Musicality, learned or innate? | Golden Skate

Musicality, learned or innate?

moonvine

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Just what the title says....can one learn musicality? I guess someone who is naturally gifted in that area, but can a skater who lacks musicality improve that enough to become competitive? Or is musicality not needed if one can land multiple quads (or triple axels in the case of the women)?
 
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I think that the type of moving to music that we see in competitive figure skating can be taught and learned. All figure skaters are naturally graceful. (That's why they are not hockey players. :) ). Working with a good choreographer, it does not seem to be beyond their capacity to learn to match movement to musical phrasing, etc.

On the other hand, there is a limit to how musical the set-up for a a quad Lutz can be. I would say that there is only a handful of skaters, like John Curry, whose sense of the music carries all.
 
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Joined
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I think that the type of moving to music that we see in competitive figure skating can be taught and learned. All skaters are naturally graceful. (That's why they are not hockey players. :) ). Working with a good choreographer, it does not seem to be beyond their capacity to learn to match movement to musical phrasing, etc.

On the other hand, there is a limit to how musical the set-up for a a quad Lutz can be.

I agree that timing and everything can be taught. But connection and artistic emotion also improve through age and critique. Being more naturally musical will give you a head start (and being tone deaf will be a disadvantage), but if you are capable of learning at a good pace and are invested, that's not a real issue, IMO.

Yes, true. It's why people can complain as much about long setups as they want, but at least lutzes can be used dramatically like that.
 

4everchan

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everything, including musicality, can be taught/learned.

Some kids have a better sense for it, but to reach a high level, they must work just as much as the others... So musical talent may give some people a boost early on but the cream of the cream of musical skaters are mostly those who worked the hardest at it.
 

VenusHalley

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everything, including musicality, can be taught/learned.

Some kids have a better sense for it, but to reach a high level, they must work just as much as the others... So musical talent may give some people a boost early on but the cream of the cream of musical skaters are mostly those who worked the hardest at it.

I guess you can sometimes see if somebody is more musical than others when they mess up. For example Carolina Kostner can sort of catch up with the music, whilst somebody who is just trained hard will try to do just do the movements, no matter if they do not match the music anymore and will not be able to improvise at much and will depend on good choreography and memorizing the movements.
 

el henry

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As was said earlier, it depends on the interpretation of musicality. Can anyone learn to match movement to music? If you’re an elite skater, probably. I would hope so :)

Do you have the gift to make it look natural, rather than oh, the beat is here, let me tap my skate here?

The skaters that I follow now — Jason, Deniss, Donovan, Andrew T. — demonstrated this gift in juniors. They make it, for me, look seamless and natural. So I would argue that for skaters such as these, that level of musicality is a gift and not necessarily learned.

Although of course it may be improved and refined. ;)
 
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The skaters that I follow now — Jason, Deniss, Donovan, Andrew T. — demonstrated this gift in juniors. They make it, for me, look seamless and natural.

Moment quality can indeed be learned. There's a reason why there's a mirror in a dance class.
 

CrazyKittenLady

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Musicality can certainly be trained. Still, some skaters do seem to have a natural aptitude for it, and with the right packaging, this can make the difference between a good program and a great one.

Or is musicality not needed if one can land multiple quads (or triple axels in the case of the women)?

IMO, tech content (at least in the current scoring system) will always trump musicality/composition/performance. Some skaters come to mind with amazing technical skill but maybe still needing a little more polishing in the performance compartment, who will beat their more artistic opponents 9 out of 10 times. Then again, figure skating is an olympic sport, not a ballet.
 

4everchan

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Clearly you never saw all the lessons I took and hours I practiced...trying to learn the two step.:rofl:

what is important to know here is that it does take a competent teacher who can show you the way to success by going one step at the time, pun intended or not....

If two step was too hard for you, even with all the hours, it wouldn't be possible... you don't learn a quad before a waltz jump... sort of thing.

There is another that is crucial : practice... it doesn't matter how much you practice... if you repeat over and over your mistakes you are just learning to do things wrong : change in practicing is essential... notice what you do well, focus on learning what you don't do well.. piece it together.

People say Practice makes Perfect... others say.. nope... PERFECT Practice makes Perfect
 

Ic3Rabbit

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From a dance or choreography point of view though, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.
AKA you can try to make the skater more musical and improve them but many times, it won't work if it isn't somewhat natural.
 
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I don't think musicality and interpretation are the same, but that's me.

As was said earlier, it depends on the interpretation of musicality.

That has always been my problem in discussions of this type. I don't really know what "musicality" means. The dictionary says

musicality: (1) musical talent or sensitivity.

(2) the quality of having a pleasant sound; melodiousness.

That's what I thought it meant, but I do not feel any the wiser for having looked it up.

To me, "musicality" is what the Beatles had. Kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what was great about "I wanna hold your hand!" -- it just was. :yes:
 
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Joined
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From a dance or choreography point of view though, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

AKA you can try to make the skater more musical and improve them but many times, it won't work if it isn't somewhat natural.

True, true. But to me the most "musical" performances in figure skating are the ones in which the music itself overwhelms our senses and emotions, taking the skater along for the ride.

Shen and Zhao were not regarded as outstanding in interpretation nor as accomplished dancers (at least they were not in the first half of their career). And yet ... 6.0! 6.0!

(Who cares if their unison is a little off on the side-by-side spin or if they are too far apart at times?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qqHEd0Bq9o&t=3m39s
 
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hanyuufan5

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Both, I think.

To paraphrase and combine Ic3Rabbit and LindaTNo1's sentiments, good choreography won't make someone severely naturally lacking in musicality into the next Yuzuru Hanyu.

However, Yuzu does hours and hours of image training late at night, sometimes noisily enough to get on his mama's nerves. :laugh: Even skaters with incredible natural gifts for musicality still need to practice refining it.
 

TallyT

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Most people can I think learn it (some simply can't get the hang of music no matter what but they're as likely to take up figure skating as I am portrait painting), but no one can develop the inherent gift of brilliance if it's not inborn. OTOH, those with the inborn gift - as in any musical field - need to train and work at it to bring it to the full.
 
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