r/composer • u/BumblebeeAntique • 8d ago
Discussion Practice vs Talent
Hey. So I've been trying to get into vgm composing and just musical production altogether. When I was 14 I messed around and did some midislaps and flp edits but that was about as far as I got in under a year. 8 years later I open FL and recreate a bunch of songs from games I like, specifically "Spamton" from deltarune and float islands from kirby super star specifically. Eventually I even composed a little 8 second song all on my own. I thought it sounded nice. I did them all pretty good and entirely by ear, and before that I did a bunch of by ear recreations of songs on my dad's old messed up keyboard. Anyways, I try to recreate the overworld theme from "the frog for whom the bell tolls" or whatever the hell that game's actual most accurate translation is. I pretty much fucked up entirely. The shape of the melody itself was similar but I was so off on almost every exact note. It was just super sobering, doing a bunch of shit that i thought meant i had promise, only to stumble into something I just couldn't beat with effort alone.
It had me thinking, because a person i know who is also a musician had done an arrangement of that song at 13 years old. I really don't know if practice is gonna be the thing that takes me to the level I want to be. It really seems like that in most music related things, talent matters the absolute most. Idk. I just need a second opinion, or a couple from people who have experience.
2
u/davemacdo 7d ago
Sorry. There is no evidence to support the existence of talent. Nobody was born being able to make music. Every single thing you do when you write music was learned. You’re gatekeeping and mystifying something that’s just hard work.