This is a guest post by Dr. Anita Collins. Anita is an award-winning Australian educator, academic and researcher in the area of music education, particularly in the impact of music education on cognitive development. Anita is a communicator, a conduit between neuroscientific researchers, music educators, musicians, parents and the general public, and works to update our understanding of the purpose and benefits of music education to overall cognitive development and health. In 2014 Anita was involved with the TED.com network through two project; as author of a short animated film for TED Ed and as a presenter at TEDx Canberra. Both of these projects have been very well received with the TED Ed film reached 14 million and TEDxTalk reaching 1 million views to date. You can read more about Anita and her work here.
This title could lead you the think that this article is going to be along the lines of “your child can do anything if they put their mind to it”. Well it is and it isn’t, but I will let you decide where you stand on the question of musical talent after you finish reading.
What is musical talent? The commonly understood definition would include an innate or genetic trait, something we are born with, something that is passed down through families who are labelled as musical. That definition has been immeasurably bolstered by the very public reinforcement of musical talent through reality shows such as America’s Got Talent, American Idol and The X Factor. The X Factor is now another way of defining musical talent – we know it when we see it, but how we know it and how they got it is almost magical in nature.
The thing is, our understanding of musical talent is getting less and less magical and more and more scientific. The use of the words musical potential and predisposition are becoming more prevalent in neuroscientific and genetic research and it is directly challenging the public and dare I say it, the media’s portrayal of musical talent.
We identify musical talent most often when we see it displayed on the stage; when a child stands musically, head and shoulders, above their peers. What we are witnessing is two complementary factors at work – a musical predisposition or potential and a high level of executive function.
What is “Musical Predisposition”?
Let’s talk about them separately for a moment. Research in the fields of neuroscience and genetics have begun to identify that there are “musical genes” for want of a better term. A ground breaking study from Finland in 2008 first identified the possible location of not a musical gene but an interaction between a number of different genes that could result in musical aptitude. Many studies have grown from this work and in 2014 a joint Canadian/Australia study got even closer to pinpointing the genetic markers for musical ability. Put simply, if a combination of particular brain structures and functions are developed, it might lead to what we know as musical talent.
The answer to the musical talent equation could be that simple, but this is not even half of it. An innate or born predisposition for musical ability is nothing without experiences in very early life that realise that potential. Put another way, a seed is just a seed until it is given the soil, water and sunshine to grow.
Musical experiences in early life are essential for innate musical ability to grow, but this doesn’t mean putting a trombone in a two-year-old’s hands and letting them just “grow”. Music experiences for babies and toddlers are as simple and as innate to new parents as singing to their child, speaking in an animated way, helping them to learn how to clap their hands together and exposing them to a variety of different sounds, including speech, musical and environmental sounds. It is that easy and already part of what we do quite naturally.
What those experiences do are develop three aspects of a young child’s brain; the auditory processing network which is being fed lots of auditory food in the form of different sounds, the motor cortex which is actually developed with the help of the auditory cortex as it takes cues from what we hear to teach the body how to move (just watch a toddler bopping to music in the mall), and the visual processing network through connecting where sound comes from, how it is made and how it sounds (which is a precursor to language learning). What all these experiences also do is prime a child’s brain to take on the next challenge of musical talent — learning a musical instrument.
Now that all the musical predispositions are firing as well as they possibly can, what does executive function have to do with musical talent?
What is Executive Function?
Executive function is a combination of skills which I like to call “being a grown up”. They are the skills we learn, through a lot of trial and error and serious lecturers from parents and teachers, through childhood and adolescence. They include being able to maintain our attention, focus for longer periods of time on difficult tasks, control our emotional reactions in both conflict and excitable situations, make good decisions, hold onto long-term goals and committing facts, figures, names and events to memory in the most effective way. As Angela Duckworth points out in her book “Grit”, these are all traits that are developed through learning a discipline such as a musical instrument, a sport or a second language.
This final list is a funny one, because they are all areas that the word talent is used; “she has a talent for playing violin”, “he was born to run” or “she just has an ear for languages”. All of those statements are true, but not in a simplistic, binary way. Children are born with a predisposition or a potential to excel at playing a musical instrument and I would include excelling at singing in this list, as the human voice is their instrument. The predisposition or potential is nothing without early “growth” and the right ingredients to thrive. You might think that the musical predisposition plus musical experiences in early life is enough, but it isn’t. Not to truly utilise all that learning a musical instrument has to offer for the lifelong leg-up it can provide for your child.
The gift of “Talent” lasts far beyond school years
It is the development of their executive function skills that are the true measure of musical talent. For a child to have the discipline to practice most days of the week for years, to battle with the emotional toll that the sometimes glacially slow improvement can bring, to adjust in the moment during a performance when things start to go wrong to still deliver a successful performance — aren’t these the traits of perseverance, emotional control, logical analysis and flexibility that we all want for our children to take out into the big, wide world?
Next time you see a performance that makes you want to say “Wow, what a talented kid”, maybe add some complexity to the statement that young musician deserves – “Wow, it is great to see how this young musician has enhanced what they were given through hard work, dedication, perseverance and determination. I wonder what amazing things they will go on to achieve in life?”
Have you ever composed a piece of music? I spontaneously began playing piano at the age of 3. No lessons. No writing anything down. I made up original music and could remember it and play it. That was 57 years ago. I now make a sizeable portion of my living from hundreds of tracks composed and produced and recorded entirely by me…the untrained. Of course I’ve lived a life full of listening to other people’s music, glued permanently to the radio and to iPods and always wandering around with headphones on…listening. Absorbing. But I never needed to write anything down and apparently I didn’t need to go to Juliard. Musical talent is innate. But unfortunately to prove that…to know that fact…you have to be born with it. It’s a kind of paradox. The rest of the academic world debates all of this while those of us who just came out of our mother’s womb being able to dream up new music and play it need no convincing.
