Racing, Music, and Taught Talent
I grew up watching all kinds of racing. I got out of watching it during my college years, and I recently started watching more races again. I was always intrigued by the strategy and technology involved. Recently, I heard a podcast where Dale Earnhardt Jr. interviewed three-time Nascar Cup Series Champion, Tony Stewart. They got into the conversation of talent. In particular, they discussed raw talent vs. taught talent. Raw talent was mentioned as the people who just get in a car and drive; it comes natural to them and they do not think about it. Tony Stewart mentions only a handful of drivers that fall in this category. Taught talent was mentioned as the people who study, watch videos and discuss with others; they have to work for their success.
As a musician, this really resonated with me. I have previously discussed with many people talent, work ethic, and my dislike for people being called ‘talented.’ In music, the people that are most of the time defined by others as talented usually work their tails off. It usually has little to do with natural ability. I had never heard it described as taught talent, but I really like that description.
Music is a skill that you must work on and consistently work on to maintain. This is much like racing. Tony Stewart mentioned in his interview that he was raining ninety-nine races in one year to get back to top, competitive racing quality. Carl Edwards, a Nascar Xfinity series champion who tied Stewart for the cup championship in 2011 but lost in the race wins tiebreaker, recently called racing a diminishing skill set. Music is also a diminishing skill set. If you actively do not practice every aspect of playing consistently, your skillset will diminish. When we learn a piece of music, perform it, take months off of it, and come back to it, are we still in performance quality? Usually not. Usually, there are some aspects we have to work on, especially in a challenging piece. The same is with our exercises; if we do not actively practice our scales, arpeggios, intonation, tone quality, interval studies, extended techniques, vibrato, rudiments, and other technique elements, they will not be maintained.
In music, raw talent will only take you so far. At some point, you have to practice, develop practice techniques, seek out knowledge, and seek instruction from a master teacher in order to reach new heights. Music is a taught talent. Once a taught talent is learned, we must work to maintain that taught talent. There may be people in the world that have more raw talent than us, but there is no reason why we cannot work harder than them. In the music world, work ethic will surpass natural ability over time. So, work lets work to develop our taught talent through hard work and work to maintain it in order to be the best that we can be.
