A Question left without an answer!

Hi Everyone,

I have this incredible friend who can make the most catchy melodies i've ever encountered, he's a true talent. But i dont' know how he does it, i mean all i do is give him the lyrics sit back and watch him just start humming over the lyrics and then 5 minute later he'll have a hit.

Now here is the wierd part.

This guy doesn't play any instruments, doesn't know how to read sheets. he doesn't know what a perfect fifth or a c-major is, he never took any musical training in his life, and frankly he would've never bothered to learn music if i didn't convince him to register for classes in this upcoming year to learn music theory and guitar. (no relative or perfect pitch)

we've been working together for the last 3 years now he's only 20.

So what is this ability called? how can i learn it? and is it accessible or is it something that you're just born with?

I just dont' get it, and yeah i tried asking him and all he said and kept saying was "i dont' know!"

Sounds like he's a natural talent to me. Sure, some musicality can be learnt, but do you really think every person could be like Beethoven if he tried hard enough?? Anyhow, its one thing to come up with a melody - its another matter to be able to arrange it and turn it into a full song.

Post a few of his melodies on YC with his permission. ..or without his permission. I'm suuuuuuurrrre he won't mind. :o

Post a few of his melodies on YC with his permission. ..or without his permission. I'm suuuuuuurrrre he won't mind. :o

:D

i wish i can do that with consequences.

Thats the thing he can make a full song, but i mean i know alot of artists who do that.

So let me get this right i've been to three forums, the only answer i got was that it's called improvisation this meaning is so broad.

this forum is full of composers i'm sure one person would know.

Ask him though or just send something with me via AIM, I'd really like to hear it. You have me curious now.

Ask him though or just send something with me via AIM, I'd really like to hear it. You have me curious now.

sorry i really can't, we dont' have permission to do so. :(

Well, first of all "catchy" is relative.

It sounds like you are annoyed that your friend is able to create melodies better than you, even without musical training.

So how is he good at improvisation? And what is improvisation?

This is just my personal opinion, but I believe that a composer/improviser calls upon his or her own "memory bank" of melodies and rythms in order to compose. What I mean by that is that everything is essentially "pre-composed" in your brain, and what you do is combine them and twist them around to create something unique. This is what I believe happens neurologically.

So how is your friend so adept at creating these melodies?

Because he probably listens to a lot of popular music: he takes ideas from the melodies he hears and puts them in his "memory bank". It's basically the ideas of Rosseau in music, that environment determines someone. His musical environment is giving him the ability to emulate the music that he listens to and compose these themes. Your classical training is what's preventing you from seeing the simplicity in his music and causing you to create themes that probably sound contrived.

-The ability? Is called experience and familiarity with the genre that your composing in

-How do you learn it? Expose yourself to the music: play it, listen to it, emulate it, study it, etc.

-Are you born with it?

I believe that everyone is born with the mental capacity to learn and develop musically, and upbringing is what will determine the extent of that capacity. So really, no. But if you want to be good, you'll have to put the effort into it.

And in no way am I bashing your friend.

Hope this helps.

Sounds like he's a natural talent to me. Sure, some musicality can be learnt, but do you really think every person could be like Beethoven if he tried hard enough?? Anyhow, its one thing to come up with a melody - its another matter to be able to arrange it and turn it into a full song.

Well, I do think that. At the moment alot of research is going up about the subject "talent", and the more we know, the clearer it becomes that talent isn't what we think it is.

For instance, some 40 years ago, a Russian psychologist wanted to test this, so he decided to train his 4 year old daughter in maths. His daughter, however, preferred chess, so he made her into a chess player. These days, she, and her two sisters and son, are the top of the chess world.

Whats even more interesting is, that by training and devotion, her brain turned upside down, and the part we use to analyse faces, is used by her to analyze the chess board, which enables her to figure out her next step within a few hundreds of a second, and she experiences it as "inuitive".

This experiment has been repeated (think the William sister, tennis), and I think (this isn't scientific proof anymore), that the more you train yourself in a certain skill, the better your brain organises things, and uses other than normal areas of it to complete the challenge, cause its more effecient.

One last thing, music, and most other creative arts, are thought up in the right side of the brain. The right side, however, is dominated in a certain level by the left brain, which limits the creativity. The so called "savants" often have left brain damage or malfunction, and that can lead to extraordinary creative skills. The brain of a savant does work in rather other way than a normal brain, but as stated before, the same thing, in a certain level, can be achieved by training, lots of training, devotion, and so on.

As a conclusion, I think talent is the time it takes for a individual to "configure" his/her brain to the task required. This, however, can be achieved by everyone, so in theory (well, my theory atleast ;) ), everyone can be Beethoven, some will just have try a little bit harder.

Even if there are experiments that show how "talent" could be learned by some, there are countless examples of such attempts that didn't succeed. I am certain there are thousands of people who wanted themselves or their children to become the next Beethovens, worked incredibly hard, got the best teachers available and everything, but still "failed". It may work better with very clearly defined and straightforward skills like chess, but for creative skills where the definition of what it actually consists of is very vague and disputed this is almost impossible. Sure, you can teach a child to play scales on a piano incredibly fast, but teaching individual musical expression is much harder, and may not succeed even with the best teacher.

I really agree that talent has a lot to do with continuous hard work, but I still think someone like Beethoven must have had an inherently strong musical disposition to become the master he was.

