Practice=Perfect vs U either have it or you dont!???

UK Paulie

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As a relative newbie, with guitar experience (thankfully) I can notice, and am reasonably happy with, my progress with the little 4 stringed fella recently. When something 'gets' me like the uke has I soak up every bit of info, every tip and everything I can around it and thats what I've found myself doing. However I have, as I suspect everyone has to some degree, got bigger aspirations and when I sit and watch people like Jake and Kalei Gamiao, I wonder whether I'm in a complete dreamworld! So, my fellow ukulele enthusiasts, my question is this, and its everyones opinion I'm hoping to get here, Who thinks that with enough practice and dedication, anyone can become as good as those guys and who thinks that actually, some people have just 'got it' That some have just got that 'something' that you cant quite put your finger on, the X factor if you like...
 
There's no denying that some people simply have more talent than others. That said, the guys who reach the Jake level have to have a lot more than just talent. Most of these guys have been playing hours every day for years and years.

I think it's reasonable to assume that anyone with decent manual dexterity and normal hearing could duplicate what they do if they (we) put the same kind of dedicated time into it that they have. The difference, I think, is that it takes a special spark to create as they do.

Just my $0.02.
 
Daniel Levitan's book "This Is Your Brain On Music, The Science of a Human Obsession" is a great read about this very topic.
 
Good question Paul! I think most anyone can get to an acceptable level, given enough practice and an appropriate definition of acceptable. It's like drawing- most anyone can learn to draw (really). To get beyond that requires both special talent and dogged determination.

Jim B
 
I recently heard psychologist/cognitive scientist Gary Marcus being interviewed on a KQED (NPR, San Francisco) talk program . He's written a book called "Guitar Zero," in which he uses himself as a test case for how the brains of adults with no music training learn how to play an instrument. It was an interesting program, and I just bought the book.

Here's the link to the interview: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201202271000

Here's a link to the book: http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Zero-Musician-Science-Learning/dp/1594203172/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331230277&sr=1-1
 
A) Good heavens! Who'd want to be perfect? *grin*

and

B) As has been said, there has to be a spark of something there, but the other 99.99999% is hard, bloody-fingers, oh-GOD-this-hurts, thumb-cramping, shoulder-hunching, wrist-spasming work.
 
For sure anyone with decent dedication, enthusiasm plus a boatload of practice/study can become a really good uke player. But to become really, really great (Jake, James, etc) requires something extra - a talent that you either have or haven't. In the same vein, I could train my ass off for the next 5 years and run a very good 100m sprint time, but Usain Bolt I will never be...
 
Practice makes perfect. 1% Talent, the other 99% is practice.

I figure that most people (given they are physically capable of something) can attain some pretty high levels of proficiency at playing the uke, guitar or whatever instrument if they properly practice 6hrs a day, 6 days a week for 10 years. We all know kids are like sponges so if you start when your 5 years old think about how much you can accomplish by the time your 25 or 35. The thing is, is that very very few people are actually willing or even able to dedicate the time and pursue something in this manner.

Of course there are a few very rare exceptions where someone is just uber talented in some way, but we're talking Hendrix, Mozart...
 
If you get a chace read the book "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell. He talks about the time investment someone needs to put into the activity they do to master it. I think it was about 10,000 hours. He gives an example of the Beatles and how they were able to put in the required 10,000 hours while they were playing clubs in Germany. It's a good read. I would say practice doesn't make perfect but perfect practice makes perfect :)
 
Wow thanks everyone for all your considered responses, its certainly thought provoking methinks! In my case, I was recently told I will never work again due to poor physical health following an accident. I have, therefore, got time and boatloads of the stuff!! I also have the willingness. I thought the 'novelty' would wear off as did everyone else (mainly my better half who I think hoped more than thought, given the amount of time it was consuming) but it hasn't. If anything, the more I play the more I want to play and the more hooked I become! Whatever the case, and I think I'm with most of you on the 1% talent 99% toil, I dont mind if I don't become an amazing player, I think aspirations are healthy, I'm just so grateful that I have found something which truly brings me joy. Discovering my professional life was over at 34 was a bit of a blow and my life seemed a bit empty for a while but now I have something beautiful in it and that's pretty amazing in my book!! :cool:
 
"Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."
~Vince Lombardi
"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration!"
~Thomas A. Edison
That said, that 1% makes all the difference.
 
Also playing with other musicians is an important part of getting 'there'. Practice gives you dexterity but a lot of the inspiration comes from others.

Glad the ukulele found you.
 
Practise does make perfect. But if you have it, you can go that little bit further :)

Agreed, I mean, I am quite a musically talented person, thank the Lord, but I had to practice just like anybody else. I had to get my guitar-playing hands to grow into 'ukulele-playing hands.
 
Some people are natural players, same with any instrument, but if you practise enough you can be as good as anyone :)
 
This isn't a scientific answer, but the best voice teacher I ever had, someone who was going to write a book on the subject, always said that in her experience, she could teach anyone to sing better than they do.... but there's a wall that everyone has, but it's at a different point for everyone. In other words, a mix of a hell of a lot of practice, and natural talent. I think the science points more to a hell of a lot of practice, but it comes down to this: you're not going to put in that amount of practice time doing something you don't love.
 
From what I have read it seems the best way to have an extreme talent is to be OCD on the subject and start at age three. You can be all OCD on whatever in later adulthood, but if you are starting at 43 you are starting with a 43 year old brain. Music's like any other language, when the brain is young and crammed with superfluous neurons and before they start getting pruned, learning and retention is like the proverbial sponge sucking up water.

Of course you can always learn something new no matter what your age, but it's like learning a new language, you're probably going to struggle with refinements of tenses and are always going to have an accent. For myself I feel if I want to learn something new, science has proved it's good for my brain cells, and if I enjoy it, it's even better for my general health and well being. I am not going to ruin it with a judgement of how sucky I am or how good, I'm just going to make an effort to keep learning, but yeah it's not going to happen without practice.

For myself finances dictate I can't ever retire and I also don't know how with my current injuries I'm going to manage to stay employed. No safety nets here. The same injuries affect my practice. :(
 
Of course there are a few very rare exceptions where someone is just uber talented in some way, but we're talking Hendrix, Mozart...

Actually, Hendrix is a good example of the difference between creation and execution that I was talking about in the earlier post. There are many players who can copy what Hendrix did much better than he often did himself. (Listen to enough of his live performances and you'll see what I mean - his execution was often pretty poor when you get right down to it - probably on those days he was too wasted...or not wasted enough.) Jimi did something nobody else had done, but the pure mechanics of what he did weren't terribly difficult and therefore there are hundreds of players today that can "do Jimi" better than Jimi did himself!

What made Jimi unusual, and an icon, was the boundaries he stretched with his creativity (and, of course, pretty decent execution much of the time).

John
 
Some people are natural players, same with any instrument, but if you practise enough you can be as good as anyone :)
I'm definitely not a natural. I'm a "left brain" player with very little on the creative (right) side. With enough practice I can become a "Ukulele playing machine" but most likely will never advance above the songs I attempt to mimic. I think that's where people like James and Jake have the advantage that not only do they have the technical skills, they have the creative ability to "imagine" a song and put it to music. That's a rare talent and if it's not already "in you" it's something extremely hard to learn.
 
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