I love singing, but I'm not very good at it. About 6 months ago I started attending a local Tuneless Choir[1]. It's just what I needed, and great fun.
How can I keep from singing?
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#32This is the most joyful post I’ve seen here.
Thanks for posting, and kudos to the author for finding something that gives him joy.
May we all find the same joy in doing whatever we do
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course. I agree with you. You will only make it in that field if there’s literally nothing else you can imagine doing. But there’s still a starting point and ceiling in intrinsic ability. I’m curious why you think there’s no difference in inherent abilities? Some people are more “naturally” skilled at some things than others, at a baseline. You can look to see examples of this everywhere. That doesn’t negate the d…
I guess it's too extreme to say there's no difference, I just don't love the explanation of there being some hard ceiling because it seems like the real process is incredibly uncertain and unpredictable. There's a million little skills you have to learn as a pianist and also many brief moments where you suddenly grow a lot because you finally grasped something important. In other words I feel like the "ceiling" gets…
I agree with almost everything you’re saying.
I really love the “brief moments” part too. I believe growth (maturation, skill improvement, etc.) happens in discrete moments that is then reinforced by practice (or lost by the lack thereof).
> stuck at some ceiling… next step forward
Then they weren’t at their ceiling :) they were at a local minimum of optimization. And getting out of a local minimum is insanely rewarding, regardless of the skill.
And maybe you’re right - maybe there is no hard ceiling. But there are learning rates and diminishing returns involved. It might take me 10x longer to get from the 95% percentile than 96% percentile, and then 100x to get to 96.5%. (Obviously percentiles are quite abstract for art). Maybe we can always improve given the right practice and guidance, even if the improvement is marginal. I just define the marginal returns area as a “ceiling”.
But… all of this can co-exist with “natural” baselines of talent.
I hate to admit that I will never be as “good” of a pianist as Martha Argerich… but I just won’t be, no matter how much I practice. I also will never be able to run as fast as Noah Lyles, no matter how much I train.
And that’s ok.
I think there is a tendency to fight back against the idea of natural talent/skill because this idea can diminish the extreme hard work it takes to hone and develop talent.
Noah Lyles could outrun 99% of us without training, but he had to dedicate his life to beat the last 1%. Most people probably don’t realize/understand how much dedication it takes to climb that final mountain.
But “inherent” talent is still a real thing. If we knew “why”.
My final thought is that high baselines can often be counterproductive for growth. Anyway, thanks for chatting about this with me.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#34Some people learn to sing, and some people were born to sing www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXknLZDoRVQ
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 inabi…
Until my late 20s, I was bad with both pitch and rhythm despite playing guitar for over a dozen years. Then I took singing lessons with a professional opera singer for 9 months, one hour a week. She stressed how important it was to record myself and listen back, in fact she encouraged me to do it for hours at a time. The immediate reaction the first few days of trying this was "holy crap, not only am I pitchy and can…
Hmmm. I might have to try that.
But also fwiw I'm so bad at tempo that even my heart can't hold a tempo.
So I'll definitely give it a shot but I'm pretty doubtful I'll ever meaningfully maintain a pace or tempo.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Until my late 20s, I was bad with both pitch and rhythm despite playing guitar for over a dozen years. Then I took singing lessons with a professional opera singer for 9 months, one hour a week. She stressed how important it was to record myself and listen back, in fact she encouraged me to do it for hours at a time. The immediate reaction the first few days of trying this was "holy crap, not only am I pitchy and can…
Hmmm. I might have to try that. But also fwiw I'm so bad at tempo that even my heart can't hold a tempo. So I'll definitely give it a shot but I'm pretty doubtful I'll ever meaningfully maintain a pace or tempo.
Understood, but to be clear, I felt the same way after I heard how off I was, as if maybe there was something defective with my brain.
Just start small, record 4 bars of something, play it back. Use a metronome to gauge the actual amount of drift. See if you can hear what the metronome is telling you. Try to improve it with a few more attempts, then call it a day.
