Very occasional quote of the day: Ndugu on talent

 Another great quote from Ndugu Leon Chancler, from his 1983 Modern Drummer interview:

“I think the most important thing is your attitude. There were, and still are, a lot of musicians who have more technique than I have, or more talent. But inside the talent is a way of not only knowing how to manipulate it through the ranks to get the maximum out of it, but there is also an attitude that you must project to make people feel you as a person. I very much wanted to get along with everybody, and wanted to add as much as I could to whatever situation.

From the beginning, I wanted to be a workhorse, and I had to work harder at drumming than some of my peers. There was a guy I grew up with who was much more advanced than I was at the time. Right now you can't give him away. Much more talent than I had at the time, but the thing that was missing was the knowledge of how to utilize that in the marketplace of the music and not just in his own home or practice room. He had the talent but it didn't work for him, overall.”

Talent and practice

I guess the "Gen Y Entrepreneur and Investor" author of this piece Why natural talent is overrated knows this stuff from reading a book, but there are some good things in here about practice. Maybe obvious, but restating the obvious is a good thing:

Deliberate practice has been found to encompass five characteristics:

1. It is designed specifically to improve performance

 The exercise often needs to be designed by a teacher or mentor who understands what your weaknesses are and what needs to be done to improve.

The activities need to be designed to stretch you and push you outside your comfort zone. Tiger Woods will drop a golf ball into a sand bunker, step on it, and then play the stroke and he will do that thousands of times until he is exhausted. Tiger may only play that stroke a handful of times through his career, but when he comes to it he is well rehearsed in how to execute.

2. It can be repeated a lot

Repetition counts. Repetition alone however is not good enough, but when focusing on a particular skill-set with a clear outcome, there needs to be high repetition.