
No Causal Effect of Music Practice on Ability (2014) [pdf] - gwern
https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/correlation/2014-mosing.pdf
======
trevyn
This paper appears to be deliberately misleading.

The "10,000 hours to expert performance" notion originated in Ericsson 1993
([http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.PDF))
, which defines a very specific term, " _deliberate practice_ " \-- "In
contrast to play, deliberate practice is a highly structured activity, the
explicit goal of which is to improve performance. Specific tasks are invented
to overcome weaknesses, and performance is carefully monitored to provide cues
for ways to improve it further. We claim that deliberate practice requires
effort and is not inherently enjoyable." Ericsson adds more detail in the full
paper.

It's not just "are you playing piano for X hours per day".

The paper in this post mentions deliberate practice in its review of the
literature, but then _all of a sudden and without explanation_ reverts to the
more generic term "practice" for all of its contributions, which appears to be
defined as "how many hours did you play your instrument".

Note that "play" and "practice" are _explicitly disambiguated_ in Ericsson.

I have a hard time believing that the authors are unaware of this distinction,
especially considering that they heavily reference Ericsson.

~~~
haberman
Whether intentional or not, I think the "deliberate practice" rebuttal is a
bit of a "no true scotsman" dodge. Anyone who says they practiced a lot can be
interrogated about how methodical their practice was, to see if it counts. The
only way, then, to falsify Ericsson's hypothesis is to spend lot of energy on
highly methodical practice over a long period of time even though you are not
improving very much. Who would spend the time to do that, just to rebut
Ericsson?

Ericsson's original paper says: "In this article we propose a theoretical
framework that explains expert performance in terms of acquired
characteristics resulting from extended deliberate practice and that limits
the role of innate (inherited) characteristics to general levels of activity
and emotionality." They want to claim that the only innate talent that matters
is that you are active and emotional, and not that you have any innate talent
for music. This paper shows that the amount of time spent practicing appears
to have no effect at all on some of these basic musical skills. It shows the
presence of innate musical talent, something Ericsson wants to deny.

Some people really like to believe the 10,000 hour rule. I have no desire to
talk someone out of believing it if they find it motivational. But as a
musician, it's obvious to me that inborn talent is absolutely necessary for
high-level performance. The idea that anybody can be Joshua Bell if they just
put in the time is a wishful fantasy, not reality.

This kind of "blank slatism" is popular because it satisfies our desire for
the world to be fair and just. We want to believe that we can create a
perfectly fair playing field where success comes from effort alone. This is a
noble idea, but the danger is when we discount evidence to the contrary --
evidence that sometimes people really _are_ different, possibly having
different talents or desires. Because then we look for who to blame when
things don't end up the way we thought they should.

~~~
slphil
Deliberate practice and natural talent are not mutually exclusive. I make a
living as a regionally successful chess teacher. I have had many highly
talented students who were not hard workers. I have had many hard working
students who were not naturally very talented. Both turned out to be pretty
good. Sadly for blank slatists, the talent seems to mean more, but "pretty
good" isn't exceptional. I had one student who was a hard working genius who
did deliberate practice and took four or five hours of lessons with me a week.
He won a national championship for first grade.

Practice matters. Especially at the upper level. There are hordes of talented
"strong casuals" out there.

~~~
sireat
Agreed that you need both talent and deliberate practice for chess but you
also need to start early.

For becoming a chess GM you need 3 things: talent, grit(deliberate practice),
starting early(10-12 is okay, 18 is too late these days).

One interesting aspect of starting early AND also persistent grit is being the
youngest sibling in a chess family.

For example Hikaru had a master level older brother and of course there's
Judith. The youngest siblings are ridiculously competitive against older ones.

------
DonHopkins
That's not what Quincy Jones says.

[http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-
conversation....](http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-
conversation.html)

David Marchese: You’re talking about business not music, but, and I mean this
respectfully, don’t some of your thoughts about music fall under the category
of “back in my day”?

Quincy Jones: Musical principles exist, man. Musicians today can’t go all the
way with the music because they haven’t done their homework with the left
brain. Music is emotion and science. You don’t have to practice emotion
because that comes naturally. Technique is different. If you can’t get your
finger between three and four and seven and eight on a piano, you can’t play.
You can only get so far without technique. People limit themselves musically,
man. Do these musicians know tango? Macumba? Yoruba music? Samba? Bossa nova?
Salsa? Cha-cha?

