Are You Tone Deaf?

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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    Sorry Dennis! If it's any consolation I'm nearly 29 and I can't follow conversation in noisy pubs that well any more, so it proves my critical bands theory to be total tosh!
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  • :D

    S'alright, I was only joking.

    And not necesarily - I've never been able to follow conversation in a noisy pub, and as a student I was once fired as a barman because I kept having to ask the customers to repeat their orders. They all thought I was being a twat so eventually the boss got fed up and I got hoofed. Thing is, I was just trying to make sure I did my job properly by getting the right drinks, but if I'd known they thought I was a twat, I would actually have BEEN a twat - because most of the customers were, and they deserved some back! :D
    If you must have sex with a frog, wear a condom. If you want the frog to have fun, rib it.
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  • digitalscreamdigitalscream Frets: 26450
    Cirrus said:
    Ladies and gentlemen, bow down before your new god;

    Thank you for taking our Pitch Discrimination Test at http://musicianbrain.com/pitchtest.
    At 500 Hz you can reliably hear pitch differences of 0.453125 Hz, which means you did better than approximately 99.9% of people who took our test!


    :-O
    Jeez, man - I was pretty proud of my 1.4375Hz result (91.4%). Then again, I do have pretty bad tinnitus, so it's pretty much a miracle I got that far.

    100% on ChristophEar's test, though, which means I can no longer blame my lack of musicality on my ears. Bugger.
    <space for hire>
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  • Drew_TNBDDrew_TNBD Frets: 22445
    image
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  • BasherBasher Frets: 1198
    I got 100% but have always considered myself tone deaf.
    I really can't sing a note in tune. I sound like a distressed goose or something.
    Presumably this means that while my ability to detect pitch is OK-ish, my ability to reproduce it vocally is what's really wrong.
    Does this make me tone dumb?
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  • 100% on your test, thankfully. Bit of lag on some of the sounds but I just put it down to blockages in the internet pipes. Firefox 28 on OSX 10.8.5.

    The other:

    "At 500 Hz you can reliably hear pitch differences of 1.90625 Hz, which means you did better than approximately 84.7% of people who took our test!" ........15th of a semitone at age 40 = close enough for Jazz.
    I'm just a Maserati in a world of Kias.
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  • MistergMisterg Frets: 293
    edited March 2014
    Also 100%

    Test must be broke... ;)

    "At 500 Hz you can reliably hear pitch differences of 4.1875 Hz, which means you did better than approximately 59.8% of people who took our test!"
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  • EricTheWearyEricTheWeary Frets: 16253
    100%. Quite amazed. I do think I am a bit tone deaf and certainly can't sing for toffee. With multiple choice there is a chance element of course so I may be partially right and partially lucky. On the other hand I had MrsTheweary pulling faces at me so maybe a bit of luck balanced that out.

    Right, off to transcribe every Frank Zappa album...

    Or sit here and write this whilst I wait for Eric Jr to have a go. He has much, much better hearing than I do so I'm interested if that translates into good pitch.

    Right, he got 100%. Also said he suffered delays in the sound coming out on a few buttons ( on android tablet) but found it very easy compared to the pitch tests he did for grade 3 clarinet.
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • imaloneimalone Frets: 748
    100%. Quite amazed. I do think I am a bit tone deaf and certainly can't sing for toffee. With multiple choice there is a chance element of course so I may be partially right and partially lucky. On the other hand I had MrsTheweary pulling faces at me so maybe a bit of luck balanced that out.
    Tone deaf really means you can't hear the difference in notes. Not being able to sing means you never learned to control the notes you're making (possibly because someone told you you were stone deaf so you never tried...). In a terrible analogy it's a bit like the difference between reading and writing (lots of flaws with that, the first one is that pitch discrimination isn't really a learnt skill). Untrained people are better at listening than you'd think, some of the psychologists I work with do tests on music memory and people are very good at remembering familiar pieces of music.
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  • Drew_TNBDDrew_TNBD Frets: 22445
    Basher said:
    I got 100% but have always considered myself tone deaf.
    I really can't sing a note in tune. I sound like a distressed goose or something.
    Presumably this means that while my ability to detect pitch is OK-ish, my ability to reproduce it vocally is what's really wrong.
    Does this make me tone dumb?
    No. All it means is you don't know how to use your chest and head resonator. Do some reading up on correct vocal technique, and you'll figure it out.
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  • Thanks to everyone who's taken the test so far! And congratulations on your solid results :)

    The sound samples are all supposed to pre-load to avoid playback delay, but this isn't always possible on mobile devices, and there's clearly some button lag issue I need to pin down. Thanks for the reports on this.

    Regarding singing, @imalone put it well: it's simply a different skill. I wrote a bit about this lately, as it's a really common misunderstanding. The bottom line is that you can't sing in tune without good ears - but you can have good ears without being able to sing in tune.

    This test is designed to make the basic point: your ears aren't broken! People often transition from:
    "I can't sing in tune" → "I must be tone deaf" → "I could never be a musician"
    and I'm hoping to instead lead them through:
    "I'm not tone deaf!" → "I can improve my ears" → "I can learn to sing in tune" → "Maybe I could be a musician after all"

    I'm going to improve the results screen to make clear that the next steps can be ear training (to improve your pitch skills, like for that Grade 3 clarinet exam) and singing practice (to learn basic vocal pitch control and connect them to your ear skills).

    Thanks again for the feedback and comments!
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  • CatthanCatthan Frets: 355
    I'm 100% NOT tone deaf but I certainly felt like it during last night's practice..

    That was a good a test, well done!

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  • BellycasterBellycaster Frets: 5833
    I am an awful Singer, truly awful, but I can transcribe solos/songs. I look at it this way, I can achieve the note "C" on a guitar repeatedly without fail, singing it requires a hell of a lot more control of ones muscles and airways.

    It's all about getting your body to achieve the required note, you can hear the note, not being able to sing it doesn't necessarily mean one is Tone Deaf, it just means one can't sing/ doesn't have the technique.




    Only a Fool Would Say That.
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  • jonnyburgojonnyburgo Frets: 12253
    100% Still crap at guitaring though.
    "OUR TOSSPOT"
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  • streethawkstreethawk Frets: 1631
    edited March 2014
    100% in Chris's test.

    I did that pitch test thing and got 'better than 47.7% of people who took the test', took it again - this time imaging a guitar string being bent slightly - and got better than 78.1%.  

    Try it!
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  • JayceeJaycee Frets: 287
    I got 100% in Chris' test but not to good in the pitch discrimination, 18% better than the majority.
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  • ToneControlToneControl Frets: 11788

    can we have a test for detecting whether a guitar playing chords and hamonies is out of tune a bit?


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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71951
    I got 100% too. I now would like a time machine so I can go back and tell the idiot music teachers at my school - who nearly put me off music for life - that. All because I can't sing in tune and had little to no interest in classical music back then. :x

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    ICBM you might like this story...

    At school I was one of the musical dunces - I remember being the only one in my class who couldn't learn a simple blues run on the piano. I just had no interest in the lessons and felt that I couldn't do music. I was frequently held back, struggling through simple stuff while the class moved on. So I dropped it in year 9.

    The year after I finished sixth form I got into a Pink Floyd tribute band and our big project was a complete performance of "the Wall". One of the proudest moments of my musical life was that second half - particularly when I played the Comfortably Numb solo and my former music teacher was standing at the front, mouth agape.
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  • can we have a test for detecting whether a guitar playing chords and hamonies is out of tune a bit?

    That's actually a great idea. Hear a chord, and you have to identify which string is out of tune (or even just "is the guitar out of tune?"). Will be pondering this one...!
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