My favorite movie is Amadeus.

The movie is about one of the great composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

It won best picture in 1985 plus many other awards. It wasn’t until when I was teenager in the 90’s was the first time I saw it. What an awesome movie.

Mozart is considered one of histories great composers next to Bach and Handel.

After studying many musical geniuses I noticed certain patterns.

Here is a list of who I think are musical geniuses.

1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
2. Johann Sebastian Bach
3. Michael Jackson
4. Stevie wonder
5. Frank Zappa
6. Steve Vai
7. Victor Wooten
8. Jaco Pastorius
9. Benny Goodman
10. Charlie Parker
11. John Coltrane
12. Maynard Ferguson
13. John Williams
14. Jerry Goldsmith
15. Danny Elfman
16. Hans Zimmer

I might create a stir by saying this but I don’t believe in so called God given talent. Only the spiritual gifts described in the book of Corinthians.

As a kid growing up everybody complimented me saying, “You are so talented, God has blessed you with those talents. “I would just say thanks and later would contemplate how hard and long I would practice to get achieve my goals. Was it God or me?

I believe that God put me in the right place and the right time that fueled my desire to practice and learn as much as I could in order to achieve the skills that I have today. Was I blessed with God given talent? Absolutely not. I was blessed with God given DESIRES! This led me to dedicate many years to hone my craft.

After studying these musical geniuses one pattern I found that every genius had was desire and concentration, this huge addiction for their craft, dedicating long hours to perfect their skills.

Desire is obvious, but that’s just the beginning. Here are my steps to being a musical genius.

Musical Geniuses:

1. Learn forever: Geniuses are always learning something new they never stop trying to improve.
2. Practice forever: Geniuses love to dedicate time to grow their skills
3. Perform forever: Musical geniuses seemed to be kind of show offs they love to share their gifts. I guess it’s kind of an ego trip.
4. Review forever: Even geniuses make mistakes, they are always reviewing their work and correcting their mistakes. Geniuses are perfectionists.
5. Create forever: Music Geniuses are always composing and creating new musical ideas. They love being unique and different.
6. Evolve forever: Music geniuses seem to be always changing their music. I can’t speak for everyone but they are the ones who create the musical trends and new ideas. If Mozart were alive today it’s almost certain that his music would not be the same today.
7. Live it forever: Musical geniuses, eat, sleep, and breathe music. That’s all they think about, they won’t and refuse to do anything else but music. I know many gifted musicians here in LA that are broke because they refuse to take a day job to pay their bills. The thought of working a day job at Jack in the Box makes them wanna vomit.
8. Desire this forever: Musical geniuses are addicted to music, it’s like drugs, they can’t put it down. Take them away from music and there lives will be miserable. Music is in the their blood and it will be there the rest of their lives.

Those are the 8 Addictions of musical geniuses.

I may have missed some components feel free to add any in the comments section below.

Over the last 15 years I have taught thousands of students, young and adult. Very few were really good and most were average to terrible. The terrible ones would wanna make you quit music forever because of their terrible playing. Haha!

There are many patterns to sucking, and to being really good. Here they are:

To suck:

1. Learn some
2. Practice none

To be ok:

1. Learn some
2. Practice some

To be average:

1. Learn some
2. Practice some
3. Perform some

To be good:

1. Learn a lot
2. Practice a lot
3. Perform a lot

If any these sound like your routine, now you know why you play the way you play. We have to train daily like athletes. We are musical athletes for the one true God. To be a musical genius follow the 8 steps to musical genius.