Prodigy? That is relative, but I did start lessons 2 months short of age 5. However, the story of what got me into lessons is telling.

My cousin John, 10 years older and now sadly deceased (I miss you very much big cousin) was a ragtime piano fanatic. When he was nearing 15, and I was nearing 5, he was practicing on their old upright and I was in the room watching. He was my hero and I watched everything he did. For some reason, 57 years later, I remember that he was playing Hard Hearted Hanna. When he finished, he went up to his room. I sat down at the piano and started to play what he was playing. My mother and aunt came to the room and I heard my mother ask "Didn't John just go upstairs? Who is playing?" And my aunt said "well, there's only 4 of us here..." He came running downstairs and asked me "How did you learn how to do that?", to which I replied "Watching you." And I will never forget the look he got on his face when he said "You learned how to play piano by WATCHING me? Aunt Mil, get him into lessons RIGHT NOW!"

And I started lessons 2 weeks later.

I can still hear something (nothing as complicated as Dream Theater) and walk to the piano and play a close approximation of it. It's called "ear", and yes, not everybody has it. But at some point, people need to learn how to recognize. It really isn't any more difficult than your ability to know a song by hearing the intro to it IF you have any playing skills at all.

This is a great example of why I laughingly tell people that Real Band has ruined me for playing. I can't play parts better than the software, so I leave the computer generated parts in. However, I CAN play. The extension of that is people who have NO playing skills at all using Real Band to create music. They have to have SOME compositional skills and a rudimentary knowledge to create chord progressions, but that does not equal "ear". It's like perfect pitch. You have it or you don't. The next level down is relative pitch, where if you have a pitch in your head you can tell what the note is relative to that pitch. (A phone dial tone is an F. If you listen to that pitch, you can go from there.)

If you can play, you have to have SOME ear. If you want to identify a chord, play some notes on your piano or guitar until you hit it. You can't miss it more than 11 times.

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.