Small hands

I'm never going to think of smaller hands and fingers as a barrier to guitar greatness ever again.

I have seen this young man before manX and his talent is extraordinary and far beyond the norm most of us are capable of. He is one of those individuals who make for a good case study on what makes us different and why some have the "secret sauce".

To illustrate an example we can both relate to, motorcycle racing, there have been a handful of riders who simply excel, consistently, in a sport filled with riders of such talent that no ordinary rider of motorcycles, even club racers, can truly grasp what these people are capable of on a machine. And yet there are those, currently it's Marquis, who walk on a higher plane than the others.

I believe this boy to be one of those.

Unquestionably, he's a prodigy.

Not a 'reality', talent, breakfast or talk show watcher, I wasn't aware of him until a day or so ago William MG.

Not that I'd even try to understand [u]how[/u] it works, I don't think anyone can or does other than [u]it just is[/u]. The puzzling aspect if you look at how he was playing even just a year in at just eight years of age, is [u]how[/u] he could play like that without comprehensive theoretical schooling and technical knowledge of what he was doing, let alone without [u]many[/u] years to assimilate it and hone those skills?

OK he's ten now, but even [u]if[/u] he being formally taught from seven years of age when apparently he first picked up a guitar, a year on at eight years of age how he could comprehend the theory let alone maintain the concentration, and importantly understand, and assimilate it -at seven remember, when ordinarily it would take a well above average intelligence highly motivated late adolescent or adult with some degree of musical aptitude several years to accomplish the level of conjunctive knowledge, motor skill and understanding of how it all pieces together musically to perform as he did and does. It'd make rational sense if he was fourteen or fifteen having been taught guitar since he was four or five...but "what the?".

For sure some individuals can certainly have an exceptionally high degree of natural aptitude at a thing which makes them exceptional [u]as they learn and develop over time[/u] as in your anaolgy, e.g. Rossi on a motorcycle, Hartmann in a Bf 109, but that's definitely different from this which one might equate with the same freakish mysterious inate ability witnessed of Amira Willighagen aged nine.

It's a shame we didn't live closer manX, we would have such interesting conversations.

I see your point with the illustration of this young lady. There is a "maturity" to these two that truly makes them outliers.

Related.

If you don't already; spend some time watching Rick Beato's content on YouTube. Lot's of great stuff but in a particular early video is Rick's amazing son Dylan and his ability to discern complex pitches, notes and chords. It's four years old. In a later video, Rick explains that the earlier you can recognize notes, the more likely you are to have perfect pitch. The older you get, no matter how hard you try, you'll never have perfect pitch but you can get really good at it.

I think to this thread, it's these amzing kids not really have an impedement to learning. By the time I picked up guitar, I was in my teens with nearly no previous musical training so there was never going to be a Jeff that was going to have these kinds of superpowers. At best, I good, solid ear for stuff.