Some of you may have heard about a related study on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, but for those that haven’t, here’s a brief overview.
Some people are neurologically tone-deaf (and these people are generally known as flute players*), such that they can not distinguish between one musical phrase and a different slightly altered one.
I know I have a particularly musical audience, so check out an online tone deafness ‘test’.
For the record I was 80.6% correct. It seems I’m pretty accurate on positively identifying the errors, but I seem to have a high false alarm rate also (this was true in the rhythm test also.).
Check out the other tests too:
- Adaptive tone test: 2.1Hz
- Rhythm test: 80.0%
- Associative Musical Visual Intelligence test: 90% (87,88,94,86,87.6)
It would seem that I’m musically above average. Maybe that trombone playing did do something permanent to my brain.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Well, I also got a 90% on the Associative one, but I was really terrible at the other two, somewhat below average. Which doesn’t correlate to my actual real-life musical experiences. In college chorus, I was placed behind my section as my pitch was usually quite accurate. So I don’t know … maybe it was the kids running around in the room behind me while I was taking it. Yeah, that’s it!
June 27th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I haven’t had a chance to take more than just the tone deafness one (I was 70-something-point-something, normal).
I also would have thought I’d do a little better than that, but it was quite difficult. It would have been easier if the pieces were shorter, I think.
My problem is not that I can’t tell when something’s off pitch, but that when that something is my own voice I have no clue how to change what I’m doing to get on pitch!
Looking forward to the other tests though–particularly the associative one. Would love to see his data regarding years of musical training & the various measures. It’s not a random sample, but I would imagine it’s been passed around enough to be a fairly good range of people.