But just imagine how much more amazing and intricate your compositions would be if there was training behind your music making?
“Amazing” and “Intricate”? Are those the goals of music? I don’t think so. Those are the goals of academia. Your comment reminds me of the movie AMADEUS when the Emperor says “Just a few too many notes my Dear Mozart…” And Mozart responds “My music has exactly the number of notes I intended. No more. No less…” Your comment, about “amazing and intricate” is as silly as the Emperor’s. If I want to be more “amazing” then I make the music that way. More intricate is a function of more notes, more key changes, etc etc…Some us were born as intricate and amazing as we needed to be—without school.”
Someone does not need to be trained to create music. If everyone could only create quality music with lessons, then we’d lose many musicians. Sure, they could’ve had singing or playing lessons, but they always truly just did their thing.
I understand what you are saying but I think that you may have taken the words “intricate” and “amazing” too literally.
By being musically trained, you are exposed to new perspectives, being exposed to new pieces of music, and ripened wisdom from a mentor and teacher that you would never receive if you are not musically trained. These are invaluable for musical growth and humility. These are the things that expand what one is capable of composing or playing past the point or level that one may be currently at. So you may be able to make a living writing music you created on your own, and may be perfectly content with your current ability, but you do not know everything there is to know about music; every perspective about music, every piece and style of writing about music, and you wouldn’t know about the experience of learning the insight and perspective from someone who has experienced music for a much longer time than you. I would hope that by reading this you can be open to the fact that musical training is very very, very beneficial to musical growth and expansion, as well as a direct way to learn knowledge you might have never learned otherwise, even if it is not “absolutely necessary” to be able to write and play music.
I understand what you are saying but I think that you may have taken the words “intricate” and “amazing” too literally.
By being musically trained, you are exposed to new perspectives, being exposed to new pieces of music, and ripened wisdom from a mentor and teacher that you would never receive if you are not musically trained. These are invaluable for musical growth and humility. These are the things that expand what one is capable of composing or playing past the point or level that one may be currently at. So you may be able to make a living writing music you created on your own, and may be perfectly content with your current ability, but you do not know everything there is to know about music; every perspective about music, every piece and style of writing about music, and you wouldn’t know about the experience of learning the insight and perspective from someone who has experienced music for a much longer time than you. I would hope that by reading this you can be open to the fact that musical training is very very, very beneficial to musical growth and expansion, as well as a direct way to learn knowledge you might have never learned otherwise, even if it is not “absolutely necessary” to be able to write and play music.
I have to agree,i started out playing the guitar at 13 and than started reading music and did well but than i found and my parents found that i was a natural at playing the drums this was for me easier than baking a cake .I think there is such a thing as naturally gifted musically
Yes some people are born naturally gifted musically,i have no doubt about that. Music teachers if they are naturally gifted musically themselves can tell from the beginning whether or not a child is musically gift.I know i can .I only have to here one song or a piece played on their instrument to tell whether he or she is gifted musically especially at a very young age
I never learned the guitar. I am a punk rocker and I never had a tutor. They say I get it from my grandpa whose Ramones collection I have inherited.
I wouldn’t say it can or cannot be acquired as a talent but Music is God’s gift to all of us just lie it was in David’s voice. Everyone has this ability and they can speak it. Music is the universal language that binds us so yea, maybe music talent is acquired. The important thing is that it exists!!!
Yes, people do have the ability to learn to play a instrument but,being a natural at play a instrument that is God’s gift to certain people .Like you have sports,there are football players like Tom Brady ,Joe Montana there are not a lot of quarterbacks like them
People are obsessed with the IDEA of the musician. That’s because so few people really understand being truly musical or understand what it means to compose music rather than play it.
Being an MUSICIAN (having the ability to PLAY an INSTRUMENT) is not by any means the same as being MUSICAL. Children are born who immediately, instinctively, without thinking about it begin to make up music WITHOUT AN INSTRUMENT. Trust me. I did. I was composing quite well in my head at the age of 5 without a piano or a guitar or anything other than my own mind. And I could remember what I thought up. Some of those compositions were later arranged and written down and recorded when I was older—but the fact that I did not play an instrument does not negate the more important fact that at an extremely young age without any training whatsoever—I was able to very clearly THINK about original music and that was precisely because I was BORN MUSICAL as opposed many other kids around me who simply were not. Some people come into this world “pre-wired” for music…notice I did not say pre-wired for a musical INSTRUMENT. I said for MUSIC. There is a huge difference between being able to PLAY a piano and being able to THINK musically.
I have to agree,its a all natural thing and some people have some don`t
It depends. If you’re talking about pop music, which is the “folk music of the people” and is very simple in its construction, yes, someone with talent can easily produce this with “zero” training at all. However, to produce music that undergoes significant thematic and/or harmonic development over the course of, say, 12-15 minutes like the first movement of a concerto, this for most composers would require a solid apprehension of how this transformation can take place and lots of practice with working with these elements. You just wouldn’t listen to a pop song that lasted for 15 minutes because mostly the only way it would last that long would be to contain many extra verses. The listener would lose interest at that point hearing so much “sameness”. Most pop/rock songs are 3 minutes each. Now you can have jazz pieces that are 15 minutes long; but they contain amazing transformation that happens right on the spot through improvisation. Most jazz musicians, to get to that point, do have to practice crazy amounts of time to have an ability to offer an improvisation in performance that people will enjoy and keep listening to. So, many people can have a talent for writing popular music in terms of a simple, 3-minute structure (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus), but composing something of greater length requires something different by way of preparation and understanding.