He is apparently a very talented person but I find that hard to believe and it's especially suspect coming from a preacherman faith healer.

That means your VERY talented...

i know its hard to believe semi live and you dont have to believe it . But you can email him and ask him any questions you like he is very open and aproachable. http://www.bentankard.org/index2.html

There is nothing wrong with a little caution but dont leave it there. Dig a little deeper as i did.

You either have it or you don't in my opinion.

I may be a good student (in anything, be it mathematics, piano, painting, whatever), learn from my mistakes, make progress etc. One day I may become proficient enough, have top skills, be recognizable. But that doesn't make me Tesla, Mozart, Van Gogh.

I took pencil sketching lessons for 3-4 months. I was good enough (comparatively, when taking in mind the little time it took me to produce acceptable results). But I never was in the league of a friend of mine who became an architect. I simply didn't have it. He did.

One guy I know, was in a small basketball team in his teens. He and the others were good enough to be in the team, but there was one of them, same age group, who simply was ahead of them. They had the same coach, did the same practice, but this one individual was above all. The guy was to become one of the Basketball Euro champions in 1987 and served as as the National team coach. He had it and the others did not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panagiotis_Giannakis

Do you honestly think that Frank Sinatra or Elvis or Aretha Franklin or name anyone in this league were the results of simple hard work? I don't believe that. Maybe hard work KEPT them high, but they had talent to stand ON to begin with.

i dont know if any of those musicians apart from aretha were particluarly talented musicians. What they did have was bags of charisma or as Simon Cowel puts it , ' likeability factor'. That also might be called a talent and can be learned but its not a musical one.

Spalding, in the interest of fairness, I don't know if you can single out Aretha as the only one with talent. All three were at the top of their game within their genre'. Because you may not be a fan of a certain genre' doesn't mean that some the best practitioners of it weren't talented. I'd say that if you were able to change the course of music for an entire generation, you must have SOME talent. Wouldn't you think?



chas

i didnt say the others werent talented.I Said 'particularly' talented. I wasnt trying to put the others down or elevate Aretha especially. I was talking about straight up musical talent. The others did incredibly well with the talent they had and you are right they moved their generation and i loved their music. But just in my personal opinion, Elvis's voice was nothing special just as Mick Jagger or David Bowie's voices were/are nothing special but their personalities comes through in their performance and they sell themselves very well. Some people have great stage presence like Rod stewart and you just warm to them and that i guess is a talent but its not musical talent but i am not entrenched in my thinking. I am willing to be persuaded otherwise.

I just read all the replies. Very interesting. Over the years I have noticed musical things about myself that I think are a talent. I'm sure others have this but I don't think everyone does. I don't say this with conceit but as a matter of interest to the discussion.

I've noticed since I was young that I could learn the scales on say the harmonica and then I could hear which note of a scale any song I knew should start on. No matter the complexity of a song I've always been able to just hear where "one" is. Once I have the chords and song structure in mind I seem to out of nowhere be able to make up an infinte number of melodies. I mention this because I would think many of you have these (and other) things that I would say are God given talents but not everybody has them. I was hoping as I read the replies that some would mention specific things that you just feel for music without really knowing how you do them.

I just put a video on a website where I am improvising a flute solo from my Korg arranger and feel I could keep on going with new melody ideas and never run out of them. If anyone would care to hear this you can at: www.soundclick.com/jerryfeheley The song title is "Lookin Good".

I hope my comments do not come off wrong. I just want to offer some opinions and an example of what I am playing.

Jerry