Tone-Deafness Test(themusiclab.org)
themusiclab.org
Tone-Deafness Test
https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/td
134 comments
The audio was very crackly for me, anyone else? Also the dull sine wave was fairly difficult to differentiate at small intervals, I wonder if the researchers considered the effect of different timbres
[deleted]
That was fun. I'm more tone deaf than 96% of people, it seems. Not shocking because I'm effectively deaf and have a cochlear implant. The natural hearing in my other ear couldn't hear the tones at all.
is this really easy to anyone else?
I think musical education helps a lot. I’ve got 32 / 32 correct but i’m a pianist...
I practiced with https://tonedear.com until I read that comparing intervals to melodies (like 'Hey Jude' for a minor third) is doing more harm than good.
I learned I was tone deaf when playing the game Myst in 1993 when I was eight years old. There was a puzzle[1] in which you had to listen to a tone, cross a room and move a slider until you heard the same tone. I knew exactly what had to be done, but I could not match the tones even after many attempts. Finally, I had to ask for my mom's help.
I carried the belief that I was tone-deaf with me for a decade or more until I happened to replay the game and found that as an adult, I had no difficulty completing the puzzle whatsoever. Apparently in my case, tone-deafness was a temporary condition of childhood. I wonder how many people have a childhood memory of not being able to sing in tune or complete a musical puzzle and believe they are tone-deaf for the rest of their lives.
1. https://youtu.be/qP6GU710jV4?t=141
I carried the belief that I was tone-deaf with me for a decade or more until I happened to replay the game and found that as an adult, I had no difficulty completing the puzzle whatsoever. Apparently in my case, tone-deafness was a temporary condition of childhood. I wonder how many people have a childhood memory of not being able to sing in tune or complete a musical puzzle and believe they are tone-deaf for the rest of their lives.
1. https://youtu.be/qP6GU710jV4?t=141
Music is like anything else in that it requires practice. At 8 years old, there's really not much learned practice in music really occurring unless you're in family like the Von Trapps. Even listening to kids sing Happy Birthday or The Wheels On The Bus can be quite interesting in how far off the "notes" are. Kids are just mimicking the words. Even the tempo is not of concern. Unless you get some sort of musical training through choir or band or something, you might not ever learn about flat/sharp and how to correct to match the person next to you or more likely the radio.
Completely tone-deaf person would not be able to recognize voices, e.g. tell male voice from female, father's voice from mother's. Obviously there are cases like this, but I believe very few.
On the other hand reproducing the tone requires practice, and mostly practice with your vocal instrument.
I would imagine that kids who grow up in families where e.g. mother sings while cooking, don't even notice how they practice at the age of 2 or so. But what is important, they train their voice, not only hearing.
It is like with colors. A person can see colors perfectly, but if you asked to mix acrylic paint to get chartreuse? Most of the population would struggle I would believe. We wouldn't call these people color-blind.
However with music I feel we somehow mix tone-deafness and ability to sing/reproduce tone.
On the other hand reproducing the tone requires practice, and mostly practice with your vocal instrument.
I would imagine that kids who grow up in families where e.g. mother sings while cooking, don't even notice how they practice at the age of 2 or so. But what is important, they train their voice, not only hearing.
It is like with colors. A person can see colors perfectly, but if you asked to mix acrylic paint to get chartreuse? Most of the population would struggle I would believe. We wouldn't call these people color-blind.
However with music I feel we somehow mix tone-deafness and ability to sing/reproduce tone.
> Completely tone-deaf person would not be able to recognize voices, e.g. tell male voice from female, father's voice from mother's.
I find this hard to believe. Human voice has a lot of timbral characteristics that show up on a spectrogram view. It would also imply that a person would be unable to tell the difference between a piano, a guitar and a trombone. This would also make understanding speech very difficult. Do people (with otherwise normal hearing) like this exist?
This is pretty different from not being able to distinguish musical pitch, say tell C# from Bb, or be able to tell which one of the pitches is higher.
I find this hard to believe. Human voice has a lot of timbral characteristics that show up on a spectrogram view. It would also imply that a person would be unable to tell the difference between a piano, a guitar and a trombone. This would also make understanding speech very difficult. Do people (with otherwise normal hearing) like this exist?
