Are You Tone Deaf?

ChristophEar · March 2014

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!

Catthan · March 2014

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!

Bellycaster · March 2014

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.

jonnyburgo · March 2014

100% Still crap at guitaring though.

streethawk · 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!

Jaycee · March 2014

I got 100% in Chris' test but not to good in the pitch discrimination, 18% better than the majority.

ToneControl · March 2014

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

ICBM · March 2014

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

Cirrus · March 2014

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.

ChristophEar · March 2014

ToneControl said:

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...!

ChristophEar · March 2014

ICBM said:

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

Nice one. This is exactly the issue that's driving me with a fury this year - it makes me crazy how many people miss out on music completely because of a stupid comment by a teacher or friend early on...

And @Cirrus I love your counterexample tale of triumph

matt1973 · March 2014

100% It would be good to have an interval test.

HAL9000 · March 2014

100% here. However some issues with the tones 'stuttering' or not playing straightaway. This on a 1st gen iPad.

Elx · March 2014

matt1973 said:

100% It would be good to have an interval test.

100% here..and I like this idea!

I have a crazy friend, I play him a C#7b9 chord and he immediately names it..I play him a D13 and he names it in a split second. Of course, 10 years of formal music education helps

He says though that it's easy and everyone could do it…well, maybe, but with all those years of training. I can tell major, minor, diminished, augmented, I can transcribe (hear it in my head and then play it on the guitar, not literally write notes on on staff, that's beyond me)…but when I listen to Allan Holdsworth, I have no idea

monquixote · March 2014

If you want an interval test @ChristophEar is probably far too conscious of not spamming to mention it, but he has a really great iPhone app for interval training: https://www.easyeartraining.com/store/ear-training-apps/

ChristophEar · March 2014

Thanks, @monquixote >:D< I can't offer App Store discounts unfortunately but I should say that if anyone is interested in anything else my company makes do shoot me a message and I'm sure a discount can be arranged

Otherwise there is a free intro version of that iOS app or you can find some interval training/testing MP3 tracks here.

ThePrettyDamned · March 2014

ICBM said:

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

I used to play keys/piano, and would learn by ear. I got alright - worked out Fur Elise first, then went on to work on some Muse and some other classical stuff, but was held back in class because no one else showed any interest at all.

Eventually, it emerged I couldn't read music at all and they encouraged me to do maths, chemistry, biology, physics, geography and history, because they got you jobs. Turns out they don't :P I've since lost my skills at learning by ear, which is a real shame.

ICBM · March 2014

ChristophEar said:

ICBM said:

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

Nice one. This is exactly the issue that's driving me with a fury this year - it makes me crazy how many people miss out on music completely because of a stupid comment by a teacher or friend early on...

Yes. Believe it or not, at the age of about 8 to 11, "Music" was the subject on the school timetable I hated most. To me it was an utter waste of time and nothing to do with what I enjoyed about listening to music at all. I was labelled as "tone deaf" because I can't sing - I have whatever disconnect it is between your ear and your mouth that means that you can't pitch the same note you're hearing correctly. (It might be possible to train this out, but I'm not sure - apparently it's quite common.) Worse, the classical music snobs who taught music derided all "pop music" as "rubbish" - when I liked things like ABBA, Wings, Deep Purple and even ELP at that age (all - yes, even ABBA! - quite sophisticated musically) and thought that composers like Stravinsky and Britten were ideal to teach 8 and 9 year-olds with. Great music, yes… appropriate to children, no.

I got into playing music by accident. It might come as no surprise

to learn that I began to be interested in electronics and hi-fi, and when I was a teenager I started to build my own systems and equipment. I became in demand as a repairer for other boys at school. One day, an older boy asked me if I could repair an electric guitar… I had no idea, but when I opened it up I was astonished how simple it was. Having fixed it, he then asked if I knew about amplifiers because they had a dead one of those too - I went back to the 6th-form study with him to look at it, and discovered that girls were interested in hanging out with boys who played the guitar. Not long after that, I bought a guitar

. And taught myself to play it… so here I am

.

