Don't let other people determine your limits
Don’t let other people determine your limits: A deep dive into why you don’t need talent to become a musician
“Not talented,” “bad voice,” “no sense of rhythm,” “tone-deaf,” “no ear for music” - Is this garbage what’s holding you back from making music? No matter what you’ve been told, you don’t lack the capacity to learn to sing or play an instrument. Yet so many of us believe we are incapable of becoming musicians...
It’s the beginning of another school year, and everyone’s deciding what to add, keep, or remove from their schedule. Are you considering starting music lessons? If you’re on the fence about starting or continuing lessons, what’s holding you back?
I hope it’s not fear of being untalented, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that you think you or your child may lack inherent musical ability and that lessons would be pointless if the student has no talent.
So many people are convinced that they’re incapable of learning to play an instrument or becoming a better singer. I bet you a million dollars* that EVERYONE who believes they’re too “un-talented” to make music believes it because someone told them so, probably when they were young. A teacher, a parent, a friend, a stranger...someone told you,
“You have a bad voice”
and that there’s nothing that can be done - you will never ever be able to make a good sound when you sing. Or they said,
“You’re tone-deaf.”
Now you believe you couldn’t possibly sing on-key and there would be no point in taking voice lessons because you can’t be taught. Or maybe they said something indirect, like,
“Just mouth the words.”
But you got the point. You knew what they meant. That was when you learned that you were a hopeless case.
Has it ever occurred to you that the person who told you this didn’t know what they were talking about?
I kind of can’t believe I have to make this point, but… learning exists. You weren’t born knowing and doing all the stuff you will ever know or do. Just because you can’t do something now, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t. Even music. No one comes out of the womb already playing an instrument or singing. Every musician learned how to do what they do.
Whoever told you that you were incurably bad at music, they were wrong.
Something I wrote to this effect became surprisingly popular on social media this past weekend. It was shared widely in just a couple days. Reading the comments on its various iterations, I was dismayed - but not surprised - to find that so many of my professional colleagues had had that experience. That’s right, professional musicians! Highly trained, expert performers who now get paid to make music for audiences had once been told BY TEACHERS that they didn’t have talent and were wasting their time. Clearly, those naysayers were wrong.
The idea that some people can’t be taught is so often repeated, mostly by folks who have no expertise on which to base an opinion, that it has the ring of truth despite being entirely false. People innocently believe it and pass it on to others, simply because they’ve been told it’s true, and they’ve never been (convincingly) told it isn’t.
I’d love to convince you, but I’ll be honest: even though I know I’m right, I’m not sure I can shake your belief that deficiency of musical ability is incurable. People who hold this belief hold it FIRMLY. I was sad to read a fair number of comments on my post from people who didn’t take the point: they insisted that they couldn’t sing and would never be able to sing. It takes cojones for someone who’s admittedly not a musician to publicly say a music teacher is wrong about their professional niche, don’t you think? It just goes to show that people are highly motivated to keep believing this myth. Why is it that we’re so resistant to hearing it’s not true?
Before I get into those reasons, we should talk about the term “talented.” We call people “talented” when they have an instinctive grasp of how to make music, and it’s widely believed to be evidence of an inborn, fixed quality. Having developed an instinctive understanding of how music is put together - and that understanding is developed, not inborn - is certainly helpful when you’re a beginner, and it can help you learn faster and more easily. But intuitive learning is not the only way to learn, and early intuition is not a reliable predictor of ultimate achievement. I’ve written before about why you don’t need talent to become good at music. Also, I’m talking about musical talent here because I’m a musician and music teacher, but all of these ideas apply to any art or skill.
There are four main reasons I can think of why it’s so much easier to believe people’s musical abilities are fixed and unchangeable - in other words, that you have to have “talent” to be good at music:
Lack of talent is a safe excuse
For non-musicians, it feels safer to believe in inherent talent as the sole basis of musicianship. If you can’t sing well or play an instrument, especially if you’ve tried to learn and haven’t gotten very far, it’s comforting to think that the reason you aren’t a good singer or instrumentalist is because you don’t have the capacity for it. You’re excused from trying, excused from the risk of failure and the emotional struggle of practicing and growing as a musician. You can safely give up, because you “don’t have talent.” It’s not really a failure if what you were attempting was never possible.
Musicians get to feel special for having talent
Musicians, on the other hand, have a stake in believing in talent; it gives them an elite status. They have something special, something others do not have. I would argue that a musician’s skill in music-making is what confers that special status, whether or not they built that skill on an instinctive aptitude for learning music. You could have figured out your skills on your own, or you could have had someone teach you. You may have learned quickly or slowly. In the end, your abilities speak for themselves, and no one will be able to tell how you learned or how hard it was for you, so it doesn’t matter. I’m sure that this self-serving belief in inherent distinctions between musical and unmusical people is unconscious and unexamined for most of us. If you’re a musician, join me in examining and rejecting your unfounded beliefs about the nature of musical ability.
Blaming lack of talent shields teachers from feeling helpless or inadequate
Teachers, especially music teachers, are among the worst offenders when it comes to scarring people for life by telling them they suck at music. We think teachers are supposed to have all the answers, and we tend to trust them and take what they tell us to heart. And teachers are usually doing the best they can, but they do make mistakes and have erroneous beliefs.
Music teachers, like musicians, also have a stake in believing there’s such a thing as unmusical people - when you teach music, it’s easy to feel that your student’s failure to produce good-sounding music reflects badly on you. Rather than accept that improvements sometimes come very slowly or admit they don’t know how to help a student improve, teachers may resort to believing that the absent ability can’t be taught. To put it more bluntly, as I did in my Tweet, “That teacher who told you your voice was bad / you weren't talented enough / you don't have ‘an ear for music’ was just covering their own ass because they didn't know how to help you.”