~~~
watertom
You’re wrong Quincy agrees with the article. The emotion part is what the
article addresses. You gotta have that “swing” and that can’t be learned or
taught, it can be enhanced, but you can’t practice into having it. As Quincy
says it comes naturally, but not everyone has it. If you have the emotion part
you can develop the techniques, but no the other way around.

My wife is a very good piano player, but she doesn’t have “it”, she sounds
like a robot playing, it’s painful to hear, but she plays in time, all the
right notes, but it’s just not there.

In drawing it’s most evident, some people can draw and others can’t, no amount
of practice will help me. The emotion side of things kicks in more so with
drawing.

~~~
doktrin
> My wife is a very good piano player, but she doesn’t have “it”

Absurdly subjective. If you can neither qualify nor quantify "it" you
shouldn't start levying it as some standard of quality.

~~~
robotresearcher
Nonsense. The reason we have the concept of ‘it’ and ‘je ne sais qois’ is
because we (many of us) find that a useful concept. Subjective assessment of
art is absolutely allowed without rigorous metrics.

The differences in timing, attack, etc from a good player and a merely
competent player are objectively measurable, but a non expert can hear the
difference and form an option without understanding what they are using to
discriminate.

Edit: fixed French spelling.

~~~
thatcat
Exactly, the English equivalent would be 'ineffable', as in ineffible beauty;
which describes a quality of an aestetic that is beyond words and relates to
how the sum of techniques used together is greater than the individual
techniques employed by themselves in the context of art.

~~~
doktrin
> the English equivalent would be 'ineffable' which describes a quality that
> is beyond words

also known as "inherently subjective"

just because you deem something to be inexpressible doesn't mean it actually
is.

~~~
thatcat
Language has inherent limits, it is an objective subset of subjective concepts
that allows us to communicate. Thinking somthing is beautiful and having
others think similarly doesn't inherently mean that the beauty can be
communicated linguistically. Otherwise, why have music, visual art, etc? If
language was capable of describing all concepts you could just describe these
concepts linguistically and that would be enough to feel the same beauty about
the concept.

------
danieka
As a former professional musician I was initially provoked since the title
clearly does not align with what I experienced when working.

What the study refers to as musical ability is in fact the skill to discern
different pitches and rhythms.

Obviously there is an enormous amount af practice required to master an
instrument. But I still find it hard to “agree” with the paper, I’ve noticed
large differences in how attuned I am to pitch and rhythm depending on how
much I’ve practiced. Hearing pitch, at least for me, is a skill that can be
both trained and lost. Which makes me think that maybe it is not the total
amount of hours practiced that is important but also how recent that practice
was. I can find no mention in the paper of how “fresh” the participants skills
were. Also, there is a huge difference in how you practice, how efficient it
is etc.

To be fair I didn’t fully understand the statistical stuff, but all in all
this fells like a somewhat blunt study especially considering the provocative
title.

Edit: spelling

------
dooglius
The title is quite misleading: the notions "practice" and "ability" here refer
to different things: "practice" is taken to mean practicing the creation of
music with an instrument, while "ability" is taken to discriminate between
auditory aspects of music one is listening to. I would expect significant
causal relationships between practicing the creation of music and ability in
the creation of music, and between practicing audio discrimination and ability
in audio discrimination.

It's rather unfortunate that the title is so poor, as the paper itself is good
aside from that; the study they mention a few times (Schellenberg & Weiss,
2013) found that "more music practice is significantly associated with better
music ability" and I'm glad people are going through the effort of checking
results like these for causation vs mere correlation.

~~~
tremendulo
_> I would expect significant causal relationships between practicing the
creation of music and ability in the creation of music, and between practicing
audio discrimination and ability in audio discrimination._

Yes, and real musicianship is more complicated still since hearing and playing
abilities _co-evolve_ as one cycles round and round a new piece. For example,
notes previously played too quietly can be played louder merely by _hearing
them_ as louder. At least that's the way I experience it. If true it adds a
whole new meaning to 'active listening' since motor activity may be included
in the loop.

------
kd0amg
Before anyone gets too excited about the headline, the "music ability" test
they apply is strictly listening (no playing). It's disappointing that they
don't appear to measure/estimate how much of subjects' practice time was spent
specifically on ear training.

