The way talent is being spoken about, as if it were an innate gift in some and not others is self-defeating. Yes, some have natural ability that enable their proficiency with music sooner than it does for others, but even they have to put in the same hard work and dedication as the rest of us. Perhaps we have to work that much harder, but it is not unattainable.

 

...
... ...... seriously?
Am I the only one who noticed that Foster snuck back into the fold?!?!

 

It's individuals preference either way.

 

Madonna would tend to disagree with you.

 

I'm the guy who's be looking for chump change in that couch.

 

picked just few quotes, agree with those all,
you can't make music without tools, you earn experience using tools to be more effective with those tools, talent alone is worthless and wasted

 

Requesting talent is strictly prohibited.

 

Talent is just a stepping stone, acquiring great skills still seeks lot of work and dedication to gain expertise, it's for sure faster to get there with talent, but it's not impossible without and with a lot of hard work. But at that point, what set's you apart is your taste/preference, work ethics and so on.

There's for sure people or even whole genres of music that rely more on production aspect, than musical, there's also folks that are trying to patch their lack of skills with tools or believe that's the key for them to get to another level, half of this plugin industry is built on that dream.

Nothing is set in stone or black and white, everyone have different level of talent, expertise and preference/taste, some just have enough amount of everything to get by, others just may lack some of it enough to stay mediocre.

Wearing all hats is where all this really come to play, someone maybe just have great taste and probably could be a great producer, but mixing isn't really his thing or whole production aspect or someone is really skillful musician, but can't really compose anything of substance, I know plenty of gigging musicians that couldn't write a song on their own if their life depend on it, but play amazing what you give them to play.

Also there are folks who are missing whole big picture because they are too focused on nuances and waste too much time on details, some of those folks are ones that would spend enough time trying to get best LA2A on something and in the end what they would do with any of it would be a huge miss anyways, but would leave it as they invested lot of time with it and got attached to it... or would do all that while having nothing worth calling a song or even on 8 bar loop that goes nowhere.

Someone can make amazing things with limited tools, somebody else couldn't with best ones, again, depends where one is on his journey and level of his expertise, end result will tell the truth.

I really want to believe that all people that pull hair over ProQ vs Kirchhoff or different emu's accuracy are on so high level, that difference they stress about is really contributing a lot to their work and isn't just the case of picking nuances while missing out on whole big picture and context... or ones that swear on analog and think digital can't make great results and all that...

 

Last edited: Oct 3, 2023

A good analogy is with football (soccer) players when you have a ridiculously talented kid running circles around the opposition, touted as being a great player one day. But they don't put the work in to keep improving so when/if they reach pro level they're no longer as good in comparison. They're overtaken by kids like David Beckham who practiced free kicks incessantly.

Talent can make music look easy but you never know how that level was achieved. I bet Hendrix put in his 10,000 hours.

If you reach a certain level you can make any guitar sound good. That's probably true of all the tools we use.

 

I think you mixed up and confused tools with boobs.

 

Talent is, at best, a faster way to acquire them. And talent does not beat dedication.

 

It seems that he is right. Music has a total of 12 notes, usually only 7 are needed. The whole life of a musician is spent playing with those notes.

Like a football game where everyone runs after a ball, a musician spends his time sorting notes.

CFBGCBBBFF (No)

GBCDBBGBEB (No)

ECCDECDECA (No)

FCDGFBACDC (No)

AGABCFAABB (No)

CDBBCFAEDC (No)

GFEBCCGGEC (No)

GFCBEDGFEC (No)

FCGBAFFGDD (No)

GDDCDGGEGE (Yes)

 

on more philosophical thought, how many time divisions music has?
there's an interesting concept that speed of ticks/punches (at high enough rate) results in tone (1000 beats per second being 1kHz, to simplify a lot) so there are way more "rhytmical" combinations to make music, right?

 

Western music has 12 notes, there's also microtonal and Yoko Ono.

 

Notes usually beat rhythms because convey more information than rhythms.

And
Western music's 12 notes usually beat microtonality because it sounds more natural to the ears.


Most of the music is 7-note music with simply defined rhythms.

 

It's not self-deafeating if you realize nobody is born equal. Everyone has different natural aptitudes and to pretend it isn't the case is dishonest to oneself. Olympians train hard but if I work as hard as them, I'm not gonna be at their level. I can get juiced and workout as hard as I can and I'm not gonna look like Arnold cuz I don't have the innate genetics. I know I'm smart, but I ain't no Einstein. Talent spans in every field and I view talent as potential. A talented individual may already start at a higher level, but you still need to put in the work to improve. Working hard unlocks that potential. Moreover, someone with less talent reaps less than an exceptional individual for the same amount of work. How much difference, depends. The truth is the talented person will always have an edge if the starting point and hard work are the same.

 

7 notes make a powerful combination that can be used to make any music:
Serious
Grotesque
Classic
Pop
Romantic
Hardcore
Modern
Ancient
Dance
And in short, anything that comes to mind. Other tunings don't have such broad span.

It is true that the number of these 7 notes is small compared to the music of most eastern cultures, but it creates the most ideal possible state that you can make music for all human emotions with these 7 notes. Now, if we add the remaining 5 notes to these 7 notes, an infinite senses can be created with these limited combinations.

 

Congratulations: you know everything about music. I'd love to hear your compositions, would you mind posting some links?

 

My man - talent is for music. Tools are for audio. (Technique however applies to both.)

Short point: though talent and tools are in the same control room, they are not in the same realm.

Longer point: you can certainly record/mix great songs with subpar equipment (or engineering skills...), yes. Everyone has, some still do. A prime example of that is Jamiroquai: great songs, definite talent, but even first year MP&E students at my school could get Jamiroquai's entire catalog sounding better (clearer, more defined).

Most great audio recordings also happen to have great arrangements (e.g., all Motown records and albums, most Atlantic Records releases produced and arranged by Arif Mardin, and anything produced and arranged by Quincy Jones - among many other names).

And the thing with great arrangements is that it makes the mixing engineer's job a breeze: everything is where it's supposed to be (those were the days when people hired arrangers for their record dates, on the one hand, and didn't have 120 tracks of guitars to mix, on the other hand.

That said, all of those great recordings had top shelf equipment - some of it well sought after these days, decades later.

In a different realm: if you ask any F1 driver (the great F1 Champion Alain Prost once famously railed against his F1 Ferrari "driving like a truck"), how they feel about driving subpar vehicles (including tires), you would appreciate that great tools or instruments (or F1 cars) don't win the race, or guarantee airplay (or streams) or a smash hit, but they sure as heck don't hurt and can only help.

Conclusion being, unlike F1 racing, music production is thankfully not a competition. Talent without (great) tools is frustrating, and one suspects, what drove - and drives - progress. Can you imagine Quincy Jones without Bruce Swedien? Or the LSO, LA Phil or Berliner recorded through a pair of $10 Radio Shack mics (or even 57s)? How about black&white television - does anyone wanna go back to it?

Talent and tools, man - it's like money (talent goes where the money is): where one is, the other's never far away (usually running fast towards it actually).

 

Tools are overrated