This is pretty different from not being able to distinguish musical pitch, say tell C# from Bb, or be able to tell which one of the pitches is higher.
> However with music I feel we somehow mix tone-deafness and ability to sing/reproduce tone.
Mind-bogglingly one can apparently be tone-deaf and still be able to sing in tune.
Mind-bogglingly one can apparently be tone-deaf and still be able to sing in tune.
I would doubt that?
On the other hand a person lacking ability to tell green from red can still paint quite good landscapes?
On the other hand a person lacking ability to tell green from red can still paint quite good landscapes?
This makes sense, but in my experience the other kids seemed to somehow gain this knowledge at a young age.
It's no surprise that I didn't make any real progress, since I wasn't learning an instrument and my school teachers made us sing but didn't bother trying to teach us to sing -- but by late primary school I was a notably bad singer relative to (almost literally) everyone else in my class. My home was by no means full of music, but we did have a record player and my sister liked to sing with my mother sometimes. And although it took me a while to get interested in pop music, by late primary school I had a CD player and some bands that I liked.
So I doubt the difference in ability was solely environmental rather than innate; surely the other kids hadn't all been taught how to sing, or grown up in very musical households. (I'm still very weak musically, and still can't sing, but I'm not literally tone deaf.)
It's no surprise that I didn't make any real progress, since I wasn't learning an instrument and my school teachers made us sing but didn't bother trying to teach us to sing -- but by late primary school I was a notably bad singer relative to (almost literally) everyone else in my class. My home was by no means full of music, but we did have a record player and my sister liked to sing with my mother sometimes. And although it took me a while to get interested in pop music, by late primary school I had a CD player and some bands that I liked.
So I doubt the difference in ability was solely environmental rather than innate; surely the other kids hadn't all been taught how to sing, or grown up in very musical households. (I'm still very weak musically, and still can't sing, but I'm not literally tone deaf.)
Singing correct tune and being able to distinguish it are two much different things. In any case, 8 years old absolutely not just mimicking words. Even musically untrained 8 years old are diffentiating tunes and trying to hit it.
I think it also depends on what kind of music you listen to. Music that is very "busy" with bass and percussion is more difficult for young kids to pick up, in my experience. Also the more difficult the vocal performance, the harder it will be to follow.
My wife and I listen to a lot of classical and hymns with simple 4-part harmonies. We have 7 kids, most of whom could match the songs pretty well at surprisingly young ages (2 or 3 years old).
My wife and I listen to a lot of classical and hymns with simple 4-part harmonies. We have 7 kids, most of whom could match the songs pretty well at surprisingly young ages (2 or 3 years old).
> Von Trapps
What makes you think that’s not nurturing?
What makes you think that’s not nurturing?
I only meant that they were a family unit that made the choice to train their young children to be able to sing and perform. I chose the Von Trapps as I assumed that it was a reference pretty much anyone would have at least heard of and might recognize. Never in my wildest did I think someone would misconstrue that.
In my reading nurturing is exactly what dylan604 implied with the von Trapps.
It is possible to solve that puzzle even if you are deaf, by counting the number of notches the slider has moved, which corresponds to the position of the key on the keyboard.
I've always had a sharp sense for relative tones - whether two notes are the same, or I can even tell specifically what interval they are, usually - but despite having played organized music for eight years of my life I'm hopeless at telling you what note a tone or chord actually is (or what key something is in). Zero indication whatsoever.
I do have a friend who can do that, though. You press the Bb key on a piano and he'll tell you it's a Bb and that it's slightly out of tune on the sharp end. It's amazing.
I do have a friend who can do that, though. You press the Bb key on a piano and he'll tell you it's a Bb and that it's slightly out of tune on the sharp end. It's amazing.
Absolute pitch like your friend has is hard to learn and relatively uncorrelated to musical ability. Musical training largely works your relative pitch muscle.
I was pretty tone deaf as a child too.
After I took up singing (briefly) I definitely got better at matching and distinguishing tones once I started paying attention to the actual melodies in music. Even then, it was and still is incredibly difficult for me. I sometimes wonder if pitch perception is analogous to learning a language; totally learn-able as an adult, but never will be as natural as if you learned it when you were a child.
