[jtheory]

This is one of those learned things that becomes inborn, I think.

I have a few things I'm pretty good at, and I'll pick up & try anything, because it's fun. Most of the music I make is improvised. And I've been picking up & trying any instrument I run across for decades now, so I have snippets of experience in lots of things now.

My wife studied classical piano from an early age, and can sit down and sight-read stuff I haven't got a chance at playing on any instrument. But she never improvises, never tries out other instruments, and thus can't really do the same thing (pick up anything and make music on it).

We both have a (possibly-inborn) talent for music, but we've taken quite different paths, and those years spent quite differently really show, now.

[ChuckMcM]

That is an interesting contrast, and similar to ones I've seen. People who have trained on an instrument such as a piano (or violin in one case) from a young age, who are technically proficient but never stray off the music page. And people who like to play around with the notes and try different things, on anything, even non-instruments like soup cans at one campout I was on.

[jtheory]

Almost anything can be used as an instrument; some easier than others (blowing over the top of a bottle), but just about everything makes noises that can then be organized, modified, etc. :)

You can make surprisingly complicated music just clapping.

I think the crucial difference is just in how we grew up thinking about music.

My wife grew up in a culture where everything was publicly judged, students and performers were rated & ranked, etc.. If you did something and you didn't do it well, you'd better do it in secret.

I wasn't free from those feelings, but it wasn't as emphasized; and as I grew up, I eventually had a good base of things I was known to be good at... which in a way freed me to do other things badly.

And the funny thing about trying lots of new things (and doing them badly) is that practice makes you better rapid competence in new things -- this works in music, but also in anything else in life.

This is what I most want to emphasize whenever anyone talks about people with natural talent for music, for example (which can seem particularly magic to people with little experience of their own).

There are probably some inborn elements involved -- how well your ears work, etc. -- but so much really is learned, and once you're hooked, the amount of "practice" in music and thinking about sound becomes huge.

I'm not a pro performer, and not likely to become one; but it's something I love, so I probably spent 6+ hours a day doing something with music interleaved into it. Not sitting down with an instrument, most of the time, but washing the dishes. Driving the car. Playing with my kids. Walking the dog.

So I can imagine how pervasive it could be for someone really focusing their life on music.

Natural talent, sure; but don't forget the hundreds of thousands of hours some people spend training their minds to the patterns of music.