------
jdietrich
Frankly, I'm completely mystified by this paper. It appears to be built on a
circular and self-contradictory logic.

The paper compares hours of music practice to scores in the Swedish Musical
Listening Test (SMLT). It finds no significant correlation, concluding that
there is no causal relationship between musical practice and musical skill.
The SMLT does not directly measure practical musical skills, but is treated by
the authors as a valid proxy measure because it correlates with hours of
musical practice (Ullén et al, 2014).

Practice does not improve musical ability because hours of practice are not
correlated with scores in the SMLT. The SMLT is a valid proxy measure of
musical ability because scores correlate with hours of practice. See the
problem?

Ullén, F., Mosing, M. A., Holm, L., Eriksson, H., & Madison, G. (2014).
Psychometric properties and heritability of a new online test for musicality,
the Swedish Musical Discrimination Test. Personality and Individual
Differences, 63, 87–93. (10.1016/j.paid.2014.01.057)

------
macawfish
I've been playing music since 4 yrs old, and I've become quite a good
musician. I really struggled with rigorous practice routines. I had a teacher
once validate that my active listening to music was just as good practice as
sitting down at the piano. That was a really important affirmation for me,
since a lot of parents and teachers force practicing to a punitive degree, to
the point where its possible to develop shame and negative self image around
"not practicing enough".

Very interesting article!

Here's an analogy: say you get a discount on your health insurance if you
visit a fitness center regularly. Except that going to fitness centers got you
excited. You don't get anything out of them. But you do like biking, going on
long hikes and you do a lot of physical activity in your work. So just because
you don't go to the gym, should you give up on your fitness? Heck no! Lean
into what energizes you to stay healthy.

~~~
hosh
Active listening seems to me to have the sams essential for deliberate
practice. Is is where you put your attention an awareness.

A punitive practice will not force someone's awareness on the practice. Though
someone might be bored and put their attention on the practice.

That has been my experience with music growing up and martial arts later. And
software programming.

------
kartan
"A common operationalization of music ability is sensory discrimination of
auditory musical stimuli of vari- ous types". Music ability is defined as
"rhythm, melody, and pitch _discrimination_ ". So it´s not about being able to
play music, but hearing and classification ability.

So it translatates in non-fancy-wording. Being able to differenciate rhythms
and melodies depends on your genetics and can not be practiced for
improvement. But it says nothing about the effect of practicing on being a
better music performer.

------
iandanforth
This article defines 'musical ability' very very narrowly. In discriminatory
tasks related to rhythm, melody, and pitch there was a strong heritable
component. Keep practicing.

------
jancsika
Who ever made such a claim?

The claim I'm familiar with is that a performer who practices decreases the
probability of a catastrophic mistake in the performance and increases the
probability that their musical ideas will be conveyed clearly during the
performance. So given two performers or roughly equal ability, hire the one
who practices.

------
setgree
Ah it took me a minute to parse out that they were distinguishing general
music ability from proficiency with an instrument -- yes, this is believable,
the weak effects of learning transfer are pretty well-documented in general
education and athletics, which Bryan Caplan has been writing about lately
[http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/02/learning_transf....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2018/02/learning_transf.html).

On the one hand, I think playing in an ensemble is crucial for learning rhythm
discrimination and that there probably would be transfer there. On the other,
perfect pitch is all but unlearnable and that presents a huge, entirely
genetic advantage for some folks on pitch discrimination tasks.

------
abalone
"Here, we examined... 10,500 Swedish twins"

Woah.

TIL about the Swedish Twin Registry: [https://ki.se/en/research/the-swedish-
twin-registry](https://ki.se/en/research/the-swedish-twin-registry)

------
thinkloop
> Music ability was measured using the Swedish Musical Discrimination Test
> (SMDT)

> The SMDT consists of three subtests — pitch, melody, and rhythm
> discrimination

The test is of fundamental primitives - not about the ability to play a tune.
The study doesn't show that practice does not make better music. For example a
deaf person who scores 0 on all the tests, can still visually memorize and
practice timings and strokes to produce nice songs.

------
melq
The paper seems to be talking about deliberate practice of an instrument, but
then measuring what jazz musicians call 'ear training'. When I was preparing
for conservatory auditions, I did quite a bit of ear training, things like
recognizing intervals between notes, cadences/chord progressions, etc after
having them played to you.

Before I started any sort of training/practice regimen, I'm quite sure I could
never identify a tritone or minor third being payed on a piano. After a lot of
deliberate ear training, I certainly could. And I suspect most people could as
well, but not by just sitting there listening to things you don't understand,
but rather by 'deliberate practice' and learning. A major 5th is easily
recognized as the interval between the first notes in a popular star wars
theme, a minor 3rd is the interval between the first two notes in
greensleeves. These sorts of associations were how I taught myself.

This study is baffling...

------
Agathos
> Participants were first asked whether they play an instrument (or actively
> sing). Those who responded positively were questioned about the number of
> years they practiced during four age intervals (ages 0–5 years, 6–11 years,
> 12–17 years, and 18 years until the time of measurement) and how many hours
> a week during each of those intervals they practiced. From these estimates,
> a sum-score estimate of the total hours played during their lifetime was
> calculated, with nonplayers receiving a score of zero.

I'm a lapsed clarinetist. It's been a few years. I wonder if I would have
answered "no" to the first question, and been scored as someone with zero
hours of practice. Yet I have a couple of thousand lifetime hours of practice.

(But no, most of that practice time did not really drill the skills measured
by the SMDT.)

------
EtDybNuvCu
And yet, any professional musician will claim that practice is an essential
part of the craft, required for learning difficult sections and tightening up
loose licks. I wonder why these two viewpoints come to such opposite
conclusions.

