Some suddenly become accomplished artists or musicians with no previous training

No, you really don't. You literally don't even need to know a single note name to be able to play a song from memory. You just need to know which keys to push or strings to pluck and frets to press in what order.

>I challenge you to play 100 pop songs on an instrument - any pop songs, any instrument - and not at least know things like major/minor chords, basic chord progressions (like the endemic I - V - vi - IV, aka "four chords").

Just because you're playing these progressions doesn't mean you have the slightest fucking idea what they are, or why they're numbered that way.

When I was about 6 years old I started learning piano. My parents took me to a teacher who used the Suzuki method. For those unfamiliar, it's a method of musical training that focuses solely on learning by ear with no discussion of theory or sheet music. I did this for years, and I absolutely hated playing the piano for reasons that had nothing to do with the piano itself.

Early in high school I picked up the electric bass, and did what you mentioned above, i.e. I learned a whole pile of pop and rock songs. I also played a bit of guitar around and between all this as well.

This constituted years of experience playing music. And yet, I did not suddenly and independently discover and understand the circle of 5ths. I couldn't tell you why a 7th chord was called a 7th chord. I didn't wake up with an intuitive understanding of time signatures.

I wasn't exposed to any of this stuff until I took a music theory class in college. It was at that point that the 'why' of what I had been doing to make noise on these instruments started to make sense.

And once I did start learning these things, there was still no intuitive sense of where to put my hands on the instrument to play the notes I wanted. I had to fumble around with it to figure out where the notes were.

And now, having spent years after high school playing in live bands in front of paying audiences, I still don't think I'm anywhere near what someone might call a 'great' musician, and my understanding of music theory is really far from complete. I still play all the time and can't sight-read, for example. I have to sit and puzzle out a piece of sheet music.

Additionally, I've read about this particular guy before in greater depth than is discussed in the linked article. Something unusual really did happen in his brain. He somehow gained knowledge and ability far beyond what we would consider normal.

For example: if you learned to ride a bike as a kid, you'll remember a moment where your balance just "locked in" and there you were riding for an arbitrary amount of time.

Now take twelve-bar blues on the piano: say you spend some weeks or months learning some bass patterns in your left hand. Maybe you learn a simple melody for the right hand. Then you put them together. Then you learn a few "riffs" for the right hand.

If you keep practicing consistently, at some point you develop your coordination in your left hand to the point that you've got a steady rhythm in the bass line. And you won't stop playing that bass line even if you mess up in the right hand.

No longer are you merely practicing the parts that go into playing the blues, you are practicing playing the blues by actually playing the blues. And each time you play a chorus, you have aural feedback you can use to decide whether the things you played in your right hand are worthwhile or undesirable. You can even play a thing which you did not intend that turns out to work, and use it later.

Essentially, you can now cycle through the blues form an arbitrary number of times. That's an epiphany, and it feels the same as the moment you learn to cycle an arbitrary number of times on a bicycle.

There are similar epiphanies when learning to construct a melody over a pentatonic scale, and an even stronger one when learning how to construct a melody over an octatonic scale. Those moments are so intense that a lot of musicians end up just stopping there because it's so much fun.

In all four cases (bicycling, music, pointers, react) what makes the difference is dogged persistence. One day you'll wake up and things will seem simple -- and the next challenge impossible. Rise and repeat.