alt Hacker NewsI don't know about that with music. Outside of absolute prodigies, my experience with instruments is that the more you practice the better you get. It's not like sports where practice can only take you so far before genetics absolutely rules the field. So it strikes me that most people can be really really good, but only if they put the hours in.
You really can work your way into being a musical genius with an instrument. It just takes a lot of work. I actually like playing instruments for that reason. It's one of the few things where hard work has actual, measurable outcomes on time scales that you can observe.
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As someone with a BM in piano performance - I’m of the strong opinion that there’s a natural baseline and ceiling. Practice can only get you so far.
You will not match a symphony professional's talent if you start playing at 30. Even if you work hard. Even if you really want it. You don't have the time.
Work is great, but hard work doesn't yield the same reward to everyone on every instrument. Geniuses did hard work, but they often needed less at every step along the way. That means they advanced faster with the same effort. But that's okay! Learning an instrument for music's sake is a joy.
Anybody can learn an instrument well enough to enjoy it. They can probably learn it well enough to play in a community orchestra. They can learn it well enough to appreciate what the pros do.
It really depends on the person. I've been involved with music in some capacity basically my entire life. I can do pitch but I have never been able to maintain a tempo to save my life (to an almost morbid degree).
I could practice technical skill on an instrument to literally no end but ultimately anything I did outside of a several second stretch by myself was completely disoriented due to a total and complete inability to maintain a tempo even when it's provided to me.
So for me there is just a hard ceiling on my ability to ever perform. I could probably do better with digital music production if I invested the time and energy into it but I'll always have the handicap that I have and knowing that it's hard to even want to invest the time and energy into trying yet another path into music where I'll likely fall flat on my face again.