(Well, maybe you are right that in theory everybody could become Beethoven with enough time. But I guess for some people it might take several hundred years. Maybe even longer if they have a childhood trauma involving surly piano teachers who yelled for every wrong note ;))

I know the term for the opposite of having musical talent: Amusia. I just don't know for myself what's the more positive term.

Even if there are experiments that show how "talent" could be learned by some, there are countless examples of such attempts that didn't succeed. I am certain there are thousands of people who wanted themselves or their children to become the next Beethovens, worked incredibly hard, got the best teachers available and everything, but still "failed". It may work better with very clearly defined and straightforward skills like chess, but for creative skills where the definition of what it actually consists of is very vague and disputed this is almost impossible. Sure, you can teach a child to play scales on a piano incredibly fast, but teaching individual musical expression is much harder, and may not succeed even with the best teacher.

I really agree that talent has a lot to do with continuous hard work, but I still think someone like Beethoven must have had an inherently strong musical disposition to become the master he was.

(Well, maybe you are right that in theory everybody could become Beethoven with enough time. But I guess for some people it might take several hundred years. Maybe even longer if they have a childhood trauma involving surly piano teachers who yelled for every wrong note ;))

I would agree to a point that natural "talent" has something to do with it. From a biological perspective, a person that has the right synaptic connections in both the left and right brain suited to musical aptitude will certainly succeed becoming a sort of Beethoven given time. Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and all of those other musical giants must have had the following components in their brain: a huge and highly convoluted primary and associative auditory cortices, a thick corpus callosum, an advanced motor cortex and neocerebellum (for their virtuosic skills and "muscle memory"). "Talent" makes learning a certain skill easy for that individual. (boring pseudoscientific thought isn't it?) :sleeping:

A second point raised is that of effort. "Talent" in a manner of speaking can be learned as well. By attempting to learn, you stimulate your brain and little by little you learn skills you never thought you can learn. Of course, some prior knowledge is a requisite which is used by the individual to develop new skills.

The last component (and most important I believe) is interest. No matter how much aptitude a person may have or no matter how much one person puts in effort in getting the best teachers and a good musical environment, that person will never learn music if he is not interested. If a person has no interest or a sense of value and purpose for music, no amount of stimulation, exposure, education, and/or talent will make him/her become a Beethoven. But if the person has some degree of talent, a lot of work, and an insatiable interest, then it is almost certain that he/she will develop "talent." You might want to check out self-taught composers like Elgar, Telemann, Xenakis, and Takemitsu as examples.

Just my thoughts anyway. Hope that helps. :toothygrin:

But if the person has some degree of talent, a lot of work, and an insatiable interest, then it is almost certain that he/she will develop "talent."

I do agree with that.

Well, as an additional requirement you could add living in a social environment that allows for such talent to develop. A person who is surrounded by artists and musicians is more likely to discover and develop a talent as a composer than a person living amongst people who don't care about music and creativity (yes, I know there are exceptions). Likewise, a child out of a poor "third-world country" (I hate using that word) who has to earn money by daily long hours of physical work, is sadly unlikely ever to be able to delve into music so much to become a talented composer.

I do agree with the point that talent isn't just something you have or have not, but something that must be attained and worked on. I merely disagree with the utopian belief that "you can be whatever you want if you work hard enough".

i could say that i do that..... i'm not prodigy but thats just the way i write my music. I guess it comes from your influence, ie. you write music like the music you listen to. Correct me if i'm wrong but didn't jazz originate from uneducated slaves creating music. Because these people didn't have the knowledge about chords and such they created music entirely from emotion and managed to create the blues scale. These people didn't LEARN how to do it, they just picked it up... i believe that it is not nessecarily knowledge that makes a good composer. If we all composed using the methods that we knew that worked in the past then we would never move forewards... i guess in a way what i'm trying to say is that knowledge can be restrictive if we rely soley on it. If everybody wrote "cautiously" using only progressions and structures that worked than i'm sure the music would be nice enough, but nothing that would move us into the next generation of music.

i'm realising that i've got a bit off track here...and i've forgotton what the point to all this was... errr

wow thank you guys i appreciate your input and help.

i spoke to him last week actually and was kind of wierd cuz it seemed like i was desperate to know, i asked him again but i rephrased the question to get more details "when did u start composing melodies in your head? how did it all start? and were u always this good?"

he said first he started writing lyrics, just lyrics when he was 12... at 14 he started to hum a melody over his lyrics, he said that they honestly sucked bad and were so basic, i begged him to sing one of those old songs but he refused saying that i will laugh at him.

it was a daily routine for him, he didn't really care about how good it sounded or how bad it sounded at the time he was just having fun, a hobby. years later he said my head started to work better and faster at it and i started getting used to it. and also said he doesn't know how he got this far.

conclusion-

i guess that he thought that making a melody was just a head thing, so his brain didn't know any better. the brain just started developing accordingly. it's hard to explain but over time his brain was trained to just do these things.

my opinion on talent,

i think talent is hard work, but to start learning that special craft during childhood it's way less than half the work. as you all know the brain takes things in alot faster.

edit - to raving spleen:

lol no i'm not jealous man, i'm a producer, i'm rather intrigued by his skill and hope his skills will improve more and more. he's the reason i got inspired and wanting to make melodies

the whole idea of it just seems so nice, you know

you can be on a plane, a train, a restraunt or even driving, you vocal chords are your only instrument. and melodies will just come to you, it's a great feeling. one day hopefully, but for now i will be practicing :)