While people with certain innate characteristics—◊ IQ, in the case of the chess study—may have an advantage when first learning a skill, that advantage gets smaller over time, and eventually the amount and the quality of practice take on a much larger role in determining how skilled a person becomes.
In music, as in chess, there is an early correlation between IQ and performance. For example, a study of ninety-one fifth-grade students who were given piano instruction for six months found that, on average, the students with higher IQs performed better at the end of those six months than those with lower IQs. However, the measured correlation between IQ and music performance gets smaller as the years of music study increase, and tests have found no relationship between IQ and music performance among music majors in college or among professional musicians.