Our Prowess as Artists

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I got praise frm a teacher for some artwork I did after just 4 months of drawing and sketching...I love that. It shows just how specialized we all are at what we like...for insta,ce I play bass as good as a 3 year player after just over 1 1/4 years...realy makes you glad to be an aspergian. I have also gotten much praise for my lyrics.

Does anyone else here have an extremely high amount of talent?

My mother used to like to tell a story about me: when I was three years old my grandfather bought a piano. The day they brought it in, I ran right up to it and played every note. Then I played the ABC song perfectly. That was the first time I ever touched a piano. I don't play piano now because taking lessons and practicing in front of my brother were excruciatingly embarrassing for me.

I seem to have talent at things that don't involve working with other people.

Same here. I started playing chess, and within a year I was playing at the level of people who had been playing for 5 years. And this is only one example, it happens with just about everything that doesn't involve socializing.

SIGH! I am an exception to the Aspie rule. I have no talent at anything, except being good at reading, but there is no money in that. And no, proof reading won't do it for me. I had a job once that included some of that. It was extremely boring, was hard on my eyes, and it made me sleepy. I also did a job through a relative once briefly, clipping articles from magazines for her boss. The topic I was searching for was extremely boring to me, and I couldn't stand to do it for long because of that.

I am not good at creative writing, so that side of it is out, too.

I do like music, but have no talent with any instrument, and have a voice like a frog. I also have trouble remembering the words to songs, and the complete tunes. Because of my poor memory with tunes, I can't even play the Kazoo well. Although I did have a cheap one once, and it was fun. I also had an alto range melodica once just for fun, until a relative stole it. This even though I can't read music, and don't know the keyboard. You can still mess around with an instrument, though, even if you are hopeless with it.

I just wish I was good at something. I did have some interest in gardening years ago, but my knees and back are bad now, and I don't have any southern exposure on my trailer lot. The south side belongs to the next door trailer. The north side yard is extra wide for some reason, so some is mine and some goes to the other neighbors on that side, except that trailer had to be moved recently. Some new people had moved in, and instead of using gas heat, which it was set up to take, they found an old oil furnace, and tank in there. They made the mistake of purchasing a whole tank of oil without having the old tank checked out first. It leaked out all of the oil, contaminating that lot, and wasting all that money spent on the oil. The trailer had to be moved to a vacant lot elsewhere in the park, so that a hazmat team could come in and clean up the site.

Even with my health problems and sun issues I may add some flowers and small shrubs to my lot this year. I don't want to add food crops, though as everyone lets their cats roam free around here and the whole neighborhood is their litter box. I am not about to eat stuff that has been watered by cats! On the plus side, they do keep the rodent, snake, frog, and toad, population down some. There are also rabbits, squirrels, chipmonks, skunks, and lots of different kinds of birds around here. I rarely see the chipmonks, but often here them "chipping."

Oh, how I wish I had talent at something!

I can probably draw and write better than the average person, but I still don't feel like a master at either craft. Laypeople usually love my creations whereas trained professionals are much less impressed and frequently advise me to "learn the basics". Making this worse is that drawing and writing are the areas I'm most skilled at, which essentially means that I fail at my few talents.

questor, you never fail to depress me haha. I'm sure you have talent at something, you just need to find coping methods that let you get past your views saying that you can't do something. As far as roaming cats, I'm sure their feces would help your plants grow faster.

The_Postmaster, I too am very good at chess and strategy games in general. Guess we can both just think ahead of others so much more, seems to be the trick.

Lucywlf, I was pretty much the same with bass guitar and lyrics writing. Having musical talent is nice.

BrandonSP, I find most "art experts" are douchey, know-it-all types that condemn anything that can't be pigeonholed down to an art movement. Bill Watterson, writer of Calvin and Hobbes, has a comic I think you should see: http://accidental-historian.typepad.com ... 970b-800wi

Independent artists like ourselves tend to be the best because of how we mix styles and implant our own ideas.

In addition to this topic headline though, I propose a question...do you prefer independent artists or famous artists?

I'm only musically talented, I'm afraid. I picked up bass quickly back in the day, but I only progressed up to a certain point. I'd have loved to play with metal/grunge bands when I was younger, but I really only learned so I could play in jazz bands over the summer.

I seem to pick up musical instruments faster than a lot of people. I've been teaching myself solo handbells over the last two years, and I might just be starting to get good at it!

Nice! I am the opposite with bass...I can do heavy metal and grunge well, but jazz takes extra effort.

Never heard of handbells...what genre are those used in?

I might have developed a talent for something when I was younger, but never really received any encouragement or recognition for anything I did decently. I picked up photography many years ago, & some of my shots are ok, others not so much....even after 40 years at it. Guess my answer is that I am not all that talented at anything creative.

IDK, depending on how much I put into it, I can feel AWESOME about things I create, but a lot of time I feel lazy and lacking.

Sorry in advance for the long post!

Agreed. I kept it up through a year of college when I had to finally painfully admit I just wasn't cut out for it. I spent my college years in the Mississippi Delta. I'm sorry to say it, but the jazzers I had to hang out with take it WAAAAY too seriously. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with taking any kind of music seriously; after all, I spent the better part of my life studying classical music. But I didn't even take classical THAT seriously. The crowd I ran with--teachers and students alike--drained all the enjoyment out of it, and I came really close to dropping out. What kept me going my last 3 semesters of school was knowing all I had to do was apply for the master's program I wanted and I could finally get back to really enjoying music again. I was in and out of jazz ensembles throughout college after I gave up bass, but I was playing keys then. I was more natural reading changes, comping, and even soloing on piano than I ever was on bass. Piano has since been where more of my time has been spent even though all my education and experience has been clarinet. I don't regret that one bit. I rarely play bass now. I'll dust off my G&L Tribute L2500 if I'm recording a demo or backing track. But the best part is I can do it just for fun if I want to and I have a GREAT bass for it.


Are you serious? Never heard of English handbells??? wow!! !

They're pretty much what the name sounds like. Modern English handbells will have a stiff, plastic loop handle, a bell casting, and a fixed clapper that only swings in one direction.

The trouble with handbell music--since you asked about genre--is handbell music is kinda it's own genre. There's not much music written for it, so arrangers end up covering music that's already been written for choirs or other instruments. You typically hear bells rung in bell choirs. But my church doesn't have an active bell choir at the moment. What I do is organize the bells in such a way that they can be rung one-at-a-time by a single person. Since I'm a keyboard player, it's more practical for me to organize them like the keys of a piano. There are some specialized techniques you can learn to play quickly, the main one called "weaving." And because of how infrequently people write new music for bells, the arrangements that are out there are mostly lame.

This is what I do:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snp5xZSc8vQ[/youtube]

Campanile, or ultimate handbell awesomeness:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRQ_MbzSBqc[/youtube]

I want to figure out a way to do THIS on bells:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y771-AxrFA[/youtube]

There really is no set genre. If we wanted to, my partner and I could work up instrumental Metallica and G'n'R covers. What you hear most often when people do that sort of thing, it's usually graded high-school level literature that doesn't attempt to work around the physical limitations of the instruments. The result is just really bad cheese.

Here's one of the more traditional ensembles out there. They do a good mix of choir and small ensemble playing. They rank pretty low on my lameness factor, but they still stick to a pretty rigid, traditional approach. But I do have to give them some big points on pushing the limits of traditional music-making on bells.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh-iuZPvefs&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

I have very little artistic or musical ability. I just don't have the imagination for it. My strengths are in logic and electronic/mechanical design. If you want something made that works, I'm your man. If you want it to look good, ask someone else...

I can master things faster than many, but I don't think it has as much to do with talent as it does obsession and attention to detail others miss.

I don't know if this is a talent or what not, but I get into moods when I cant stop thinking about crap like the nature of existence or what not. I should write some of it down, but I don't like writing (been told I'm good at it though).

AngelRho, I tried sitting through those videos but the large steel tone hurts my ears..it does seem like it takes a lot of talent to do that though. And a lot of money to buy a full set...how many keys of range do you get from a set?

To give you an idea here's a kinda mediocre (for me at least) video of my bass playing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq5eqIYT ... e=youtu.be

And a DeviantArt account with some sketches: http://metamorphosized72.deviantart.com/
Note: I do not have a scanner, so some details were lost, especially on the volcano landscapes picture.

Philosophical thoughts are usually ignored by the masses, when really in doses they can rejuvenate previously stale thought patterns.

Regarding razorEddie, I imagine as a subgroup we will either be extremely emotional and artistic or extremely unemotional and analytical/engineers. Go figure.

when I bring my organizational skills to a project, my creations and creativity tends to blow people away but I don't think I have it naturally. It is a survival mechenism that has learned to dwell on high alert in case I screw up and make a fool of myself, and somehow it's allowed me to do very well in the graphic arts because of it.