Branshen · March 2014

100%. Worked perfectly on a Windows 7 machine running Chrome.

Sambostar · March 2014

I think I am confident in myself to know I am not tone deaf. Afterall I can transcribe Malmsteen or Demartini or pick up about anything if I concentrate enough. Not really a great test, I think you'd have to be a complete moron to not get 100%.

But with my slow internet connection and speeding through it with the notes still repeating from the last test, whilst on the next page. I got 10/12, 12/12 and 12/12.

So therefore I am a moron.

Sambostar · March 2014

Oh and the thing with singing in tune is this I think. Imagine your voice is a string without a fretboard or one of those 70's things Jimi Page used. It is not so much that you don't know the note, it is more the fact that you can't find it, or moreover that you haven't had enough practice to register the vibration or frequency coming from your throat as a tone. It is more a case of incompetent technique rather than lack of ability. So many people get put off singing because they think they are tone deaf as their range is limited. I can't even hear myself when I sing in a church or something, not that I go often, but the point is you have to rely on muscle memory to an extent and if you have none, you are screwed.

Adam_MD · March 2014

Couldn't play it on my iphone but was just fine on my pc. 100%

Panama_Jack666 · March 2014

100% BOOM!

Phil_aka_Pip · May 2014

Interesting. I got 100%.

Ways to expand or improve it:

Include tests where A & B are of the same pitch but different waveforms

Include tests where A & B are less than 1 semitone apart, simulates tuning guitar strings, you want to know when they are equal.

ChristophEar · October 2014

Hi all,

Thanks again to everyone who tried Tone Deaf Test! I just wanted to share a couple of updates about the project:

Test Results

Between the web and the iOS version of the test we've now had over 40,000 tests taken - and just 2% of people have turned out to be tone deaf!

This is roughly in line with the scientific literature on the subject and confirms that the vast majority of folks who think they're tone deaf actually have ears which are perfectly musically capable - or at least, they will be with a bit of practice!

The Next Step

Encouraged by that, I've spent the last 6 months or so focused on creating the next step.

Many people took the test and then said "Great! What now?"

The answer (imho) is "get your voice under control and go have fun in the world of music!" but I wanted something a bit more substantial to give them!

The result: a new iPhone app called SingTrue which trains your ears, mind and voice for music. It uses the iPhone mic to listen to you sing and give personalised feedback. There are also relative pitch exercises to help you start identifying notes by ear (using the powerful solfa system a.k.a. "do, re, mi")

The app will be launching in the next couple of weeks. If you're interested you can get more info and see a video of it in action here:

http://singtrue.co

If you're interested and feeling generous please lend a hand spreading the word by upvoting and clicking "get notified" on our PreApps page (you can do FB login) where we're trying to build up a bit of launch buzz...

So if you've always felt like your voice lagged behind your guitar skills, or you're looking for a way to upgrade your ears for improvisation and playing by ear, take a look! It's iOS for now, but if it takes off we'll be porting to Android a.s.a.p.

monquixote · October 2014

What do we want?

AN ANDROID VERSION!

When do we want it?

WHEN YOU HAVE TIME!

Rocker · October 2014

Great test @ChristophEar. I got 100% even though I am a *little* bit deaf.

ChristophEar · October 2014

Rocker said:

Great test @ChristophEar. I got 100% even though I am a *little* bit deaf.

Glad you enjoyed it! Kudos on the perfect score

Fuzzdog · October 2014

I got 100% and an accidentally opened Linux terminal window due to me slipping with the mouse.

)

Would be nice to have some closer (much less than a semitone) intervals in there to tax the old ears a bit more.

vasselmeyer · October 2014

@Fuzzdog If you want to test for microtones try this one:

http://musicianbrain.com/pitchtest

I did very badly (in my opinion) whereas our drummer(!) scored better than 95% of people.

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Are You Tone Deaf?

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