[jfoutz]

This line comes to mind:

Young Composer: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing a symphony. How should I get started?"

Mozart: "A symphony is a very complex musical form and you are still young. Perhaps you should start with something simpler, like a concerto."

Young Composer: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."

Mozart: "Yes, but I never asked anyone how."

[facepalm]

His father was a famous music teacher and started teaching him at age 4 (and he watched his sisters lessons already at age 3).

[jfoutz]

If you could take 10 4 year olds and start training them in music that way, you won't get 10 Mozarts. I doubt you'll get one. (I'll concede they may all be very good for 8 year olds though) Different people learn different ways.

I guess my point is, for a given training program, you're going to have a wide distribution of effectiveness of graduates.

[lazyant]

While I agree with you (genes and all that) just in case someone doesn't know, someone was set to prove that you can in fact raise a "genius", with success in the case of his daughters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

[kamaal]

Yes,

But if you take 10 mozarts, who don't have a father who is a music teacher, doesn't have a sister whom he can watch getting trained and his own training doesn't start at 4.

I'd doubt if they would do anything in Music. Let alone become some one like mozart.

[thewarrior]

There's a real life case study we can use here.

The Jacksons. Joe Jackson pushed his kids really really hard often to the point of abuse. All of them are good singers now but only one of them became Michael Jackson.

[facepalm]

But is that because MJ was better than the others, or because his marketing played out better? There might be some factors independent of the skill of the individual that end up making a star.

[loso]

It wasn't all marketing. Not even mostly marketing. When the group was still young but in the industry all of the industry execs pushed for Jermaine Jackson to go solo. He considered the cute one by girls and was considered to have just as much talent as Michael. Or at least close to it. While he had a decent solo career it was nothing like when Michael got older and went solo.

Basically Jermaine was heavily marketed when he went solo and even had a bidding war for his services. But it was MJ who was the star and for lack of a better term had the "it" factor.

[cheepin]

Mozart was an early prodigy for sure, but from what I recall, he didn't put out any really good music until his 20s, and didn't write a masterpiece until his 30s.