After I took up singing (briefly) I definitely got better at matching and distinguishing tones once I started paying attention to the actual melodies in music. Even then, it was and still is incredibly difficult for me. I sometimes wonder if pitch perception is analogous to learning a language; totally learn-able as an adult, but never will be as natural as if you learned it when you were a child.
This rings true to my experiences with High School Choir. Tone matching was a skill that everyone was able to improve in, with just two notable exceptions.
There was one girl who was truly tone-deaf, and as a result could not tell that she was only ever singing one monotone note.
And then there was the teacher's son, who would run sound during our productions and claimed to have perfect pitch. He certainly could pick up on things much quicker than anyone else running the boards.
There was one girl who was truly tone-deaf, and as a result could not tell that she was only ever singing one monotone note.
And then there was the teacher's son, who would run sound during our productions and claimed to have perfect pitch. He certainly could pick up on things much quicker than anyone else running the boards.
I got a 98%
Ditto, but it took a few tries. My first couple were 85%. I don't have headphones and found that closing my eyes was helpful.
Likewise, closing my eyes was unintentional at first and then I realized it actually helped quite a bit so I kept doing it. Senses, focus, and the dynamics between them are fascinating.
Close your eyes, it will be easier.
The first one it gave me was the 1/64th above. I had to mentally adapt my expectation of the amount of focus I had to give to the tones. After that I got them all w/o difficulty. I wonder if the ordering was the same for others, if so this would be a good way to test if there are people who can discern such a difference immediately, without any priming.
The explanation when you finish the test says that it's random. IIRC I got three 1/64ths, of which I got 2/3, so tough to tell whether that's an unlucky mistake, or just getting them by random luck!
Mine definitely started with a much larger interval. 1/64th only did not come before 1/32th, also. I thought they were trying to trick me as if it was ordered, but in the end, it kinda was for me.
I wonder if they changed it, as it makes a comment about being able to use the up/down arrow keys based on user feedback. It now does one stage, and then tells you it's about to get harder.
TwoSet violin did it in a Youtube video and Eddy (the one with perfect pitch) got it quite easily. I suspect anyone with perfect pitch is not going to have any difficulty.
It was not the same. I could just barely barely tell the 1/64th tone, and got it wrong about half the time.
Missed the first one got the rest right.
Refused to accept KBD input after the mario 8bit chiptune. Loved to try, can't complete. please fix!
Firefox on Linux failed to play the Mario tune at the beginning. I refreshed, and it then worked. I think they've got some issues.
I had to switch from Chrome to Firefox for it to work. FWIW.
It looks like I'm only average at guessing the direction of shift but where do I rank in speed guessing? If they wanted 100% accuracy why highlight the decision time?
I think they want to know how certain people are about the pitch change, but this isn't a great way to determine that - there are too many reasons response times could vary. I thought this was a distracting part of the test and couldn't see what value it would provide in the end.
I scored 23, I didn't wear headphones. I've always known not to have prefect/absolute pitch. I used to play guitar a lot (I can tune the thing by ear!) but certainly can't sing.
I thought the "game" aspect was distracting. I'd preferred if they didn't show the correct/wrong and the timing. During the listening test I decided to look away from the screen and focus elsewhere. I'd like to take this test again but I can't bothered filling out all those questions again. To bad you can't just jump right to the test...
I thought the "game" aspect was distracting. I'd preferred if they didn't show the correct/wrong and the timing. During the listening test I decided to look away from the screen and focus elsewhere. I'd like to take this test again but I can't bothered filling out all those questions again. To bad you can't just jump right to the test...
That was really fun I got 32 out of 31 correct. I can't sing at all, so there is that- thanks for posting this goofy little test.
Does your lack of ability to sing affect your ability in math? ;-) You got more questions correct than asked??
Dyslexia is one hell of a drug mate.
I know that dyslexia causes people to get letters rearranged, but I'm now curious if it causes words to get rearranged as well. Off to look that up now...
apparently rearranged words is a thing not just letters.
"Seeing words backwards sometimes - a person sometimes might see the words backwards."[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristics_of_dyslexia
"Seeing words backwards sometimes - a person sometimes might see the words backwards."[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristics_of_dyslexia
Well, that explains why I can't tune a guitar by ear - all the examples where the difference was 1/64 or 1/32 sounded as completely identical four beeps, I had zero idea about the direction and had to guess randomly. I.e. it's not that I could not interpret the difference, it's that I could not identify any difference in the first place.
