I’ve taught some guitar students over the years who would nervously ask me–after just one or two lessons–whether I thought they had any talent. That question always troubled me. As a teacher, I’ve learned that you can’t judge a student’s future skills based on their performance in the beginning. No matter how jaw-droppingly good a player may become in the future, everyone starts humbly.
So when students ask me if they have talent, I say: “You’ve got a good start. And if you invest some time and care, you’re going to get better.” And then they look relieved, like a weight’s been lifted from their shoulders.
And of course they feel relieved. After just a few hours with the instrument, my guitar student was already trying to judge whether or not she’d ever get good. That’s a lot of pressure for a beginner to put on herself. It’s not realistic to expect signs of greatness from yourself at the start of your training. Sometimes it’s not even realistic to expect signs of greatness in the middle of your training.
Students who ask nervous questions about talent are usually just starting to taste the work involved in learning an instrument. They’re encountering their own shortcomings. And almost all of them experience the fear that they’ll neverbe able to play well. It’s an understandable and quite natural fear to experience. Getting good at anything requires lots of effort, and nobody wants to expend effort for nothing.
Here’s the good news: you can relax. Rest assured that with patience, good learning materials, the desire to learn, and a long-term mindset, you can keep on improving yourself as much as you want for as long as you want.
Knowledge and practice
The idea that some people have talent and others lack talent is a very common, incorrect, and even dangerous worldview. As a teacher, I’ve heard students express all kinds of doubts and negative beliefs about themselves:
- “I’ve got no rhythm.” Well, you can learn rhythm.
- “I can’t carry a tune.” That’s what voice lessons are for.
- “My fingers are too small.” You can cope with small fingers.
- “I’m not a creative person.” There’s no such thing as a “creative type.” And creativity is actually a set of mental skills that can be taught, and can be learned.
Research on high achievers suggests that talent probably plays only a tiny role (if any) in their accomplishments. The real deciding factor is how much time high achievers spend on what researchers call “deliberate practice”.
In other words, if you want mastery of an instrument, virtuosic command of poetic techniques, or anything else worth working for… it’s going to take a lot of well-planned and carefully-executed practice.
Mastery may not come instantly, but it doesn’t take an eternity either—if a total beginner wants to perform at legendary, world-class levels, research suggests that she’ll need to work at her craft every day for about ten years.
Nobody is exempt from those years of hard work. The people you think of as “talented”? They weren’t born masters. Like you and I, they couldn’t even speak when born, so they certainly weren’t master poets. And when they first picked up that guitar or sat down at that piano, their practice sounded like any beginner’s practice, clunkers and all. Masters get good at what they do by patiently correcting those mistakes and racking up small improvements in skill and knowledge over a long span of time. They stick with it.
Practice is the secret to mastery, and that’s good news. It means you control your own destiny.
Instead of worrying about whether you have what it takes, let’s worry about doing the work… because doing the work is what it takes.
Do the work, and be kind to yourself
Before we move on, I want to take one last look at what it takes to get good at songwriting, singing, or your instrument of choice. There may not be an inborn superpower that lets you bypass those hours of practice, but there are definitely some qualities of character that’ll help you along your way and make the journey a bit more enjoyable.
I think the most crucial quality is this: compassion for yourself.
Serious practice is humbling because no matter how good you are, you’ll be spending a lot of time staring your own weaknesses in the face.
When you get good at practicing, you’re going to become very aware of your own mistakes and shortcomings. At some point–probably many points along the way–you’re going to be tempted to judge and condemn yourself. And at those moments of frustration, I hope you’ll remember this: everyone struggles. So be kind to yourself. Be patient with yourself. Frustration is temporary, and you can always try again.
Many people seem to think that if something doesn’t come quickly and easily to them, it means it’s not going to come at all. Out of impatience and perhaps fear, they begin to avoid practice. And before you know it, you’ve forgotten where you put that old notebook. And there’s an inch of dust on the piano.
When you find a challenge, please know that yes, learning music or lyric writing is challenging, and that doesn’t mean you’re somehow deficient. It just means you need more training.
When you encounter a challenge, lean into it. Work carefully and thoughtfully and persistently at the challenge. Enlist help from books, teachers, online forums, and fellow artists when you’re stuck.
There’s always a way to move forward.
The self-defeating student
I want to share another conversation I’ve had often with guitar students:
Teacher: Okay, let’s try that F chord again.
Student: I can’t do it!
Teacher: I know. That’s why we’re working on it today. Go ahead and try. Remember to arch your fingers.
Student: (reluctantly arranges her hand into the correct position; presses the strings down; strums, hears lots of gross buzzing and clunking) See?! I can’t do it! It’s impossible.
Teacher: Not yet, but you’ll get it. F chords were hard for me when I first learned them too. Keep trying.
Student: (after about five minutes of struggle, manages a pretty good F chord) Hey, I did it!
When you encounter something you can’t do, it’s often tempting to give up. That student wanted to give up before she’d spent even five minutes struggling with that F chord. She almost let a five-minute obstacle crush her will to make music.
Those five minutes of struggle probably felt like an hour to her. But at the end of it, she’d made real progress on that “impossible” task.
In the course of your practice, you should expect to struggle, expect to feel awkward and sound awful at times. That’s all perfectly natural, so don’t beat yourself up over it and don’t make the mistake of thinking that awkwardness lasts forever. Making simple mistakes doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to failure for eternity; it just means you’ve got a problem in need of solving. With simple time, effort, and access to good learning materials, you can solve that problem.
Accept the idea that you’ll have to be a beginner at each new thing you learn; accept that you’re a work in progress. You’ll have a much more relaxed and easy time if you just stay calm, set reasonable expectations, be kind to yourself, and relax into the work.
A final word of encouragement
Among songwriters, most songwriters and lyricists don’t have a deliberate practice routine of any kind. That’s great news for anyone willing to do the work. If you can systematically practice lyric writing through daily study and lyric writing exercises, your abilities will rapidly surpass most amateur songwriters.
So this moment in songwriting history is a great opportunity for anyone motivated. We’ll explore how deliberate practice applies to learning music theory, learning an instrument, writing lyrics, performing… and even learning how to change guitar strings or use digital recording equipment.