Is It Possible To Have Musical Talent Such As This? Options

[Brooke Taylor]

Did you ever see the movie August Rush? -- I may sound quite ignorant, but do you believe it is possible to be as gifted as the boy in the movie? He's an orphan that hears music in his head all the time, like an orchestra playing in his head. He gets on the guitar for the very first time in his life and plays this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSI4_9OhwV8 <<< Soon, he discovers the piano in a church with a little girl playing scales, and the first time ever seeing sheet music in his entire life. The little girl shows him the notes, and a little baby book explaining a few notes. He looks at it for 30 seconds, and he starts writing a score for an orchestra. He is discovered as a musical prodigy and is enrolled in classes at Juilliard. I am assuming yes, because look at an article about this child, "Jay Greenberg" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/24/...ain657713.shtml <<< Perhaps, maybe it is, to an extent. Do you think that Jay Greenberg has anything in common with August Rush? I just want to know if it is possible for a child to have such extreme talent, like the boy in August Rush. I know I sound silly. I just want to hear some opinions.

[Martin.Walters]

Did you ever see the movie August Rush? -- I may sound quite ignorant, but do you believe it is possible to be as gifted as the boy in the movie? He's an orphan that hears music in his head all the time, like an orchestra playing in his head. He gets on the guitar for the very first time in his life and plays this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSI4_9OhwV8 <<< Soon, he discovers the piano in a church with a little girl playing scales, and the first time ever seeing sheet music in his entire life. The little girl shows him the notes, and a little baby book explaining a few notes. He looks at it for 30 seconds, and he starts writing a score for an orchestra. He is discovered as a musical prodigy and is enrolled in classes at Juilliard. I am assuming yes, because look at an article about this child, "Jay Greenberg" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/24/...ain657713.shtml <<< Perhaps, maybe it is, to an extent. Do you think that Jay Greenberg has anything in common with August Rush? I just want to know if it is possible for a child to have such extreme talent, like the boy in August Rush. I know I sound silly. I just want to hear some opinions.

Anythings possible, just extremely unlikely.

If I got this right, Chopin was playing for only one year, until he played a concerto.
Ive been playing 18 months, and learning his Op9, no 2. ~ It will take me ages to ever get to concerto standard 0,0

[Mad Tom]

Did you ever see the movie August Rush? -- I may sound quite ignorant, but do you believe it is possible to be as gifted as the boy in the movie? He's an orphan that hears music in his head all the time, like an orchestra playing in his head. He gets on the guitar for the very first time in his life and plays this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSI4_9OhwV8 <<< Soon, he discovers the piano in a church with a little girl playing scales, and the first time ever seeing sheet music in his entire life. The little girl shows him the notes, and a little baby book explaining a few notes. He looks at it for 30 seconds, and he starts writing a score for an orchestra. He is discovered as a musical prodigy and is enrolled in classes at Juilliard. I am assuming yes, because look at an article about this child, "Jay Greenberg" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/24/...ain657713.shtml <<< Perhaps, maybe it is, to an extent. Do you think that Jay Greenberg has anything in common with August Rush? I just want to know if it is possible for a child to have such extreme talent, like the boy in August Rush. I know I sound silly. I just want to hear some opinions.

It is mostly Hollywood nonsense. No-one, however unusually wired their mind, however much of a prodigy, picks up a guitar for the first time and plays like that, nor does anyone compose a symphony 30 seconds after seeing musical notation.

Even Mozart had to put in some study/practice time to learn the craft.

[SueHM]

I agree. Those few children who show extraordinary talent at a young age usually back it up with an extraordinary amount of hard work in order to make very rapid progress. This is possible because some youngsters are capable of intense focus and concentration on something that really interests them - and I think this is very different from those who are 'hot-housed' by pushy parents.

[MadMatt]

First of all he tuned the guitar to an open chord which helps tremendously. This is something that someone with the right mind would be capable of doing. IE knows what a musically pleasing chord sounds like and knows that one can change the pitch of the strings by altering the tension on them.

Naturally one could then think, well if you can tune the instrument using the machine heads, maybe pressing down on these weird line things might do a similar thing. Besides looking at his environment, surely he's been exposed to music and has seen a TV with people playing the guitar etc.

With an open chord anyone could bash the guitar in the way that he's doing and create that rhythm thing. It does go a bit overboard when he starts to improvise though and doesn't hit a wrong note, I'm sure he's also playing harmonics at one point, which requires prior knowledge of how to create them. But with a little bit of practise I'm sure he could do that.

But be able to write a symphony after 30 seconds of studying sheet music is? No, that's a learnt ability. Musical genius will allow you to picture amazing things inside your head and be able to hear and compose wonderful things. But it's similar I suppose, to a linguist. Perhaps they can speak 20 languages and write in one, english. They could be fluent in Japanese, but put some hiragana in front of them and they'll be like? Huh? That they have to learn.

[skylark]

Did you ever see the movie August Rush? -- I may sound quite ignorant, but do you believe it is possible to be as gifted as the boy in the movie? He's an orphan that hears music in his head all the time, like an orchestra playing in his head. He gets on the guitar for the very first time in his life and plays this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSI4_9OhwV8 <<< Soon, he discovers the piano in a church with a little girl playing scales, and the first time ever seeing sheet music in his entire life. The little girl shows him the notes, and a little baby book explaining a few notes. He looks at it for 30 seconds, and he starts writing a score for an orchestra. He is discovered as a musical prodigy and is enrolled in classes at Juilliard. I am assuming yes, because look at an article about this child, "Jay Greenberg" http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/24/...ain657713.shtml <<< Perhaps, maybe it is, to an extent. Do you think that Jay Greenberg has anything in common with August Rush? I just want to know if it is possible for a child to have such extreme talent, like the boy in August Rush. I know I sound silly. I just want to hear some opinions.

I haven't seen the film August Rush but it sounds an extremely implausible story. Jay Greenberg, on the other hand, appears to be a child who empathised with music at a very early age and has had training to focus his musical sensitivity. This particular phrase in the article stood out:

Jay has been told his hearing is many times more sensitive than an average person’s. The sounds of the city need to be shut out manually. But Jay can’t turn off the music in his head. In fact, he told us he often hears more than one new composition at a time.

"Multiple channels is what it’s been termed," says Jay. "That my brain is able to control two or three different musics at the same time "- along with the channel of everyday life."

I've heard things like that being said about savants. I'm not sure what the correct definition of a savant is, but it's my understanding that it's someone with a highly unusual talent in a particular field, whether it's music, art, mathematics, etc. For instance, there's a young man called Stephen Wiltshire who can take one look at a building such as St Peter's Basilica (below), and make an accurate architectural drawing of it from memory. He's even drawn "London from the Air" from memory, in architectural detail, after just one helicopter trip. He has been able to exercise this talent from about 7 years old. I've got one of his books and there have been a few television documentaries about him. Here's a drawing he did, from memory, of St Peter's:

http://www.yangsquare.com/stephen-wiltshir...ects-have-this/


Stephen is autistic, and I gather it's one of the facets of autism (albeit a fairly rare one, I think) to have a talent of this nature. I'm not sure whether all savants are autistic, I don't know enough about it. I've heard it said though that their minds have "multiple channels" and that they can't turn off the sounds in their head, which I gather can be very *busy*, with all the channels competing for attention. In fact I've got a recorded documentary on the phenomenon which includes a musician, I'll have to get it out...

But to come back to the film, the character may have been inspired by Jay Greenberg and others like him, but the film is pure fiction by the sound of it.