Unfortunately many people will not become good regardless of any amount of effort invested. And many excellent performers have not invested great amounts of time or effort, contrary to what you say. I know 1 guy who after 9 months of experience, plays vastly better than I, who has around 4500 hours of practice/experience. it would take me 30 years of daily practice to get as good as he was after 9 months. After practicing 3 hours a day, every single day for 4 and a half years, I am now wandering why I even bother to try, as nobody enjoys or appreaciates anything I play, even songs I have recited as many as 10,000 times, are not good enough to even attract 1 view on you tube. I have never invested so much time and dedication, to receive so very little in return. I now discard any concept of effort being the main determiner in life, and consider fate and luck far more influential.My bosses son had never touched a soccer ball until age 10.By age 12 he was being eyed of by talent scouts. He is amazing after just 2 years of experience. In virtually every sport I have been around in my 37 years, the best performers took only a couple of years to reach competitive levels, which pretty much puts rest to this notion that successful people strived for ever and a day to get good.A recent study estimated that grit or persistence accounts for only about 5% of academic performance achieved by students, leaving the vast majority of factors unrelated to effort. Also it has been shown that Gladwells 10,000 hour rule is complete bunkum. There is no specific number of hours or amount/type of training that can make someone good.
There are many facts here that make your arguments invalid.
Your first point regarding some random person who's practiced for apparently 9 months.
Let's first do some basic maths as so far what you've sent could be completely hypothetical.
your 4500 hours in whatever amount of time. 4 years or something (not that I know why amount of hours matters but hey-ho)
Let's assume this "person" you're referring too did nothing but eat, sleep and play piano, let's go to an extreme and say he managed 16 hours of practice a day.
9 months x 30 days (averaging days in a month) x 16 hours = 4320!
With even so many other factors aside we've first go right down to the basic maths that this person could be near you anyway, if he WORKED HARDER than your casual "3" hours a day.
Let it be known, I don't back this point, it's as completely ridiculous as your point.
Next, as I read more of your comment I get the immediate impression you can go and join your friends crying a river. not even 1 view on YOUTUBE? OH BOO HOO. Up until what 20 years ago nobody knew what Youtube even bloody was how did you think people survived then when they needed to feel good about playing the piano. THEY WORKED HARD.
Now I only have little to no facts from your comment that I can work with here. But when you say 4500 of practice, I honestly don't even know what that means.
Insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
We could all sit at the piano and play the same things and do the same things over and over and count that as "practice" I don't know schedule, but I would bet my money that it wasn't great.
At no point did I ever think you could quantify the amount of hours required to master anything (referring to your 10,000) what I said was, people that WORKED HARDER achieved better results.
This is not a time based statement, as you could ignorantly say, well I worked 6 hours and you work 3 so why am I not double as good as you..
I should probably even further clarify that working harder, doesn't necessarily mean just WORKING LONGER. it's working smarter. it's actually PROGRESSING each time you practice at the piano. Rather than wasting 30 minutes on a passage with no actual results.
The people that practice correctly are the people that start to snowball ahead. What makes you think you're even practicing correctly?
Lastly, let me give you some background. I had no formal lessons at the piano until I was about 12. before then I had casually played on a little keyboard that I enjoyed from around 5 years upwards but never took a true interest in the piano until I watched somebody perform a piece. It was like a light switch, I had to get good, I had to perform like I had heard.
That year I worked my butt off my piano teacher gave me grade 1 pieces, grade 2 pieces grade 3 pieces, i flew through them and within that year I performed Chopin's Nocturne op.9 no.2 for her. The next year I was working on grade 5 pieces. That same year I performed Clare De Lune, a Chopin Waltz and a Posth Nocturne.
This is not a gift, I did not possess some magic, I just absolutely loved what I did and I thought about nothing else. Youtube did not exist. The internet was still a gimmick, and text messages on a mobile were so much effort you actually just called people instead!
My life changed and I dropped the piano. for 10 years on and off I never really touched it. I started piano lessons again 2 months ago, performed some pieces that I prepared beforehand which were a bit rusty.
I've been given Beethovens op 14 no.2 to learn, with nothing official but a grade 3 qualification in piano. In 10 years of not properly playing i've completely maintained the ability to practically pick up where I left off and continue to progress.
In 3 weeks I have a concert, and I've got that time to learn a piece - Debussy's Arabesque (you may have seen my first page of effort in the audition form)
3 weeks to learn and confidently perform this piece and do you know what, I'm going to do it. Not by turning up on the day and rocking off the best sight reading i've ever done, but by spending every spare minute I have until then perfecting it. I'm booking time off my day job just to get more time to practice.
Do you even know what hard work truly is?
There are honestly 100000's of pianists better than me at this stage of my ability. Do I honestly care? God no, I care about myself and I care that in 3 weeks time i'm going to give MY best performance regardless of what anybody else is playing.
Topic: Hard work over God given talent?