Try again after a good night's rest. Over time you should be able to naturally feel when you're slowing down or speeding up.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I 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 instru…
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 inabi…
I am the same way. I am a music lover, I am good with pitch, can accurately tune a guitar from new strings to within a few cents with no reference. But I can barely clap along with a metronome for more than a few bars. I have had years of lessons but my lack of rhythm really makes it almost impossible to progress despite putting in a lot of practice. My wife who plays guitar for fun will walk up while I am laboring over a piece that I have been working on for weeks and do a better job after two tries. It’s really demoralising! It feels like most people can do rhythm like walking or breathing, but for me it takes 100% CPU and leaves little for anything else.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#38> who could “do music”... were born, I felt, gifted in a way that I was not Maybe it's true for some people but I generally think it isn't. The secret to being able to play an instrument is studying or practicing a little every day for 20 years. Some people get there faster but unless you have mobility issues, most people can learn enough of an instrument to have fun.
I believe I’m tone deaf. There is no test for this. I am color blind, but I have the most favorable form of red/green color blindness which means for the most part I see all colors, but I fail the tests. Likewise I hear tones, and can distinguish tones. I can play something and know if I have hit the wrong key. However, I have practiced long enough to know I’m tone deficient and that knowledge really affects one’s desire to practice. I see little kids on YouTube that already have more talent than I could ever achieve. I really don’t see myself ever being able to pick up anything complicated by ear. If it’s transcribed correctly then sure it’s doable with sufficient practice. I can’t hear a chord and know what chord it is. I have dabbled with my guitar for 30 years. I frequently struggle to know when frequency goes up vs down. I can’t sing in key. I can barely tune a guitar by ear. It’s usually off a little bit though and it takes me a very long time. The song “Back in Black” has this little bit at the beginning G E D B and then sort of an A bend. Whatever Angus does with that A note I just can’t figure out. I have tried it a thousand times.
Re: How can I keep from singing?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its a spectrum. Mozart was a prodigy at 6. Most people are average, and almost everyone who is good practiced for years, but the people who are really good no doubt had some natural gift.
I 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 instru…
Your experience is not universal truth.
My experience tells me that one can spend years at an instrument and still lack the fundamental capacity to be an artist.
I've spent years playing different instruments. I'm pretty good at it, I can get proficient at new instruments pretty quickly. However, my ability tops out at reproducing music. There's a fundamental creative spark, some subtly different neurology, that allows some people to create art, to express the intangible through music. I don't have that. I simply can't connect with music or art the way an artist does. I see the mechanics underneath and that's as far as my brain goes.
It's incredibly silly to assert anyone can study into a master musician. There is such a thing as innate talent that simply can't be acquired, and that talent is the thing that makes an artist.
Conversely, as an engineer, I do have that talent. It's been obvious my entire life, the same way an artist's talent becomes obvious early on. The way I approach problems is fundamentally different from the way someone who simply studied thinks about things. It's a fundamentally different way of thinking and experiencing the world.
Look around you at the varied shapes and sizes and varieties of humans. Some humans are natually huge and powerful, some are small and nimble. A 4'8 ballet dancer can't "just" learn to be a 6'4 bodybuilder, physiology just doesn't work like that. Small humans can't get big, and big humans can't get small. Big humans are stronger than small ones, and small humans can never get as strong as big ones.
Why is it unthinkable for humans to be different on the inside? If our outward physiology is so wildly varied, why is it impossible for internal physiology and neurology to be exactly as varied between individuals?
Innate talent exists. Everyone has different mixes of talent, and not all of them can be learned. There's nothing wrong with admitting that. It's part of the beauty of the human species. And realistically our species wouldn't have evolved to this point without a wide mix of specialized individuals.
Claiming that everyone can be Mozart if they just work harder really cheapens the whole thing. That implies talent is interchangeable with effort, and it definitely is not. If you can work past that childish crutch, you can see the awe in a human who was born to do something at the very highest level.