I strongly believe that if it can be done, it can be learned, and if it can be learned, it can be taught. I know I speak for many other teachers as well as myself when I say this: we know we have a responsibility to continually seek new creative and innovative ways to connect with our students and feed their growth. Teachers are merely human, though; we have shortcomings and blind spots, and no single one of us knows everything or knows how to teach everything, much as we wish we could. Maybe one particular teacher didn’t see a path forward for you; another teacher could help you find that path.
It’s a simple and definitive answer
People long to receive, and to give, definitive, final answers to every question. “How can I sing well when I don’t instinctively know how to do it?” “You can’t, the end.” Simple. Wrong.
It’s uncomfortable, humbling, to acknowledge the unknown and to live with uncertainty. The truth is that we don’t know for sure what can or can’t be learned. There’s such a thing as congenital amusia - an actual neurological disability of musical pitch perception. (It’s rare, you probably don’t have it.) Is it impossible to overcome? Well, scientists don’t currently know of a way to overcome it.
It’s tempting to say “can’t be done!” and walk away. But we DON’T KNOW that it can’t be done, we just know that we don’t know how to do it. It’s the more complex answer, the uncomfortable, unfinished, unhelpful answer, but it’s the truth. Even something that seems so clear-cut as “this person’s brain is unable to perceive differences in sound frequencies” is still just what we know so far, our best understanding based on the available information. Someday scientists may discover a way to rewire the amusical brain, and everyone who was so certain it was impossible will be proved wrong.
It takes a lot of emotional energy to stay in that state of uncertainty where you don’t know how - or if - your goal can be achieved. It’s understandable that people want to avoid grappling with that feeling on an ongoing basis.
Is it possible that someone has an insurmountable, inherent limitation when it comes to learning? Sure. I’m not saying everyone could learn absolutely anything if they tried hard enough. But just because someone hasn't learned a thing yet is not proof that they couldn't learn it.
This is why you should absolutely NEVER tell someone they don’t have what it takes.
You, specific individual reader, may not be a teacher. But it isn’t just teachers who perpetuate the “information” that it’s impossible to succeed without talent. I suspect teachers account for only a very small, although very influential, percentage of the people who authoritatively inform others that they don’t have talent. What I have to say here is for everyone.
Stop saying that some people can’t be taught.
It's arrogant and ignorant to think you can know with absolute certainty what the limits of someone’s potential are. You are not omniscient. You could be wrong, but by telling someone what their limit is, you could be artificially creating that limit. Mostly, what stops people from improving at music, or anything for which “talent” is believed to be required, is the belief that they can’t do it.
You have probably internalized a belief about your own inherent limitations. What if you let go of that belief? You might find that it was the only thing holding you back.
Again, I’m not saying limits don’t exist. I’m saying humans are not infallible judges of where those limits might lie - others’ limits or our own.
The common defense of the practice of telling people they suck and shouldn’t bother is that it’s a kindness, that we’re sparing someone the heartbreak of inevitable failure, or saving them time and effort that would ultimately be wasted. This “tough love” is usually given by people who, while they are well-meaning, are unable to realize or accept that they are overstepping the bounds of their authority on the subject.
There is a huge difference between telling someone, "You are deficient in this area and I don't know what I can do to help you" and telling them, "You lack an inherent ability to do this and therefore you can never learn it under any circumstances." One is an honest acknowledgment of present difficulties; the other is an assignation of blame wrapped up in an unjustified sweeping conclusion. One, you might helpfully and kindly say; the other, you should not say.
Of course there’s no guarantee that a certain goal can be achieved with enough hard work; it’s as irresponsible to promise a student they can achieve anything as it is to tell them it’s impossible. We simply don’t know for sure what someone could or couldn’t do, and we have to balance practicality with humble open-mindedness.
Besides, people don’t need to be told to curb their aspirations. It’s not as though you have to be the greatest in the world or there’s no point in doing anything at all, and almost everyone knows that when they aspire to make music. The vast majority of people are also quite aware of their shortcomings and don’t need to be informed that they have room for improvement.
If there is a reality check needed, it’s “You can’t achieve this without doing the necessary work.” Professionals can and should give an honest assessment of how much time and effort might be needed for someone to improve. Professionals can and should steer students away from unrealistic goals and toward manageable ones. But no one ever has any business telling another person they have no potential and should give up altogether.
So, do you still think you’re one of those people who can’t get better at music?
Are you still, after reading everything I’ve said here, convinced that you’re the exception, the person so dull and devoid of instinct that instruction would be wasted on you?
You are not. I have worked with and alongside so many music students and would-be musicians throughout my decades of amateur study and professional performance and teaching, and I have never once encountered someone who couldn’t be taught anything at all or couldn’t learn anything more. I have never once dismissed a student because they couldn’t be taught. NEVER. I have, now and then, let students go when I recognized that I wasn’t equipped to give them what they needed, but never did I believe any of them were unteachable.
Many commenters who replied to my post saying they were discouraged from pursuing music by one of their teachers also said that they achieved amazing things when they connected with a teacher who believed in them. You, too, deserve to be taught by someone who believes in your potential. If you’ve been told you have no aptitude for music, get a second opinion. Get a third, fourth, fifth opinion. Make sure they’re qualified opinions of real, professional teachers. If you want to learn music, you can. You have what it takes. Don’t let someone else determine your limits.
*I don’t have a million dollars and could never make good on this bet; I’m assuming you know that.
Read more:
Signs you should let your kid quit lessons
