Musing: Can anyone learn to master any skill?

Associate
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I have recently started to learn to play keyboard with the aim to play piano. I am the only one in my family who has never played an instrument before and it does not come naturally to me. However, because I want to play it I find myself spending a long time to pick things up, getting frustrated, but pushing through.

I think the individual needs to want to learn as much as anything else.

That's me too. I play some stuff by ear and practice with one hand but I am having real difficulty in mastering hand independence.

If I am brutally honest with myself, I am too lazy to stick at it. I don't want it enough.
 
Soldato
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That's me too. I play some stuff by ear and practice with one hand but I am having real difficulty in mastering hand independence.

If I am brutally honest with myself, I am too lazy to stick at it. I don't want it enough.

See I really want to play, always have. I am learning with simply piano which is really good I must say.
 
Soldato
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My take on this is that with hard work and dedication you can fulfill your potential but cannot exceed it, and that, whatever the endeavor some people have the potential to achieve much more than others...
 
Man of Honour
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No.

For example, someone with brain damage affecting their motor skills won't be able to master the skills required to perform complex surgery. Etc, etc.

But without a definition of "master" and "skill" the question doesn't work anyway. Let's say, for example, I ran a marathon. Have I mastered marathon running? Is marathon running a skill? What if I was younger and both my knees worked properly and I trained a lot and ran a marathon in 3 hours? Is that mastery? 2.5 hours?
 
Caporegime
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For example, someone with brain damage affecting their motor skills won't be able to master the skills required to perform complex surgery. Etc, etc.

I specifically excluded such cases in my opening post. :)


I'm thick as **** but have managed to learn guitar.

If I watch someone play like this, I realise that I can't even physically move my fingers that fast, let alone land them accurately on the right notes at the right times... (skip to 1:00) :p


I feel like this is about as good as I could perhaps get. I can actually move my fingers this fast, and play some bits of this song already... (Skip to 2:25)


At the moment I mostly play songs like this which don't have any complicated solos but are still satisfying to belt out. (Skip to 0:20)

 
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Caporegime
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I could never rap in 100 years my brains not wired that way. ha!

I thought that. Dont know unless you try!

The hardest bit is saying each individual word clearly instead of letting the words blend into each other. And actually injecting some timing, rhythm and tonality. The latter-most of which i struggle with!

If there are lots of words in a verse which start with the same letter it makes it easier.

Rap God is much, much harder to rap despite having less words per minute, and less beats per minute in the "fast bit" ...
 
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To be honest I never thought that rap was going to come out your mouth and I assumed I was going to be trolled with some Rick roll stuff lol.

The thing about rap is if you listening to it again if you brains not wired right you won’t hear the words what’s been said. Some people understand and some people don’t.
 
Caporegime
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To be honest I never thought that rap was going to come out your mouth and I assumed I was going to be trolled with some Rick roll stuff lol.

The thing about rap is if you listening to it again if you brains not wired right you won’t hear the words what’s been said. Some people understand and some people don’t.

I should have done that... :p

I said:

I gotta be the one to bite the bullet, I'm a sinner but i bet i coulda been a better man.

I wanna be zen but i go sipping on some medicine instead of meditating, but i get it when i can.

I dont wanna wind up in the gutter with a bottle of malt liquor, bitter cos i never got a call telling me that its all figured out.

Im sick of doubt but im looking at the wall
 
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Man of Honour
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Can almost do rap god, no chance in hell of playing scarified for about a decade. :p
Ultimately learning something like that is like weight lifting, or similar. You just cannot ‘practice’ your muscles better than they can naturally develop and grow. Whenever I’ve tried to ‘shred’ I’ve always ended up given myself injuries by playing too much in a way that was placing great stress on my wrist... I have shonky wrists as it is.

This bit in Scarified is absolutely mental. Hurrghnnnn!

tVRzFlB.jpg

Edit - that’s wrong ^ but you get the point.

I had a group lesson from Paul Gilbert once, which was super awesome. Well, other than it was destroyed slightly by my own fanboy ways - it really bugged me (from a “let’s be best fwendz” perspective) that he never asked for our names in the lesson... which I think was just a completely artefact of the way the
 
Caporegime
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Ultimately learning something like that is like weight lifting, or similar. You just cannot ‘practice’ your muscles better than they can naturally develop and grow. Whenever I’ve tried to ‘shred’ I’ve always ended up given myself injuries by playing too much in a way that was placing great stress on my wrist... I have shonky wrists as it is.

This bit in Scarified is absolutely mental. Hurrghnnnn!

tVRzFlB.jpg

I had a group lesson from Paul Gilbert once, which was super awesome.

Yeah uh, i cant read tabs. Thats one of the things got forgotten in the big 10 year hiatus. :p

But I did watch a youtube cover!
 
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