# Are you tone deaf?



## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

Found this on FB. I'm not sure if this is a true test but all I know is I passed it with no mistakes. LOL 
Check it out.

ToneDeafTest.com - Find out if you are tone deaf or not


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## JBFairthorne (Oct 11, 2014)

Well...I'm not tone deaf. Now I just gotta figure out what the ACTUAL problem is.


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## Jamdog (Mar 9, 2016)

Dogs have excellent ears. It's the fretting paw the issue.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

100%, pretty easy stuff. I conduct similar tests with new students. If they have no trouble with these I go on to chord recognition.


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## Guest (Sep 4, 2016)

100% here as well.
36 in all.


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## Lincoln (Jun 2, 2008)

100% that was fun


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## JBFairthorne (Oct 11, 2014)

I would be extremely surprised if anyone here failed. I'd be surprised if anyone got less than 100% unless it was a mis-click or something.


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

I did it once, and got 100%. Since that seems to be the norm, I thought I'd just run through it at random and give myself an awful grade to post.

I got 100% without listening to one single note.

I'm thinking that means I'm at another level of better than all of you.


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

I'm joining the 100% club, thank God.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

Here's another one that is pretty hard. I got 80.6% (I used headphones which I would recommend for taking the test).

Tonedeaf Test: Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!


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## JBFairthorne (Oct 11, 2014)

adcandour said:


> I did it once, and got 100%. Since that seems to be the norm, I thought I'd just run through it at random and give myself an awful grade to post.
> 
> I got 100% without listening to one single note.
> 
> I'm thinking that means I'm at another level of better than all of you.


Nah it means you're "something else".


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## JBFairthorne (Oct 11, 2014)

I had a hard time with that one...and I couldn't find my score...IT seemed to ask ME what my score was...wtf? Mostly, the differences I noticed were relatively small, a subtle difference in chord or whatever. It would have been nice to be able to re-listen to the passage before deciding if they're different or not. By far though, it seemed most of them were different (meaning more than 50%).


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

JBFairthorne said:


> I had a hard time with that one...and I couldn't find my score...IT seemed to ask ME what my score was...wtf? Mostly, the differences I noticed were relatively small, a subtle difference in chord or whatever. It would have been nice to be able to re-listen to the passage before deciding if they're different or not. By far though, it seemed most of them were different (meaning more than 50%).


When you get to the end, enter the small survey (age group etc.) and leave the score at zero - when you hit the arrow, your score will come up.


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## JBFairthorne (Oct 11, 2014)

Yeah I did the survey...but I thought the drop down list for score was a "what do I think I got" question for the survey. It was a hard test but I think that a lot of the "hard" was wrapped up in being able to hear it ONCE. I think if you even had to opportunity to listen to it twice...the "numbers" would be vastly different. It was a cool test. Slight melody changes in the melody examples. Maybe a subtle chord alteration like a 7 or a #5 etc. I REALLY had to listen and think if there was a difference.


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## Adcandour (Apr 21, 2013)

Alex said:


> Here's another one that is pretty hard. I got 80.6% (I used headphones which I would recommend for taking the test).
> 
> Tonedeaf Test: Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!


I bombed it (66.7%). However, I felt it was a memory test instead of a tone test. I have an absolutely brutal memory.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

adcandour said:


> I bombed it (66.7%). However, I felt it was a memory test instead of a tone test. I have an absolutely brutal memory.


If you use headphones and do it in a place free from distractions, it should help. My short term memory is akin to Dory of Nemo fame..


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

I got 80.6 on that one, definitely tough.

Wonder if we got the same ones wrong Alex, LOL.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

Tried the other one too. Had a hard time with musical memory . Some of it the difference is just one note. I got 83.3. Except for a few obvious ones there is a lot that I pretty much guessed. LOL


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

davetcan said:


> I got 80.6 on that one, definitely tough.
> 
> Wonder if we got the same ones wrong Alex, LOL.


My first thought was a glitch given the funky way to get the tally but Chito got a different result. Musical bros!


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

Alex said:


> My first thought was a glitch given the funky way to get the tally but Chito got a different result. Musical bros!


I'm blaming my wife for interrupting me while I was trying to listen to a couple of them  Not sure if I would have got a better or worse score


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

I wanted to start my own club..................the 97% club.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

Alex said:


> Here's another one that is pretty hard. I got 80.6% (I used headphones which I would recommend for taking the test).
> 
> Tonedeaf Test: Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!


I clicked on this one and a shit load of popups appeared so I clicked it shut. It's a time waster.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

I did what I did in school and clicked the same button for every answer. I got 50% so I might be tone deaf. I also didn't have headphones on. I wasn't surprised when I finished the first bunch of questions and the test/survey what ever wanted to shill something which I declined.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

Electraglide said:


> I clicked on this one and a shit load of popups appeared so I clicked it shut. It's a time waster.


Yeah, me too.


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## Chito (Feb 17, 2006)

I saw that too, I just closed the 3 ads at the left, right and the bottom. It was fine after.


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

Electraglide said:


> I clicked on this one and a shit load of popups appeared so I clicked it shut. It's a time waster.


