The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #23351   Message #258945
Posted By: GUEST,Joe "The Missing Link" Lindquist
16-Jul-00 - 10:55 PM
Thread Name: Are Musicians Multi-talented?
Subject: RE: Are Musicians Multi-talented?
Most musicians are multi-talented. Most of them are also right-brained. There are a few exceptions, such as myself, but the clinical psychologist who diagnosed me as such said I should not attempt anything in music. So how did I ever learn piano and organ (both classical)? Languages are a left-brained skill, and I am a whiz at them. Mathematics is a right-brained field (guess who took Greek in college to avoid math??) I guess this explains why I dropped out of COBOL programming school after investing (???) nearly 8 thousand $$$ in a vain attempt to learn what the aforementioned psychologist said was my only viable career hope!! Really reaffirms your faith in psychology, doesn't it?! Most musicians, unfortunately, are not dancers. I myself didn't get into participatory dance until I was in my mid-forties. Even so, there are some dances I am unable to learn, simply because the natural movement skills that enable one to do them are right-brain-controlled. Hambo for instance (check out the link to "It's Saturday Night" in the "Salty Dog Rag" forum). Or, for that matter, Salty Dog Rag. Contra, English, vintage (especially waltz and ragtime foxtrot), and, believe it or not, Argentine tango, all are amenable to a left-brained person. Perhaps more than the side of the brain, however, is the personality type of the individual (cf. PERSONALITY TYPES by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson). But this is a whole new area of discussion - - - too vast to be even surface-scratched in a forum such as this.