Genetics and music talent

[Doug]

We have a bunch here with music talent (of different levels) let's see how it comes and passes on genetically.

I'll start of my grandparents only one was musical - like wise his father
Of 4 siblings only 2 of us show any music talent.  (notice the "any" not claiming real talent)
Of the genetic offspring of the siblings 11 in total not one shows any music talent.
Lost genes with my generation. 
Of non genetic kids 1 shows some talent and so does son.

Someone else give it a try.

[brucemacneill]

My father was a pianist, my mother played piano too but there's a difference. Don't know much about their families.
One of my great uncles was a banjo player but I don't know if that counts. Introduced me to strings anyway.
I don't really feel like a musician but some folks seem to think I am. None of my 5 siblings was into music.
I have several nieces and nephews and great-nieces and nephews who are professional musicians.

I think there's a music gene.

[Marshall]

No overt musicians in my family trees. My father had a givt for melody and harmony, but no formal training. Taught himself to make musical sounds on a piano. taught himself some simple guitar when i took lessons. Sang loudly and nicely at family gatherings when occasional music broke out. But that was after a lot of liquor.

My mom was not musical, but has always be artsy in a visual crafty sort of way. I seemed to get the artistic side from both. My brother is construction worker and sports nut. Played one year of trumpet in Jr HS.

My wife is not musical or visual artsy. Our two kids have, one a gift for writing, the other is a graphic designer and very good photographer. But neither is musical.

Four grandkids. All pretty young. But you can tell, 3 of them will not be musical. But the 4th one I think has the bug. Whenever music comes on, like at a carnival ride, he immediately starts dancing to the beat. He can't sit still with music. He's immediately in tune with it.

[Marshall]

Two weeks ago all 4 kids were over. They were getting rambunctious. I have a nice Kala uke that I sit on a chair in the Living Room. It's to entice the kids. Willy, the dancing one, finally picked it up and started plunking the strings for real. You could see the lightbulb start to go on, . . . , then his cousin kicked the yoga ball across the room and it hit the ukulele and drove a tuner into poor Willy's forehead.

I hope that doesn't ruin the instrument for him.

[Doug]

Some music talent is all that's required for this listing.   Banjo pickers count 1/2.  Playing the piano counts as some talent.  That's my sister plays piano and sings.  BTW my father sang and he sang enthusiastically and very BAD, painfully bad.  In church people hated to sit near him, and Christmas Carols ran and hid.  No music talent from that side of the family.  

[millring]

No musical talent in my family, but lots of passion. Older brother Geoff could have been a good guitarist if family responsibility hadn't called him in a different direction. Sis Jackie lives for music, but like me feels something akin to phantom pain for a voice that's not there. And when I say "not there", I mean it literally. We both have faint whispers of voices. When I'm playing with Jackie, I have to play and sing as softly as I can because, singing as loud as is possible for her, she simply sings no louder than a whisper. I finally discovered that it's a genetic thing -- we have some kind of deviation in our throats (found out an interesting way when my aunt had her esophagus perforated during a routine scoping).

Mom and dad loved to dance. Dad played harmonica and mom played exactly two songs on the piano -- "Goodbye" and "Chloe-Song of the Swamp", as taught to her by a high school boyfriend.



My grandmother met my grandfather while entertaining the troops in Paris during WWI. She was trained in opera. I doubt she was any good.

[jdd2]

[Doug]

Mar 27, 2015 20:11:16 GMT -5 jdd2 said:

Woy you have talent going back a long way.  You know he could have been a star if he had a guitar. 

[aquaduct]

Nobody else in my family has ever done music that I'm aware of.

Now my wife's family is another story.

[Deleted]

I'm thinking that familiarisation and upbringing probably trumps genes in the matter.

[Village Idiot]

My maternal grandfather was quite musical. The trombone was his forte, but he played it all his life and was in lots of jazz bands. My mother can't carry a tune in a bucket, despite her father's efforts.

My paternal grandmother could play hymns out of a hymnal, but nothing beyond that. My Dad played Chopin and Scott Joplin.

Reading about any musicians, from classical until now, it's been by experience that while many musicians come from musical families, most just pop out of the blue.

[dickt]

My parents appreciated music and both sang a bit, but neither played any instruments. Didn't know my grandparents. My siblings both sing but don't play. My kids are all musically talented--Julie is an actress and did some singing, Peter played bagpipes and has sung lead parts in musicals and a college a Capella group. He taught himself guitar and banjo. Adam was a music major on guitar and played percussion and bass in school bands. Kathy was woodwind captain of marching band and was in all district band every year in Fairfax County. She no longer plays but made half hearted attempts at guitar when she worked at a music store. What I like about guitar is that it is a lifetime instrument.

[Shannon]

I'm not a great player of anything, but I'm a decent player of several things. I think it is fair to say I have some talent, although I have no idea where it came from. I'm an adopted kid and have no substantive knowledge about my genetic ancestors. My mom is a pretty good piano player. My dad loves music, but can barely play the radio. (I'm speaking of the parents who adopted me).

All 4 of my children like music and have some talent. Did they inherit that talent, or is it more a product of the fact that they grew up watching me play all the time, plus having music playing in the house all the time, plus lots of encouragement to try an instrument? Nature or nurture?

I don't know.

[Dub]

My father loved to sing in church and played violin in high school and college. Unfortunately, his ear for pitch and harmony was tenuous at best. Needless to say we didn't encourage him. His maternal aunt played piano and pump organ so I'm guessing his mother played too. She died when he was a small boy so I have no knowledge of her musical ability.