Usually when you tune an instrument you have a simultaneous reference, you don't have to remember the reference. Especially with a guitar, you tune a string against another string at the same time. It is easy (for me) to tune away small differences because the beat frequency is audible.
On this test I could not determine the 1/64th differences, I guessed those but I got all the 1/32nd and bigger intervals easily. I have a feeling that off-by-1/64th would be easy to hear if the tones played at the same time.
On this test I could not determine the 1/64th differences, I guessed those but I got all the 1/32nd and bigger intervals easily. I have a feeling that off-by-1/64th would be easy to hear if the tones played at the same time.
That's why you tune a guitar by listening to the beat in the notes, provided you can get close enough to the right chord you can figure out the rest just by tuning it until the chord stop varying in volume.
I can tune a guitar by hearing and I wasn't very good at the quiz.
Musicality and being good the quiz might not be related that strongly. Music kind of relies on people being unable to notice difference <1/4 tone, or at least that's the closest you can get to true rational intervals with an equally-tempered piano (other instruments can cheat by changing their notes slightly to sound better).
Ditto.
Did anyone else find the first half of the test harder than the second? I got all of the questions right but the ones where the tone was 1/3 or more of a tone off I really struggled to tell if they were up or down. Weirdly I didn't have that problem on the 1/4 or less questions.
I have no musical talent at all by the way.
I have no musical talent at all by the way.
Music perception varies so it might be easier for you to hear a narrower interval. I can imagine it being closer so it doesn't mess up with your perspective, whereas with a larger difference you might lose your comparison baseline from the first.
Yes! I think this is a good explanation. I find it hard to relate two different notes to each other when they are sufficiently different. If they are very different then it obvious but if they are 1-2 tones apart I only really hear them as two different notes rather than one note clearly being higher than the other.
It can get even weirder when you jump a gap more than half an octave. For instance say you jump down 6 notes, absolutely speaking it's lower... but relative to the original "note" (not pitch) it's closer to being above than bellow, which can make it feel higher at the same time.
I can perceive this higher+lower aspect simultaneously in a lot of music and i suspect this is common even.
I can perceive this higher+lower aspect simultaneously in a lot of music and i suspect this is common even.
True, but this is another dimension of tonal perception I think i.e comparative memory. Kind of like the musical equivalent of short term memory... until you get into scales and more recognizable sequences then that part of the brain seems to have way better memory abilities somehow.
I have better hearing than most people (upper and lower frequency sensitivity) but I guess I'm pretty tone deaf.
Wow so many questions. Got 85%, could do better. Interface could be streamlined.
lots of invasive questions.
Did anyone else have more trouble with a particular direction? I had significantly more difficulty with small descending changes, and I think I have worse hearing on my right side, so I'm wondering if different hemispheres may have be responsible for detecting ascending or descending changes.
When it descends it couldn't be any clearer to me, but on a couple ascents I had to guess.
I got all of them. Is this really a harvard research?
These tests are also interesting. They correspond with my result from the OP, that is I can't reliably determine a 1/64th step in the OP, and I also can't reliably hear a 2-cent difference in this one, although I can distinguish a 5c diff.
https://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_index.php
Do you think you're tasteless? Test you flavor perception.
You laugh, but I once threw a "tasting party" for my friends that went along those lines. You can buy a kit with a bunch of test strips with certain chemicals on them on amazon (search "super taster kit") and see who reacts to them and who doesn't.
Add in some miracle berries and weird food, and you've got a good time.
Add in some miracle berries and weird food, and you've got a good time.
Losing your sense of smell and taste is a symptom of COVID-19!
Too bad the iSmell never took off and became ubiquitous, or it could be used to screen for COVID-19 symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/
Too bad the iSmell never took off and became ubiquitous, or it could be used to screen for COVID-19 symptoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
https://www.wired.com/1999/11/digiscent/
Don't play this game inebriated or in a noisy area ... it requires focus for the 1/64th notes.
