white people are too good at making music, we need affirmative action in orchestras!
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It’s not just about practice and training. I’m a professional classical musician and I can assure you that the number of people who make a career in this field is very small compared to the people who didn’t make it. In college, we all had great equipment, access to the same teachers, and put in hours of work with rare exceptions.
The reality is that some people are just better at it than others despite effort. For me, I was good from the start and music just made sense. I worked extremely hard and I continued my work because I was seeing progress. Some people chip away at it for hours and years and NEVER get better. They pour their lives into it with nothing to show for it.
There are exceptions of course in terms of race. Most orchestras are mainly White with many Asians and very few Blacks. The auditions are blind because we need the best sounding people. No one cares what category they fall in. When you have to play with people, it’s what they bring to the table that matters. There’s nothing worse than playing with someone who can’t play in tune or has terrible rhythm. All it takes is one weak player to make an orchestra suffer, especially a wind player.
I believe it's a mistake for you to assume that all the people who didn't make it tried as hard as you do. Personally I find the very concept insulting. I feel no need to pretend that I tried just as hard at playing sports as the people who are good at it. I feel no need to spare the feelings of those who HAVEN'T worked as hard as I on something by allowing them to claim that my abilities are the result of winning some specious genetic lottery rather than as the result of me just working harder to get good at it than they did.
You can't compare someone who spends all of their free time living and breathing their instrument to someone who simply spends the same amount of time in the practice room or at rehearsal but doesn't give it a second thought outside of that time.
I have never met someone who was better than me at anything that they didn't also clearly try harder at. I'm comfortable admitting that I'm not as good because I didn't work as hard. Crying about "talent" is just a form of sour grapes for those who have decided they don't want to work harder than they already are.
If someone works hard enough to get to the point of comparing a second chair to a first chair in a highly paid professional orchestra, sure small genetic advantages may begin to eclipse level of effort, but when it comes to a college student dropping out of orchestra vs one who sticks with it, that IS a separation in level of effort, and frankly, I'd be curious to see which student spent more time drinking at parties and which spent more time playing their instrument alone in their room while no one was watching.
Apparently you don't drive. Where I live, everyone who wants to take a driving exam has to attend driving lessons, everyone attending the same number and the same kind of lessons. Yet some people pass the driving exam in the first try, and some fail ten times.
There is a huge chasm between "took the same number of lessons" and "worked just as hard at getting better".
Some people put in extra effort. Those who don't dismiss the extra effort as "talent".
No there isn't. There is nothing you can do while taking a lesson other than taking it. One person can't take the same lesson harder than another.