~~~
haberman
> And yet, any professional musician will claim that practice is an essential
> part of the craft, required for learning difficult sections and tightening
> up loose licks.

It absolutely is. Practice is necessary but not sufficient for high-level
musical performance. The study talks about musical ability in terms of rhythm,
melody, and pitch discrimination -- mental skills around music -- and finds
that these are not changed with practice. These two statements are not in
conflict.

~~~
mannykannot
But if practice is necessary for high-level musical performance, then that
implies it has a causal effect on it. This paradox seems to be resolved by
noting that where the paper uses 'music ability' it means scoring well in
certain traits (rhythm, melody, and pitch discrimination), not being able to
perform well.

~~~
haberman
> This paradox seems to be resolved by noting that the paper uses 'music
> ability' it means scoring well in certain traits (rhythm, melody, and pitch
> discrimination), not being able to perform well.

Exactly. I think the paper is trying to establish that there is some kind of
inborn talent that is not affected by practice, even if other things (like
performing ability) are.

------
cortic
? "music ability" eq "rhythm, melody, and pitch discrimination" (I'll be
honest this bothered me that much i didn't read very much further)

Did they design a test specifically to make them feel special? rhythm is
subjective within music (think jazz). A 'good' melody is only subjectively
different from a bad one. Maybe pitch discrimination could be genetic; partial
deafness.

They may not be technically wrong, but their definition of _practice_ and
_perfect_ seem twisted to click bait.

------
gtani
I also think this is flawed. Wind and orchestral string players (violin, cello
etc) must develop a fine ear for pitch/intonation, pianists usually aren't
given any choice as to tuning/voicing/regulation of the instruments they have
to perform on and I think over time, many lose sensitivity to non Pythagorean
intervals and ET deviations from just intonation.

So everybody's lumped together, those that play one instrument vs those than
are proficient on 3 or more

------
stanfordkid
Take something really complex, dumb it down to 3 variables, draw
conclusions... profit?

Is the difference between Stevie Ray Vaughn and Jimi Hendrix measurable by
"rhythm, melody, pitch discrimination" and whatever methodology they used to
quantify these variables?

It's like measuring computer scientists ability by how quickly they can
implement binary search.

EDIT: it is interesting that musical practice doesn't change those abilities.
But I think the title of the article is misleading and grasping.

------
bobthechef
Silly title.

One the one hand, you have skill, on the other ability. Ability is the
potential you have to become good at something, skill is actualized ability.
So while I may not be able to e.g. play the piano now (no skill), given enough
practice, I can actualize my potential into skill. Potential may place a bound
on skill, but the only way to convert potential into skill is through
practice.

------
schuetze
Psych Science, while published by a somewhat reputable source (the APA has had
some questionable positions on torture), is not considered a highly rigorous
journal. It prioritizes “sexy” findings that are more likely to not replicate.
Within the psych community, these kind of findings are taken with a grain of
salt.

