15/10/2026
40 years of scientific research have found ZERO genetic basis for musical "talent".
Probably the single biggest discovery in the scientific field of accelerated learning comes from the great Professor Anders Ericsson, whom I had the honour of interviewing before he passed away.
He conducted the pioneering research into the question of where "talent" comes from. Was it genetic? Inexplicable magic? Or were the "talented" individuals in various fields, from sports, to literature, to art and music, actually doing something differently to everybody else.
As we covered in Chapter Two Mindset, the research revealed clearly that "talent" was essentially a myth. All the accomplishments and abilities of so-called "talented" musicians, artists, sportspeople, and other experts had been gained through a vast amount of a particular kind of learning activity.
"I've been reviewing this now for about 30-40 years, trying to find something which seems to be necessary for you to be successful at some domain, that really can't be influenced by training.
Once you start looking and finding that those individuals who have certain types of abilities, once you look back and see what they were doing there in the first five or eight years of their life... you find that they were engaged in [particular] activities and that actually seems to be related now to their ability here.
It's really the training that is critical.
I'm not saying that we will never find genes that actually will give you a sort of a head's-up on your success. But what I would say is that basically so far I'm not seeing any compelling evidence.
People have now been mapping out the DNA for hundreds of thousands of people, trying to actually see how [for example] the best long-distance runners might have different genes from those who are far less successful. And so far, as far as I know (and this is based on other people who are actually doing the research) we actually have not found even a single gene that actually would be of useful value to help you know whether you're going to be successful in long-distance running, or sprinting, or whatever."
--- Professor Anders Ericsson, Musicality Now interview
Ericsson named this different kind of learning, which all the seemingly-talented experts have been doing, "Deliberate Practice".
The defining trait which distinguishes it from the blind brute-force "massed repetitions" approach, is introducing a "reflection" step, where you analyse how things went and what you might try differently next time.
In the music context we can see Deliberate Practice as having three parts which operate in a repeated cycle:
1. Plan
2. Play
3. Reflect
The traditional "massed repetition" approach is to simply Plan then Play. We pick what we're going to run through, then we play it. Repeat. Hope it gets better. (And be disappointed when it generally doesn't.)
In fact, if we're honest, often even the "Plan" step is skipped. We show up for a practice session and somewhat mindlessly run through our routine. We feel like we did our duty because we did the "Play" step. But we aren't even making thoughtful plans about what to play, or how to play it differently each time through.
With Deliberate Practice, we introduce a "Reflect" step, where we pay careful attention to what just happened, and we use what we observe to influence our next "Plan".
For example, you might be working on a certain two-measure phrase, which you just can't seem to play at the target tempo. It's fine when you play it slowly, but you make several errors when trying to play it faster.
You might Reflect that you're always late playing the third note---so you Plan to try moving your finger a little earlier to hit that one. Or you might Reflect and notice that actually your finger is landing a little off-target which is why half the time you play the wrong note in that spot---so you Plan to be more intentional about that finger placement at that moment. Or you might Reflect and realise you're obeying the "instructions" on the page, but actually your mental representation of that passage is a bit of a blurry jumble of notes---so you Plan to slowly play it through note-by-note and then audiate it after, to build a better mental representation of what you're trying to play.
There are various ways to explain why introducing this "Reflect" step is so effective.
One is that this kind of intentional reflection "wakes up" the brain more fully, activating its learning processes. It also allows us to thoughtfully troubleshoot and problem-solve, which greatly shortcuts the learning process by helping us jump more quickly to an effective way to do the task at hand.
You can also think in terms of conscious and subconscious mind. The traditional "massed repetition" approach is relying on our subconscious mind to somehow automatically make us better at the task through sheer repetition. And while the subconscious mind is incredibly powerful, we need to set it up for success by giving it something to work with. The "Reflect" step is using our conscious mind to feed some new experiments and experiences to our subconscious mind, which can then figure out the new neural pathways needed for success.
And finally, I like to think of it as a way to become your own best teacher. By conducting a new little "experiment" each time around the Plan-Play-Reflect cycle, you discover for yourself the most effective ways to move your muscles and play the notes you intend to, a skill which itself becomes better and better over time. You become both student and teacher, as you continually optimise your own learning process.
One reason I like this "becoming your own best teacher" framing so much is that it sets the scene for integrating the various musicality aspects we'll explore below. You are empowered to choose the "experiment" to run next at any given time, and use it not just to "get the notes right" but to move you along the path to your own Big Picture Vision, developing exactly the kind of musicality you care most about.
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This is an excerpt from Chapter 6: Superlearning in the Musicality book.
