Did someone say youtube vid? The answers to everything you seek are here:

 

Talent is an illusion created by culture industries to disguise the fact that producers actually need discipline and effort to become good at anything, and remind the public that it is easier to consume - especially if it means consuming whatever they happen to be selling.

 

Talent is an illusion?? So you're not good at anything are you? Nor have you practiced anything? Anti capitalist you are, disciplined you are not.

 

I say that talent is an illusion is because it is commonly promoted and understood as being an essential quality. By this understanding, working hard is a choice, but "some people are just born with talent" is saying something else. I think it can be argued that work/discipline/experience/etc have a different connotation than talent. It sounds like you are suggesting a conflation of the two, as if I were saying that if talent is an illusion then discipline is an illusion also - if so, that doesn't accurately translate the opinion I offered.

Using the word "talent" to convey some mysterious inscrutable mojo is encouraged because it serves to either obfuscate how some perceived "elites" achieve what they do, or why achievements in one area should be championed over other kinds of achievements. An example of the first might be how mediocre musicians with more/better social connections appear more "successful" than those who simply play really well. An example of the latter might be why people attribute greater social status to guitarists than to bassists, or athletes compared to surgeons.

In any case, I think it's weird that your first instinct is to reply with personal remarks. I didn't say anything about my own work ethic, or capital, so step off. You are obviously welcome to disagree with anything I have said, but don't get all presumptuous as if you know me personally.

 

Exactly, that's why most artists I listen to are better 30+. Most guitarists calm down 30+ and play mature solos. Age is an asset to us, but it's not as easily marketable for record companies.

At 37 the Stones wrote a little hit called "Start me Up"... check it out.

 

Only in so far as you applied an opinion to "talent" in a context and nothing else. Talent can be an illusion (I think a more appropriate description would be talent can be contrived or faked) but so can any attribute. Talent, correctly defined and truthfully presented, is not an illusion.

I get what you're saying but I don't see that there's much point to it in this case since the same can be said about almost anything. The reaction you got wasn't warranted though... I'm with you on that.

As a broad social observation, in context, you've definitely got a point and it's one of the million things we should be more aware of but I don't think it's a valid point to just lay down in this thread on its own unless you extrapolate it to explain why it should or shouldn't affect the initial statement of the OP - which you didn't do.

 

By 27 they had written

-Satisfaction
-Paint it Black
-Lady Jane
-Let's Spend the Night Together
-Ruby Tuesday
-She's a Rainbow
-2000 Light Years From Home
-Jumping Jack Flash
-Street Fighting Man
-Sympathy for The Devil
-Honky Tonk Women
-Gimme Shelter
-Can't Always Get What You Want
-Midnight Rambler

To name but a few.

:D

 

I don't get very concerned about matters of authenticity. Rather than a matter of identity, I tend to think of it in terms of process. When I ask myself "is the notion of talent worth using? Does it clarify anything with regards to creative process?" My answer is "no". This can lead into a rabbit hole that goes beyond the present discussion, but basically anything fake really is something. So its not that a fake skill or process can exist, it's just misrepresented. Which ties into what I was saying about incentive. If talent wasn't largely used as a token in social status games, it wouldn't be incentivized the way we see. So even fraud can be seen as a skill, of an antisocial sort. While also possibly obscuring other skills a person possesses, in favor of those they don't.

To some people, my synthesizers are all fake, because to them synth=wannabe-piano. To others, my sound design is fake because "it is not really music, it's just noises". Sometimes I think my tinkering with gear is fake, because I don't really understand the electronics of the stuff I build the way an actual engineer would. But not unlike tofu, carob, or some other ersatz thing, I find it ultimately more productive to understand these things for what they are in and of themselves, rather than how they can be compared to something (or somebody) else.

Fair enough! It's true that most people's hearing doesn't allow them to appreciate sound the same way later in life. But I think that what we are seeing here is more a matter of changing neural plasticity over time. This also explains why many young prodigies are considered "talented" in the first place. It's not that others couldn't have had perfect pitch or keyboard muscle memory by being exposed to those things at just the right time, they just didn't. When their brains were especially plastic, they were simply learning some other skills/relationships instead. And with less plasticity, and less new experiences with age, even brilliant diligent people often find themselves more interested in exploring what they already know, taking less chances. It's like a dirt road where the grooves just keep getting deeper the more times you drive it. The young bonsai always contains more possibilities, while the mature one is a stratification of those many past decisions. Age might not allow an explosive proliferation of potentialities, but it allows us to refine and build upon the past, with the possibility of sometimes transforming this into new beginnings.