I run Adblock and Ghostery, they take care of about 99% of that shit.


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## Electraglide (Jan 24, 2010)

davetcan said:


> I run Adblock and Ghostery, they take care of about 99% of that shit.


It seems, on this laptop, that they cause conflict with other programs and are one of the causes for Firefox to crash. I use my own ad blocker in instances like this.....I close the window. It was worse on the XP laptop.


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## fredyfreeloader (Dec 11, 2010)

Alex said:


> Here's another one that is pretty hard. I got 80.6% (I used headphones which I would recommend for taking the test).
> 
> Tonedeaf Test: Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!


Apparently I'm not smarter than a sixth grader in math and the sixth grader would in all probability would kick my ass here . 
%h(*&B#(*


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

adcandour said:


> I bombed it (66.7%). However, I felt it was a memory test instead of a tone test. I have an absolutely brutal memory.


The diametric opposite of tone deaf is perfect pitch, and every bit of research indicates that perfect pitch is fundamentally a highly-developed memory skill. The individual with perfect pitch has a richly detailed - if perhaps not especially easily verbalized - memory of what a given note _feels_ like. They can imagine a given note, and compared one heard againstthat template in memory; not unlike the way any of us have a mental image of the letters of the alphabet and could likely imagine a given letter, identify one drawn on the palm of their hand with their eyes closed, or recognize it in any of a thousand different handwriting styles or typefaces.

The implication is that "tone deaf" persons lack a detailed sensory memory of what individual notes, as well as "higher" and "lower" (sharp and flat) sound/feel like. They certainly have _some_ sort of sense, when the contrast is large - they'd be able to tell you that a note two octaves higher or lower is higher or lower - but it is the narrow distinctions that they'd have trouble with. So, knowing that the note to be played is a tone and a half up,not a tone or two tones up, would be difficult to detect, because they don't have a detailed enough mental template of intervals for two tone to "feel" different than a tone and a half.


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## jb welder (Sep 14, 2010)

I got 94.4% on that second one, I did have to close my eyes and really concentrate.


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## Rick31797 (Apr 20, 2007)

I am in the 100 percent club......


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

Mooh said:


> Yeah, me too.


I have AdBuster and Ghostery. No pop up ads.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

fredyfreeloader said:


> Apparently I'm not smarter than a sixth grader in math and the sixth grader would in all probability would kick my ass here .
> %h(*&B#(*


Yeah, you only play better guitar then most of us.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

mhammer said:


> The diametric opposite of tone deaf is perfect pitch, and every bit of research indicates that perfect pitch is fundamentally a highly-developed memory skill. The individual with perfect pitch has a richly detailed - if perhaps not especially easily verbalized - memory of what a given note _feels_ like. They can imagine a given note, and compared one heard againstthat template in memory; not unlike the way any of us have a mental image of the letters of the alphabet and could likely imagine a given letter, identify one drawn on the palm of their hand with their eyes closed, or recognize it in any of a thousand different handwriting styles or typefaces.
> 
> The implication is that "tone deaf" persons lack a detailed sensory memory of what individual notes, as well as "higher" and "lower" (sharp and flat) sound/feel like. They certainly have _some_ sort of sense, when the contrast is large - they'd be able to tell you that a note two octaves higher or lower is higher or lower - but it is the narrow distinctions that they'd have trouble with. So, knowing that the note to be played is a tone and a half up,not a tone or two tones up, would be difficult to detect, because *they don't have a detailed enough mental template *of intervals for two tone to "feel" different than a tone and a half.


So, in short, are you saying they don't have enough musical experience to tell the difference?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Memory skill is partly experience, yes, but also what one does. And part of what one "does" is what you pay attention to when learning something. Somewhere out there ARE people who can simply not recognize intervals, sharpness, flatness, etc., for purely neurological reasons. But a much larger share consists of those who simply paid attention to the wrong things and could be trained, or should I say re-trained.

It's not unlike reading difficulties. There ARE folks whose capacity to decode text and extract meaning from it is neurologically compromised, but a much larger segment of those labelled as dyslexic can be trained to read normally with appropriate methods. As with tone deafness, learning what to pay attention to involves unlearning what not to attend to.

Honestly, we make too big a deal out of people who had difficulty learning skills that were bloody hard for anyone to learn in the first place. Its like watching the Perseid meteor shower with friends. Some of us got lucky, looked at the right part of the sky at the right moment, and the stars aligned for us, and some of us were looking the wrong way and missed it.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

mhammer said:


> [ It's like watching the Perseid meteor shower with friends. Some of us got lucky, looked at the right part of the sky at the right moment, and the stars aligned for us, and* some of us were looking the wrong way and missed it*.


The other 90% were in bed, like me.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Incidentally, some of you may remember the ad that ran in _Guitar Player_ for the longest time, selling a training course for perfect pitch. The guy behind the course, David Burge, was affiliated with Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa. The company is still selling the course, and you can find a variety of reviews of it, both good and bad. The premise that better pitch recognition is trainable is relatively sound. As with any sort of training regimen, though, not all instructional methods are a perfect fit with every potential learner.


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