Yeah tried it without headphones with my phone pressed against my ear. I barely managed to catch the last two reference tones most of the time after clicking next. The 1/64ths were tough that way. I missed a couple of the first ones but started getting them after I got a good click, get the phone to the head to listen to the tones fast rhythm going on.
I recommend headphones at the very least.
I recommend headphones at the very least.
I found their World Music Quiz more fun (linked at the end of this quiz).
My hearing is better than I thought. I found it easy to discern between 1/64th notes. I got 31/32.
"You did better than 23% of people." What a polite way of saying "You suck at this!".
I can hear pitch, but barely. 23/32, and some of those were random guesses. I'm in the 16th percentile! I know that I can't hear pitch very well, and my musically oriented partner says that I always sing "weird" harmonies like 7ths that are not particularly pleasing to the Western ear.
Strange, I've always considered myself somewhat tone-deaf (when trying to pick a song by ear i can pick 5-8 notes correctly, then i hit the next one, and can't understand if it's higher or lower than I need), but here I got 29/32, and one of those 3 misses was me mistyping in a hurry.
Pro tip: Say "yes" when asked if you've taken the test before, and you won't have to answer questions about your background.
To be honest, I feel like it is a completely fair request for these guys to ask for anonymous demographics (presumably to feed into their research) in exchange for providing this service ad free.
I just wish that their certs hadn't expired before I got a chance to try it!
I just wish that their certs hadn't expired before I got a chance to try it!
Did you actually get a chance to see their questions? I wouldn't have posted my comment if they were less invasive or if people could skip more of them. But they seemed too invasive to me. They didn't even try to (to give just one example) request age ranges like many other demographic surveys do, instead asking for exactly how many years old you are, which seemed kind of unnecessary. I wouldn't be surprised if some subset of their data points were sufficient to identify a decent number of people uniquely.
Note that speed is not being judged, I found it significantly easier to get 32/32 after realizing this might be the case.
For some reason I find +1/64th harder to distinguish than -1/64th, is it possible to have asymmetrical perception differences this subtle? or is it more likely software / hardware limitations?
For some reason I find +1/64th harder to distinguish than -1/64th, is it possible to have asymmetrical perception differences this subtle? or is it more likely software / hardware limitations?
I was the opposite! I couldn't tell the -1/64 from 0 at all, but I was able to identify the +1/64 cases. (My strategy quickly became "if I can't hear the difference, it went down")
I actually had the same experience, with -1/64 being much easier to hear. I don't have a good hypothesis as to why that would be either. I'm using pretty lousy headphones, fwiw.
I feel like this is likely due to some kind of quantization. I'm doing my best to figure it out with my armchair sound theory but i'm very far from an expert in that or PCM... correction invited:
A semitone at 440 = +-26.16 Hz
Although the true sinusoid doesn't start and end at exactly on those points, this is how many points "land" on each period. There are also subtle differences in the amplitude of each point on different periods with the same number of points - i'm not sure how to rate that in terms of perception but my suspicion is that we are affected more by the average period, by using the highest/lowest points (half a period).
If true, the duration becomes very important, 108 periods fit into 1 second, which gives us a max precision of 1/108 = about 0.93% i.e +-1.013 Hz error... which is larger than the difference we are trying to detect.
I'm not confident in these calculations, but It does at least seem very close to the precision limit of 48KHz... So I'm guessing the starting position of the modulation has quite an influence on which way that error swings, and this could account for the differences we are hearing between +1/64 and -1/64
</ hand waving>
A semitone at 440 = +-26.16 Hz
1/64 = 26.16/32 = +-0.8175 Hz
48000/440 = 109.0909090909091
48000/440.8175 = 108.88859902340538
Although the true sinusoid doesn't start and end at exactly on those points, this is how many points "land" on each period. There are also subtle differences in the amplitude of each point on different periods with the same number of points - i'm not sure how to rate that in terms of perception but my suspicion is that we are affected more by the average period, by using the highest/lowest points (half a period).
If true, the duration becomes very important, 108 periods fit into 1 second, which gives us a max precision of 1/108 = about 0.93% i.e +-1.013 Hz error... which is larger than the difference we are trying to detect.
