"Practising music without the right genes to back that practice up is indeed useless."
Useless? Utter nonsense. But a great excuse to get out of practicing..."Mom, you *know* I just don't have the genes!"
:highly_amused:
It's a little known fact that Levi Strauss had blue genes.
BUT....kidding aside. I just remembered a corollary to all this that I first stumbled across in Psych 101B, "Physiological Psychology": that humans are born with incompletely developed and relatively plastic neural connections and that the final development of those connections is influenced by how they're used. Basically, the more times a neural path (like one that controls a motor action) is fired, the stronger and more efficient that pathway becomes. That's the underlying physiological basis for the development of "motor memory". BUT: according to the wisdom of the time, (early 70's), by around puberty your wiring's pretty much as good as it's gonna get.
Probably explains why so many instructors in so many disciplines figured out eons ago that it's best to "start 'em young", even if they didn't know why. It also tends to support the premise that "nurture" can overcome over "nature".
When I first learned that I also developed a pet theory that if you "learn to
learn" it's a lot easier to learn
new stuff no matter how old you are.
Still, I
hate those guys who can repeat a lead they just heard, by ear, and then
remember it forever after, besides....although frequently I've got a lot more
creative ability :biggrin-new:
For me, to be able to
memorize something
musical, and then play it right,
dependably, repetition is mandatory. Even my own stuff.
:wink:
