If I was to practice the piano (self-taught) 8 hours a day every day of the week, how soon would become a virtuoso?

Genius isn’t real.

Bear in mind that there is a LOT of active myth making in this area.

This isn’t to detract from the fact that individuals can become top of their field.

But more to point, the OP didn’t say anything about being in the top tier.[/quote]

Genius isn't real to those they dont have it or can't recognize it. You even fail to read the thread accurately - the OP asked if he could become a "virtuoso", which is exactly that, of being in the top tier of skill.

Since you are unable to recognize the role of giftedness in achieving human excellence the one thing we can be sure of is that you don't possess it. You would never be a concert pianist. Or Marconi.

In other words ‘the emperor’s new clothes’.

To be fair it isn’t entirely clear what the OP means, or thinks he means, by this. Hence the widely varying responses.

I guess I’m supposed to be offended by this but I’ve already stated the thing you say I don’t have isn’t a thing.

Musical talent (including piano) is a spectrum, like running. If you are in the top 2% potential, and practice as you say, you could become technically very proficient in 4-5 years. But that is just step 1. Technically perfect pianists are 10 a penny. Pro piano is a whole nother level that few outside the clique recognize. Virtuoso by definition is the best of that group, and the fact that you post on LR means that you don't have what it takes. But fear not! As many a non-talented pianist or guitarist has discovered, you can learn enough to entertain (ie get laid) in 3 months. Well worth it.

The "emperor's new clothes"? How about an IQ of 100 wouldn't understand what an IQ of 140 does? Therefore the higher level of intelligence doesn't exist? History and culture are littered with acknowledged geniuses - to everyone except you. I wonder why that may be ...

The OP asked whether a given programme of daily piano practice would enable him to become a virtuoso. I wonder what he could have said to make it "entirely clear" to you what he meant. But that's ok - virtuosity is obviously not part of your tool-kit. I am a bit worried about the basic reading part, though.

So if you say "genius" doesn't exist you can't be offended at being told you don't have it - you say. It's very fortunate, then, that you aren't offended, because you definitely don't have the thing you say doesn't exist. Actually, I could choose some lower-tier criteria that also seem to be absent - but I suppose they don't exist, either.

You have tried to be too clever with your response to the OP's quite simple question - and only shown that you don't get it, that we are not all born equal with equal capacity; some are more gifted genetically and that is why they have separated themselves from the rest of us mere mortals by their skills and accomplishments. Do you not think that an Olympic athlete is gifted, a top scientist, musician (yes, a virtuoso), writer or painter? You can give every kind of opportunity to those without talent and they will never be able to achieve what only talent can.

I don't argue that talent alone achieves success at the top of any given field; dedication, hard work and opportunity are also required, but the latter won't do it if the giftedness isn't also there. Hence 10,000 hours on the piano will not turn a "sow's ear" into a virtuoso.

Hghhh wrote:

Musical talent (including piano) is a spectrum, like running. If you are in the top 2% potential, and practice as you say, you could become technically very proficient in 4-5 years. But that is just step 1. Technically perfect pianists are 10 a penny. Pro piano is a whole nother level that few outside the clique recognize. Virtuoso by definition is the best of that group, and the fact that you post on LR means that you don't have what it takes. But fear not! As many a non-talented pianist or guitarist has discovered, you can learn enough to entertain (ie get laid) in 3 months. Well worth it.

It was kind of you to set him some more modest goals.

There’s nothing wrong with my reading comprehension. Thread title said ‘virtuoso’ but in the body OP asked about becoming a ‘concert pianist’. I took this to mean becoming a pro who mainly plays classical and I answered on page one.

I actually agree with you this is a highly unlikely outcome and not a good reason to learn but more for reasons of time rather than a lack of talent, which we have no way of determining either way.

I also don’t believe the 10000 hours thing and I don’t believe we are born equal.

I take the rest of the thread to be about the nature of learning a thing and how best to go about it.

muso2 wrote:

There’s nothing wrong with my reading comprehension. Thread title said ‘virtuoso’ but in the body OP asked about becoming a ‘concert pianist’. I took this to mean becoming a pro who mainly plays classical and I answered on page one.

I actually agree with you this is a highly unlikely outcome and not a good reason to learn but more for reasons of time rather than a lack of talent, which we have no way of determining either way.

I also don’t believe the 10000 hours thing and I don’t believe we are born equal.

I take the rest of the thread to be about the nature of learning a thing and how best to go about it.

We are all capable of learning - to the best of our respective abilities; but we don't all have the same ability.

Giftedness - at anything - usually reveals itself in a passion for the thing (and often at an early age), a propensity to work at it more than most, and a rate of progress that is unusual.

Although 10,000 hours is a simplification, excellence at anything and particular a performance skill - as a musician has - would typically require hours of application undertaken over years. The mediocre don't generally put in that amount of work because they all too soon hit a ceiling and find their hard work is not rewarded by progress. For the truly gifted, as they learn there appears to be no ceiling.

I have seen in many areas of life - music, sports, writing, performance - how aptitude plays a crucial part in determining the level of skill that is achieved. But it goes without saying, that none but the dedicated rise to the top of anything.

If the OP dedicates himself to 8 hours of practice each day he will soon find out if he has any talent. Or not. But I suspect if he had any he wouldn't be asking this question in a thread - he would have been playing long ago. Because he loves it. If you don't love it you won't have any chance of reaching the top of a craft.

Ok but 8 hours a day is still way too much for a beginner.

I suspect his question was more in the realm of fantasy than a plan.

muso2 wrote:

Ok but 8 hours a day is still way too much for a beginner.

My guess is that neither of you are physicists and you do not understand the nature of collaboration in science. Sometimes a collaborator serves to act as a foil or sympathetic ear. It doesn’t mean that the collaborator contributed materially to a discovery.

Einstein worked largely in a vacuum for much of his career. His discoveries were so avante-garde that it took many decades after his work before it could even be understood. In understandable terms, here’s some simple accounting for his best work:

1) Ph.D. Thesis - essential ‘proves’ the existence of atoms by providing a calculation of Avogadro’s number. Uses observations of Brownian motion of small particles (i.e. pollen grains or silica spheres) to show that an unfathomably large number of particles strike the particles to account for the motion. (Worthy of a Nobel Prize, Part 1 of Annus Mirablus).

2) Photoelectric Effect - explains earlier observations of the interaction of light of different colors with various metals. Shows that there is a 1:1 interaction between light and current carriers in a metal. Gives credence to the ‘quantum hypothesis’ unwillingly advanced by both Planck and Einstein. (Won a Nobel Prize, Part 2 of Annus Mirablus).

3) Special Relativity I - length contraction and time dilation. No two observers will agree on where and when something happened if at least one is moving relative to the other. Introduces classic thought problems like the Twin Paradox. I could go on for a while but this work has never been appreciated. (Worthy of a Nobel Prize, Part 3 of Annus Mirablus).

4) Special Relativity II - probably Einstein’s most famous work. Often expressed as E = mc^2, but this is an incomplete description. Mass-Energy equivalence is up there with inertia and third law as misunderstood Physics. (Worthy of a Nobel Prize, Part 4 of Annus Mirablus).

There are very few people that would disagree that Einstein is at least worthy of four Nobel prizes at this point in his career. However, three out of the four papers didn’t see much appreciation until much later

5) General Relativity (1905-1915) - Einstein’s life work. He essentially showed how the gravitational fields produces by massive bodies were produced by the effect of massive bodies embedded in the curved space of space-time. Uses the obscure work of a German mathematician named Riemann and works largely in isolation. There is nobody in the world thinking about this problem in a coherent way besides him. Modern take: your GPS doesn’t work without his calculations as satellites in low-earth orbit do not work without his calculations. In one account, he described it as 10 years of fumbling in the dark. (Worthy of a Nobel Prize, one the greatest snubs of Nobel History, up there with Rosalind Franklyn and Jocelyn Bell).

