Music, talent or skill?

[BONES]

I have/do neither so I am in no position to comment. Except to say that I have no need of either and I have much better things to do with my time.

[hao nao]

he's so modest ... on the catwalk I mean runway he is sublime

Foster's and Armani?! Masterful!

[Timfonie]

When I was a kid, I begged my mother to let me take piano lessons. She refused, and I had no access to a piano, so that dream ended.

Sorry to hear that. Yeah, not everyone's lucky to get the chance to start developing skills at a young age. I had that luck when I was eight.

Now, 14 years later, I'm still composing/arranging by ear, and I still can't read music fluently, or play the piano better than a trained child.

Well ... I've had piano lessons six years long ... and guess what? Even with serious practice I never became a skillful sheet reader (to my annoyance). On the other hand I did start making my first (very modest) compositions not long after touched the piano for the first time.

This definitely shows where my weaknesses and talents are. We simply have to accept who we are.

[Jbravo]

I studied piano for ten years and I'm still no virtuoso performer, but at the same time I think virtuosity is overrated. I think it takes a lot more talent to create original compositions than it does to slavishly recreate someone else's composition...(though that does require a lot of skill which can be obtained by a lot of practice) I was always terrible at sightreading music which I think is common for people with an ear for music - once they've heard a piece a few times they can play it back by ear and so their music-reading skills are never fully stretched - until exam-time when it's too late... So I would say, ask yourself if you want to be a creator or a performer - then you can decide which is more important, skill or talent

btw, I'm not saying that those two are mutually exclusive, you probably can't get by without a bit of both