re: #187 jaunte

Unusual kid:
Seongha typically takes three days to learn and practice a new song

I do not at all mean to belittle that kid’s talent, but:

He’s a jukebox. Believe it or not, it isn’t terribly unusual for budding musicians of that age to get a firm handle on new songs within 2 or 3 days. Technical difficulty can be overcome with practice.

What sets a jukebox kid apart from a true prodigy is not their ability to tackle technical challenges, but rather their capacity to intuitively understand stylistic nuances and incorporate that into their playing. A truly amazing young musician will grasp all of the above, but will spend more time farting around, struggling with making his own music than s/he will spend trying to craft a note-perfect rendition of “Herpty Derp” by Derp Herpleson and the Derpty Doops.

My authority for asserting this comes from having myself been a rather above-average jukebox kid who could eventually figure out how to play nearly anything put in front of him, but whose original compositions all somehow managed to sound like perverse mutations of “La Cucaracha”.