I'm pretty unconvinced by the piano savant thing. I can believe that a head injury might somehow open a pathway that makes it easy to translate the idea of sound in the mind into the geometric patterns that it corresponds to on a piano. It's true, that is difficult for most musicians. But there are plenty of recordings out there of this guy playing and his playing is.. not that great to be honest. I've known various people in my life who developed their own "outsider art" style of playing piano just by sitting at the instrument and improvising in an informal way. It's not that rare or that difficult.
I'm pretty unconvinced by the piano savant thing. I can believe that a head injury might somehow open a pathway that makes it easy to translate the idea of sound in the mind into the geometric patterns that it corresponds to on a piano. It's true, that is difficult for most musicians. But there are plenty of recordings out there of this guy playing and his playing is.. not that great to be honest. I've known various people in my life who developed their own "outsider art" style of playing piano just by sitting at the instrument and improvising in an informal way. It's not that rare or that difficult.
What takes practice... (read more)