Talent Is Alignment

Summary

2025-10-03 Talent is Alignment September 20th, 2025 marks exactly one year since I bought Roland’s FPX-30, 88-keys full sized digital piano. Being in my 4th decade of life I never taught myself any instrument, even though I own and dabble with many. In fact, while I’m unable to remember sounds or hear them in my head, it seems I have a rather good understanding what “sounds nice” that allows me to ad-hoc compose music. Feel free to listen (and judge) today’s morning jam session - a daily recording that I often make for my family on a durable recorder, as part of my “legacy”. When I share recordings with family and friends I often hear that I’m talented and people are surprised that I only play for a year. I have much worse opinion about myself, but take the compliments with gratitude. Here I’ll share the secret with all of you. The open secret that I tell to everyone who asks: I play piano 1-3 hours per day. As of today that’s probably ~1000-1500 hours. That explains everything right? Diving deeper Sure, explanation is time, but on the other side I feel like I’m seriously crippled in the music department: I cannot name the notes that I hear. I cannot humm the music that I composed and can play with eyes closed when at the piano. I have plenty of trackers, synthesizers etc., but struggle to create 2 minutes worth of music, whereas it’s not a problem to me to have 5 minutes ad-hoc composition on piano. I’m touched heavily by evaluation so I often mistake notes when I press record button and, finally, I tend to stick to minimalism repeating same chord progression over and over. In other words: I don’t feel I’m good not even to have “talent”, yet my audience thinks otherwise and praises my talent. What is a talent anyway? This made me think - what is a talent anyway? I often been called talented in many areas. Sure, maybe I am. I don’t feel so, but I’m not going to refute based on that. Yes, I know many weird software languages, yes, I spent a lot of time doing sysadmin...