How could being a gifted musician possibly be overrated, especially when it comes to learning to play the piano? The answer is simply because it will be effort and perseverance that ultimately determine how good you are going to be, not how much talent you have.
As well as teaching the piano for a lot of years, I have also been a high school music teacher and have seen first hand, students that are clearly musically gifted but because they did not make learning music a priority in their lives, they either got nowhere or achieved very little before they quit. This is because the gifted can sometimes rely on their natural talent and don’t think that they will actually have to put much effort in at all.
The fact of the matter is that if you are learning to play the piano, no matter how talented you are, you are not getting very far unless you work at it. Sure, if you are talented then you will find some aspects quite easy to master but if you don’t have much talent and therefore have to put in a lot of effort, you can still end up with basically the same result. In other words, mastery of a skill or technique has almost nothing to do with talent and everything to do with persistence and effort. The real difference is in persistence and maybe the amount of time that it takes to achieve mastery.
I don’t consider myself to be naturally talented, even though many people have thought otherwise. For me, I just wanted to play the piano from a really young age and was given the opportunity to take lessons. The way I describe my personal journey is that I was really keen to play more and more piano music, so I kept having lessons year after year, exam after exam until I finished school and then I went to university and studied music there as well. I had wanted to teach, so I started teaching while I was attending university and I just kept going and now I have been teaching the piano for more than a quarter of a century! The key to my personal success was that I kept going. I think I was just determined to play the piano well, nothing more and nothing less.
Not all of the time, but sometimes I come across a student that is clearly musically talented and because of this natural talent they will learn new concepts and techniques really quickly. The very real downside to learning the piano and finding it really easy ( sometimes to the point where very little effort is needed at all ) is that eventually when new techniques or new piano pieces are given become challenging and require real effort, they tend flounder. Some students flounder so much that they quit. Its almost like they have thought that learning the piano would always be easy and when they find out for themselves that there is a point where it gets challenging, they quit.
The piano is considered a hard musical instrument to learn and therefore everyone gets to a point where they find learning a challenge. For some students it happens right from the beginning and for others it happens further down the track. One thing is true is that everyone finds some aspects hard, but hard certainly doesn’t mean impossible. Hard means just a bit more effort is required. Hard equals more effort, more patience with oneself and more courage (and a bit of stubbornness can also help).
For the piano students who are not so naturally musically talented, have somewhat of an advantage over the more talented ones because they understand quickly that they will need to put in time and effort to learn to play the piano and they don’t expect the process to always be smooth. They just simply get on with the process of learning.
So for those of you reading that may consider yourselves somewhat lacking in talent, you have other qualities that are absolutely needed for success. Also, as an aside, if you think that you might be wasting a piano teacher’s time because you allegedly don’t have a lot of talent – you’re not. From my perspective as a teacher, I have always enjoy teaching all sorts of students, including those that aren’t the most gifted. The so called less gifted are usually the most determined and will often achieve their goals.