 

Hey you must be right, Mozart was a producer with great discipline and put tremendous effort when by the age of 12 had already wrote 10 symphonies. He must have been an illusionist.

No it doesn't explain it one bit. This conversation is not about "what if" and exploring possibilities. It's about facts. Fact is a person who plays keyboards more than 2 years or so, can also play the piano. Perhaps with less finesse but still enough to make my point legit. Any talk about people telling others "you can't play the piano" or "you are fake because you play synths" is totally irrelevant and refers to flat earthers.
So you are either a musician or you are not. I will accept button mashers as artists too, but it would be impossible for them to prove they are musicians without a computer or relevant piece of gear. To their defense that is the instrument they "play" which makes for a whole new generation of a different kind of musician, learning process etc.
Also, electronic sound design has been around for 100 years or so. Who in this forum cares if there are still people who may not understand its purpose. Oh and if a person is really serious about it, they would at least try and learn how to understand the basics of "the electronics of the stuff" as you put it.

Sure... And you are who exactly ?
Jokes aside let's consider this simple thingie: Why would you care in a 17 y.o. rock record sung in Greek language, do you think you 'll be able to fathom any of it ? Or a 14 y.o. techno remix of a traditional Mongolian song lol... Do i owe you something when you hide behind anonimity ? Step up with your credentials and i'll play you a ton of my released music and my occasional domestic hits, errr... yes that is plural. Btw as someone else very nicely mentioned, there are some people here with international hits and releases. Seek and ye shall be rewarded.

Oh and who the fk cares about hits ? I consider an album which sold about 800 copies my best to date work.
Heed my words mate When you are in this biz, you'll find sooner or later, there's nothing else to do but constantly pressing forward. And when you 're doing it right, persistence makes a name for yourself and creates a following. You keep making music and eventually a hit will come. Minor or major doesn't matter. We don't make music to have hits. Those who make this their life's purpose will probably fail miserably. Don't get me wrong , ambition is fine as long as it is not overshadowed by ego and materialism. We make music first and foremost because it is a calling. And your life's calling doesn't fade away after 30, neither your talent takes a walk right out of your pockets because it is not something you gained, but rather a special gift embedded to your individual personality.

I see some peeps comparing you to the Pink menace lol, well i must say you probably mean better than just trolling. But imho, your view of the general art.music scene is clouded by immature perception.

PS: If your ears' frequency response was all you need to "judge" how music sounds, all mastering engineers would not be older than 12 years old. But as you have it, the best MEs in the world are over 45-50 and sometimes over 60 lol. Now i wonder, what would this mean?

 

Last edited: Sep 17, 2018

Maybe it's a vestige of some bio-evolution thing. Until fairly recently people didn't live much past 30, so if it turned out they had anything important to say, it'd had better happen fast, lol

 

what does this have to do with your claim?

I already told you IF you approach music as a guessing gaming, totally ignorant of it and think of something in mind then clunk your way around till you find that on a piano lets say, ( how could you ever call that talent to begin with?)

BUT a person who studies music who gains knowledge of how music works structurally, knowledge is not going to disappear just because they hit 30.
for example say your writing in a portion of a song section is in the KEY of Cmajor
your changes are Dmin7, G7, Cmaj7, Emin7, A7 ,DMin7 Galt C6

whatever has happened to your hearing overnight from 29 to the next morning at 30, your not going to have your memory wiped clean of how music works, what music is

your chord changes are laid out so next you write your bassline

D E F A G A B D C D E G B C D E G A B C# D E F A B C# D# F E G A C

next step you start writng out your melody over the harmony and bass etc...

