DailyDirt: Incredible Skills

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

They say that to master a particular skill or discipline takes about 10,000 hours of practice. Talent bred in the bone plays a role as well, whether it's physical build or one of those strange genetic quirks like absolute pitch, and there's a long list of other factors that shape a person's abilities. But there's one distinct commonality: when a person is truly great at something, we love to watch them do it (even if their talent occasionally makes us burn with jealousy, too). Here are a few links about people who can do incredible things:

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Filed Under: axl rose, fencing, ivy league, kwasi enin, mariah carey, prince, singing, skill, talent, yale


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  • identicon
    Rich Kulawiec, 27 May 2014 @ 5:52pm

    Notably missing from that list of vocalists

    Annie Haslam (of Renaissance) who not only STILL has incredible range, but -- unlike Mariah Carey, for example -- knows what to do with it.

    And the late Minnie Riperton (of Rotary Connection and others) also had an amazing range; unfortunately she never got the chance to fully explore that talent.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      JoeCool (profile), 27 May 2014 @ 7:40pm

      Re: Notably missing from that list of vocalists

      Where the hell is Brad Delp - perhaps the greastest male rock voice EVER??

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 28 May 2014 @ 5:44am

      Re: Notably missing from that list of vocalists

      Pretty silly that Joni Mitchell isn't included, during her early career she was known for having an unusually wide vocal range.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 May 2014 @ 9:20pm

    surprising

    I wouldn't have thought that David Bowie's range was wider than Robert Plant's or Freddie Mercury's.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Mike Masnick (profile), 28 May 2014 @ 5:10am

    10000 hours.

    Slightly off-topic, but the 10000 hours thing is greatly exaggered. The "they" in "they say" is simply Malcolm Gladwell, who misinterpreted a very narrowly focused study on violin players (which not only had a small sample size, but also had tremendous variability, showing both that some people needed many fewer hours and some people had 10,000 hours to no real greatness).

    There was a great debunking of it here: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2013/09/david_epstein_o.html

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    FauxReal (profile), 28 May 2014 @ 6:18pm

    The list has been amended to include other singers. Mike Patton comes out on top. Please ignore the hyperbolic title of greatest singer of all time as this is just a ranking of vocal ranges. It was taken from released recordings. Some of these singers may have larger ranges and there are likely really bad singers that have great vocal ranges that we will never know about. Still no Minnie Riperton.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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