6) Lasers (1917) - In work that is probably too obscure for a short description to a lay audience, Einstein showed that stimulated emission of radiation was an important part of light-matter interaction. In high fluxes, this can lead to an amplification in a suitably designed cavity. Led directly to the development of the LASER. (Worthy of a Nobel Prize, never fully recognized}

7) EPR Paradox (1935) - Probably too hard for most lay people to appreciate or recognize. IMO, one of the hardest papers of the group to appreciate. However, even in his failure, Einstein showed that QM required a radically different way of thought about the link between space-time and sub-atomic interactions. {Definitely worth an additional Nobel, hampered by the ‘Jewish science’ fiends of the nascent third reich.

So I’ve laid out 7 individual Nobel prizes that should have been awarded to Einstein. Lesser luminaries like Bardeen and Curie have won two.

The essential genius of Einstein is that he could have won many more Nobel prizes if he cared about it. However, his reach and touch is all over modern science. For clarity, I have left many other important papers from this discussion. This is why Einstein is regarded as the epitome of Genius and any other comparisons fail utterly. Even if he collaborated with 100 people in this work (more like 5-7), he is the greatest intellect that we have known in Physics.

Genius exists. It is rare, and it can work alone or with a chosen few. 10,000 hours does not begin to describe it and if you just memorize what came before you, you cannot pretend to that throne.

stephen santiagoog wrote:

I am talking about practicing 8 hours a day and not one day off a week. How long would a newbie like me take to become good, very good and ultimately a concert pianist?

Assuming you are 5 to 8 years old, you have a small chance of making it.

I had dinner with world class pianist Garrick Olsson once and he told me that 3 hours of piano a day is plenty.

I had not denied Einstein was a genius. In fact I used him as an example. But thank you for providing more detail.

Piano man wrote:

stephen santiagoog wrote:

I am talking about practicing 8 hours a day and not one day off a week. How long would a newbie like me take to become good, very good and ultimately a concert pianist?

Assuming you are 5 to 8 years old, you have a small chance of making it.

I had dinner with world class pianist Garrick Olsson once and he told me that 3 hours of piano a day is plenty.

If you are born with talent, like he was.

Being a great musician is much more than developing physical skills. Music is a language - and many different styles of music have their own languages - and great musicians have developed an acute understanding of the language they play. That is an intellectual skill of a very high level. It involves listening as much as playing. The gifted can not only play, they "hear" better. The mediocre are relatively poor at both.

muso2 wrote:

I had not denied Einstein was a genius. In fact I used him as an example. But thank you for providing more detail.

Ok, I missed your position reading back through the thread. My fault.

Itzhak Pearlman did a masterclass at Julliard many years ago. The top violinists at the school were ripping through their best solos. One violinist asked Pearlman what it took to get to playing solos with major orchestras and doing recitals and big concert halls. Without hesitation, Pearlman responded "you all are too late." He explained that all the professional soloists have agents and are booking concerto gigs before they graduate from high school. Once you go to college, the best you can hope for is maybe a string quartet or concertmaster. Most everyone else will end up sawing away in a violin section.

llort_vbo wrote:

muso2 wrote:

I had not denied Einstein was a genius. In fact I used him as an example. But thank you for providing more detail.

Ok, I missed your position reading back through the thread. My fault.

You also identified the wrong poster there. That was me. More attention to detail needed.

It's been done. Without the natural gift, I'm sorry to say, your efforts will be in vain.

You could make a pact with the devil, like Dr. FAUSTUS, (Thomas Mann), practice your ass off for 20 years.

But I'm afraid the result would be the same. No virtuosity, no Carnegie hall, and probably no record date. Unless it turns out you are one in a few million. Go figure.