IF your approach to "music" is to be ignorant of it, and guess at everything ( imagine approaching speaking to people that way)
the LEAST of your worries is what happens at 30.
there is NOTHING a human beings does by "guessing"
which we consider "talent"
"talent" is when you know what you are doing. and do it well.
guessing at something is not knowing or doing well , if you accidentally throw a ball through a hoop you are NOT talented or a champion homie.

the hearing you lose with age is the upper harmonics in the range from 9khz up to 20khz that is what you lose, there are NO instruments which have their fundamental up there! ( instead at minimum second order harmonics but most of the time 3rd 5th order etc.
in other words the area you lose in hearing with age is the area which MOST music has nothing there but the crispy portion of cymbals and sss and ttt of vocals nicca.

 

Last edited: Sep 17, 2018

In all my years on the interwebs..I have seen successful trolls , but indeed this is a first to see them
actually spawn "child trolls".. offspring if you will.. truly amazing.. the "man" may be gone.. but his seeds
have clearly borne "fruits"... by now I count 4-5 of them... ( and some just jumped on the bandwagon of course )

but we don't really know how old the daddy is.. to judge his great success in light of his above or below 30's ness
(had to keep it on topic ya know ). ... since it's the winning hand..
I may as well expect to see whole threads on just this in the coming weeks

 

27 is under 30, bruh

No matter how hard I work I could never sing like Aretha Franklin...we simply do not have the same vocal cords.

 

and you'll never be able to troll like your "daddy" did... well you are off to a good start tho..
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

 

funny with the case of the rolling stones, try it with david bowie or tom waits !

 

Instead of refuting my observation, this seems to confirm that to most people, the notion of talent is inseparable from fame. That rather than being about understanding skills, it typically just amounts to "cult of personality", pissing games over status and categories. Mozart is also an illusion. Even in contemporary culture, celebrities in my own lifetime more products of mythology than people I know and learn from. Yet, I am supposed to believe that I know what a celebrity from 250 years ago was all about, and use that as a practical barometer of success? Real compositional tools don't need a famous name to yield results. And putting others on a pedestal doesn't help you to learn, or to sound more like yourself. Likewise, not putting others on a pedestal does not rob them of their actual achievements. If anything, the critical distance might help you to appreciate them more than as a mere "fan".

Saying that a hypothetical person could play keyboards or learn electronics within two years is not "facts" either, it sounds like conjecture based upon common sense and your experience. There is no evidence-based measure of "talent", or even of musicality, for that matter. It is deeply subjective, even if you try to rationalize it with aggregated statistics or expert opinions.

For example, I have never claimed to be a musician. But I have been asked to play concerts, and had people tell me that they loved my music. So whose position is the correct one? If people took what I did as being musical, then I can be happy for them, instead of being a douche and arguing with them that I am not really a musician. Those gatekeeping discussions of "proving" what you do are IMO just pissing contests, elucidating nothing. Like a heated debate about whether or not X "is really art", or a 40-page argument about what should be allowed in producing jungle. It's just stylistic convention, which would be fine, but people very quickly prop it up as if it were somehow an objective thing. (Also, FWIW, my synths don't even have keyboards, which made the whole piano comparison even more bizarre.)

Quite true! And even if you were a clone of Aretha, your experiences would still make you a different singer. With any famous musician we can name, we already have the benefit of them doing what they did. That leaves us free to do something else, rather than be measured against their accomplishments. Hell - many artists chafe against being measured against their own past accomplishments.

 

I actually read that at first as "IRRITATION"...

 

I'm over 30...so definitely following this thread!

 

The real-life David Brents: 12 inspiring musicians who made it later in life

I personally didn't start playing in bands until I was in my early 30s. My playing continued to improve throughout my 30s and into my 40s. And while I haven't become famous or written a hit single I have played in some cool local bands, got to open up for some relatively well-known acts and appeared on TV a few times. And I'm not done yet.

You don't lose your talent or creative potential when you hit 30, but often times life begins to interfere with those types of ambitions by the time you reach that age. There are other factors at play as well, but statistically speaking you are less likely to to "make it" as you get older. It certainly doesn't mean that it isn't possible.

 

Last edited: Sep 17, 2018

people under 30 are walking through life with a blindfold over their eyes .
(a clickbait comment to match yours nicca.)

either i am fukking retarded OR this above video is some the best talent i have ever seen in a youtube video, it happens be all over 30!

 

Last edited: Sep 18, 2018