My mother played piano and organ well and became a public school music teacher until she and dad were married. She would often play piano in our home while the rest of stood around her and sang. She loved opera and listened to The Metropolitan Opera every Saturday afternoon over the radio.

I have two brothers who are quite musical and all our children are accomplished musicians.

[RickW]

My Dad had a wonderful voice, but was never serious enough about anything to really try. Don't think anyone else on his side did anything artsy. My mom could draw, was a costume designer, but I don't think I have heard her sing a note in her entire life. My sister has not done a creative thing about 40 years.

James, my children are artistic, but not musical, despite all I did to try and make them so. There was always music in this house, and me playing. So, I don't know about environment. Genetics, I can't say, as we don't know.

[Russell Letson]

I have no known musical ancestors, though I'm pretty sure my grandparents all played the radio. One brother owns some guitars and claims to play them, though I've never heard him. Other siblings, nada. Late in life, my mother reported that when they were courting, my father sang to her all the way home on train ride from NYC back upstate. For herself, Ma claimed a condition re: tunes and buckets similar to Todd's mom's. I don't know whether I have talent--I suspect sixty years of dogged persistence is my secret.

[billhammond]

My family experience leads me to believe that environment is the key to musical aptitude more than genetics.

Our household had a piano as long as I can remember, as did my maternal grandparents' house, and in both places, kids were welcome to plunk away as long as they didn't pound.

My sister, three years my senior, started piano lessons while in grade school (not sure what grade) and worked hard and got very good. She also sang in church and school choirs, getting especially good training through the latter, which in high school was led by a teacher who went to school at one of the legendary MN choral schools, either St. Olaf or Concordia College. She eventually was drawn to pipe organ and wound up graduating from college with a music major/education minor and taught music as her livelihood all her working years in various schools.

Mom was good enough to play duets with my sister and they did so with great enjoyment and laughter in our house. I eventually came of age to take piano lessons, I think I soldiered through for a year or two, probably starting around 9, but I think the combination of my sister being so accomplished and me just being a guy with lots of other interests caused me to lose interest and I was given parental permission to step away from lessons. My folks were never pushy about those sorts of things.

I was in a school boys choir from a very early age, soprano years, and we gave annual holiday concerts that I can still recall vividly, in places like bank lobbies and large theaters, not just at school. That's where I got the spine tingles of choral harmony, and so I willingly joined choirs at church and in high school.

There was always music playing on our Motorola console stereo, and a lot of it was funny stuff that was still very musical, like Gilbert & Sullivan, Victor Borge, etc. Lots of classical music on LP, but popular music, too, show tunes, and an Andres Segovia record that knocked my socks off. I was leaning toward asking for a guitar in junior high, and when the Beatles hit our shores, that leaning turned into a leap, and I got my first, a nylon stringer, at age 15.

Funny thing -- over the years, I have always envied my sister for being able to pick up a piece of music she's never seen before, put it on the music rack and start playing. Meanwhile, she has always envied my ability to create my own compositions and to improvise.

My dottirs love music, dabbled with violin in Waldorf School as required, but never longed to be players themselves. They are great, natural singers, though, and never have any problems staying in pitch or in rhythm.

[millring]

Mar 27, 2015 22:05:36 GMT -5 dickt said:

What I like about guitar is that it is a lifetime instrument.

+1

[millring]

Music is a curious thing relative to the nature/nurture thing. I tend to think music is the almost perfect combination of two different spheres -- the technical/musician and the creative/artist. And though some exceptions might be apparent, I think they are few (Pat Donohue comes to mind).

A Venn diagram wouldn't adequately express the overlap either, because (seems to me, anyway) the overlapping of the sphere of technician with the sphere of the creative generally demands a diminution of the one to achieve the other (though the creative side gains more from technical proficiency than the technical side gains from attempting creativity).

I'm inclined to believe that to the extent that the "nurture" side of the argument holds sway, it is with the creative/artist side of the equation. Likewise, I'm also inclined to believe that to the extent that the "nature" side holds sway it is in the realm of the technical.

We see it more clearly if we compare it to the world of sport. There is very little that nurture is going to be able to do to create a 9 second 100 meter runner. No carrot/stick training, diet, encouragement -- even starting from birth -- could ever have made me into a 9 second 100 meter runner. I would always lack the bio-mechanical anatomy required. If we branch out into other more complex sports that require specialization and things like strategic thinking, confidence, and mental toughness though, the guy with less nature and more nurture can thrive, despite less than generous physical endowment -- though, as the herd gets culled toward the peak of human capacity, that nurture is still going to require some boost from nature (Larry Bird was slower than much of the competition, but he was 6'9").

No amount of training would ever make a slow-fingered guy like me be able to play guitar like Julian Lage. If I had been raised with a guitar in my lap, I still would lack the basic bio-mechanical anatomy required to play like that. But music equally favors the creative side. That's why there are countless average musicians succeeding in the biz, and there are technical wizards that can't put food on the table.

Furthermore, even though I think it's true that there is a biological (nature) limitation that will ultimately restrict one's capacity for proficiency, the beauty (or frustration) in music is that we just don't (and can't) know where that limit is. So we practice, in faith, to get as good as our fingers will allow.

But one of the great things about music is that it can be equally enjoyed on either side of that equation.

[millring]

Of course, I can contradict myself immediately. Here's nurture, described: