I found this interesting article on the net which basically does a god job of disproving the theory that practice is the most important aspect of getting good at something. The salient points were that a talented person can reach Olympic level with only 4 years of experience in a sport. By specifically singling out only talented individuals, trainers can achieve remarkably short "incubation" periods for producing excellent performers. If there were no such thing as talent, selecting specific individuals as students could not result in such a huge decrease in the time taken to train them. The worlds greatest ever Olympic swimmer was the 5th fastest person on earth after just 3 years of serious training at swimming, at the tender age of 15.Potential experts in any field can be easily spotted very early during their training career. If only long, arduous training regimes produced expertise, how come the experts to be can be singled out long before this arduous training has been undertaken? The correlation between training and development of expertise is very loose, leaving many of the factors responsible for achieving excellence unexplained, with genetics almost certainly a significant factor. Ill post the link tomorrow. Im too tired now. But I can tell you now, hard work on its own cannot make anybody a great pianist. I am so convinced of this I will call this statement a unquestionable fact. There is no evidence that infinite amounts of training of any particular type, structure or grade will make everybody become good. Conversely, there is ample evidence that excellence not infrequently is achieved with only modest input of time and effort. For example one person achieved level of Chess Grand master after only 3 or 4 years of experience. Some who trained religiously for over 20 years failed to achieve this level. The idea of work and dedication being the cornerstone of greatness is facing extinction, im afraid.