I have read about and studied and heard examples of singing and did work on those. And I'm sure I sounded pretty sick and horrible at times. What separates me from maybe others is that I work through failures and bad days. (On your feet, soldier! Second place is first place for losers! Accomplish the objective regardless of obstacles. "My shoes are shined, my pants are tight, my balls are swinging from left to right, sound off, ..." (old Navy marching cadence)).

And I totally believe in the efficacy of taking lessons if you have the means. In one or two lessons, you can learn and practice things correctly that might take you years in the old "blind hog finds an acorn once in a while" method of the great unknown talent out there.

Jonpall said it well one time. A person can have great "Talent" and natural ability but there is nothing wrong with getting lessons or professional instruction and becoming insurmountably superb, either, in so many words.

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  • 2 weeks later...

This is a video about what "talent" really is. This is definitely one of the most important videos that you will need not only for your singing career, but in all aspects of your life. Enjoy and post your comments below to start a discussion about this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vV6nM90J8

link if video above is not working:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1vV6nM90J8

folks,

for singing, i really believe another key component is the innate ability to imitate and emulate.

you need to study and very deeply, intensely, with all you've got "supremely micro-intend" to sound a way or ways you need to or wish to. also, mental visualization is a major help.

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