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First of all we have to have the attention of the student (any age), then we have to have his or her permission to teach something.

Whether it is hard work or talent he has to give this task, is a composite of what he already possesses in his life.

If he does not have enough or either, we have to start building systems for him to orient and use notation, understand the keyboard, and get his body and mind through the "MAZE" that is reading music.

He can't sight read until he knows the game plan of making sense of it all and how it works from his mind and body as the operator of the system.

The issue of hard work vs working easy in building and development would be to choose easy.
It's a mind set. I think the easy arrives through understanding the systems we are working with as a student.

Why do we keep saying hard work? Work is descriptive enough. Work meaning effort. Effort being just enough effort.

When he gets passion about his music, he pursues it with keen interest and takes himself to the highest level he can approach through his decision to work hard and apply all of his known talents to the pursuit. "Wings!"

Betty

We want more graphs and better colours!

And judging by your musically oriented posts here, there seems to be other talent as well.

"everyone knows that rock beats scissors, but then scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock, Kif we have a cunumdrum" so
Rock=hard work
scissors= talent
paper=luck?? i guess

tJ:
We want more graphs and better colours!

I do indeed have a preference for late-Scriabinesque style Excel worksheets, i.e. highly chromatic ones!

af:
And judging by your musically oriented posts here, there seems to be other talent as well.

Thank you for the kind words, Jason. The efforts to get back into piano-playing again over the past few years were motivated by trying to make the best use of the sprinkling of talent/aptitude that others told me I seemed to have as a child/teenager. If only I had done it sooner... then again, better late than never, eh?

-Michael B.

Inasmuch as intelligence has something to do with this subject, Jensen's '69 article, which I have mentioned here before, remains required reading for most:

http://anantiblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/06/jensen-1969/

While blind hard work sometimes pays off, it also is sometimes a waste of resources or a life.