------
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
This subject always seems to get everyone in a twist. That's because there are
at least two different things being discussed: necessary vs. sufficient.

The Gladwell version of 10,000 hours was quite clearly a 'necessary'
interpretation of deliberate practice. You look at success vs. amount
practiced and see that those who practice more tend to be more successful, at
least to a point. Fairly simple idea, wrapped up in a neat pop-sci quip.

The 'sufficient' argument is a radically different one that suggests that
ultimate ability isn't that different between individuals. Immediately, this
seems strongly at odds with other observed intellectual metrics such as IQ
which is very highly heritable (h = 0.7 to 0.8) and does not suffer from many
of the data quality issues that other metrics do.

A much better title for this paper would end with 'ultimate ability' or
'potential' or something, because practice is obviously necessary. There's
just a lot of people talking past each other here, and several that clearly
didn't read even the introduction to the paper which discusses this
difference.

------
iovrthoughtthis
What if simply believing that one can't learn these things prevents them being
learned (by that person)?

------
ianamartin
This is a really badly designed study. I started playing violin when I was 4
and started performing professionally when I was 7, and continued to do so for
20 years.

Learning to play an instrument or sing is not the same as studying pitch
differentiation or rhythm. There are a surprising number of successful
musicians who are bad at these things. But the method laid out here is utterly
meaningless. You might assume that practicing the violin would have some
affect on these things, but it doesn't necessarily. Many people simply learn
these things by wrote for specific pieces of music from their guidance in
private lessons and teachers.

You might also assume that someone who practices a lot and got a degree is
also good at Music Theory or Music History, but that's also false. There are
tons of professional classical musicians with graduate and Doctorate degrees
who are bad at all the things measured in this study as well as history and
theory.

I'm really shocked that the authors couldn't figure out that they were
measuring two completely different things and calling them the same thing. It
almost seems intentional for the sake of publishing a controversial result.

People absolutely get better at these specific tasks when they practice _these
specific tasks_. Every music curriculum in world specifically requires classes
in these exact tasks, although the bar for minimal competence is extremely
low.

I run a small side business tutoring people who are already professional
classical musicians who want to get into a DMA program. They have to
demonstrate competency at these tasks, as well as some basic knowledge of
Theory and History. They can't; even though they are top-level performers on
their instrument and practice hours every day.

I offer a 12-week crash course that covers these types of tasks and as well as
the knowledge component, and people usually find me because they've already
applied to a DMA program and been rejected for failing these prerequisites. I
know for a fact that they get better with deliberate practice because after
working with a couple of dozen clients, every single one of them gets in on
the second try.

Not to mention the fact that every single day, there are students in Music
degrees who start off really sucking at these specific measures who get enough
better at them to pass the class at the end of the semester, through very
specifically designed exercises that target these abilities.

This whole study is an infuriating waste of time and money, and it's an
example of some really bad science that's floating around there in the world I
really have a hard time believing this was accepted anywhere for publication.

------
bitL
Practice makes permanent, right?

------
kebman
I've never practised guitar a day in my life, yet I'm most likely better than
you at it. ;)

~~~
doktrin
my core takeaway from HN these days is that life is but a meaningless
expression of conscious carbon, quick to life and quick to death, with the
only constant being endless futility.

------
Tomminn
This seems absurd.

------
logicallee
what's with these obviously false journal titles? "Food is a luxury: caloric
intake not necessary for survival." yeah, sure.

~~~
coldtea
Perhaps you should read the paper to find how the title is not false?

~~~
logicallee
But the title still obviously is false. Obviously practice increases your
musical ability.

maybe if you read my paper you would see how you don't need any caloric intake
to survive. (If I redefine all the words I just used, in the body of my
paper.) Hence my "why the obviously false titles."

~~~
coldtea
> _But the title still obviously is false. Obviously practice increases your
> musical ability._

There's nothing "obvious", unless you can counter both the results and the
explanations given in the study. And they haven't redefined anything.

------
lawn
Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice make
perfect (there is no such thing).

~~~
dkersten
Not perfect practice, but deliberate practice. For example, I practice sleight
of hand (for card magic and cardistry). If I just practice, then whatever bad
habits and mistakes I make, well I make them permanent. If, however, I, for
example, video my practice sessions, watch them back and correct the mistakes
I make, then I get better and my technique gets better. The point is to find
out where you go wrong and correct for it.