I'm not confident in these calculations, but It does at least seem very close to the precision limit of 48KHz... So I'm guessing the starting position of the modulation has quite an influence on which way that error swings, and this could account for the differences we are hearing between +1/64 and -1/64
</ hand waving>
In passing your math looks correct but I don't think that's the right way to assess the resolution of the system here.
The sample rate has a fixed spacing. Each sample will have some amplitude. Your ear reconstructs the sinusoid from these discreet samples.
In general, as long as we're well below the Nyquist frequency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency) the question (AFAIK) is how much jitter exists in the horizontal (time) and vertical (amplitude) directions. The tone will need to go on long enough for any noise in the system to average out relative to the size of the difference that you want to detect. This is addressed (IIUC) by the Fourier uncertainty principle.
On the hardware side of things, I'd naively expect modern systems to have very low jitter in both dimensions. However, I fully expect the human side of things is significantly more complicated. An article from 2013 describes research purporting to show that humans exceed the Fourier uncertainty principle (apparently through some sort of nonlinear biological wizardry) by more than ten fold. (https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-prin...)
The sample rate has a fixed spacing. Each sample will have some amplitude. Your ear reconstructs the sinusoid from these discreet samples.
In general, as long as we're well below the Nyquist frequency (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency) the question (AFAIK) is how much jitter exists in the horizontal (time) and vertical (amplitude) directions. The tone will need to go on long enough for any noise in the system to average out relative to the size of the difference that you want to detect. This is addressed (IIUC) by the Fourier uncertainty principle.
On the hardware side of things, I'd naively expect modern systems to have very low jitter in both dimensions. However, I fully expect the human side of things is significantly more complicated. An article from 2013 describes research purporting to show that humans exceed the Fourier uncertainty principle (apparently through some sort of nonlinear biological wizardry) by more than ten fold. (https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-prin...)
As you expected, you probably shouldn't read to much into these calculations. ;-)
The Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem guarantees that we (as in the DAC in your computer) can perfectly reconstruct the analogue signal for any discretised signal that is bandlimited to frequencies below Nyquist, i.e., 24 kHz for a 48 kHz sample rate. No matter how crooked the sample points may look to you. And 440 Hz is way below the 24 kHz limit.
Sure, this doesn't take quantisation into account, but 16 bit is sufficient to encode the difference in amplitude at the individual sample points between 440 and 440.8175 Hz with plenty of headroom (about 210 digital steps at 109 samples). Indeed, the smallest frequency difference that would have a zero difference after 109 samples due to quantisation is about 0.001 Hz (modulo mistakes in my hasty calculations). And this doesn't take dithering into account. Dithering essentially gives you an infinite dynamic range (depending on your definition of dynamic range) at the exchange of a higher noise floor. Of course your signal is likely also longer than 109 samples.
See this excellent video [1] by Xiph.Org's Chris Montgomery for a whirlwind overview of digital signal processing.
[1] https://www.xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
The Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem guarantees that we (as in the DAC in your computer) can perfectly reconstruct the analogue signal for any discretised signal that is bandlimited to frequencies below Nyquist, i.e., 24 kHz for a 48 kHz sample rate. No matter how crooked the sample points may look to you. And 440 Hz is way below the 24 kHz limit.
Sure, this doesn't take quantisation into account, but 16 bit is sufficient to encode the difference in amplitude at the individual sample points between 440 and 440.8175 Hz with plenty of headroom (about 210 digital steps at 109 samples). Indeed, the smallest frequency difference that would have a zero difference after 109 samples due to quantisation is about 0.001 Hz (modulo mistakes in my hasty calculations). And this doesn't take dithering into account. Dithering essentially gives you an infinite dynamic range (depending on your definition of dynamic range) at the exchange of a higher noise floor. Of course your signal is likely also longer than 109 samples.
See this excellent video [1] by Xiph.Org's Chris Montgomery for a whirlwind overview of digital signal processing.
[1] https://www.xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
Good to know.
I tried to stay under one second and got 25/32 at least two times I hit a wrong button out of reflex.
I tried to stay under one second and got 25/32 at least two times I hit a wrong button out of reflex.
Real tone-deafness (amusia) is fairly rare. Something like 20% of people self-report it, but the actual prevalence is only ~4%. What most people seem to mean when they say they have it is "I can't sing at all." But really tone-deafness is not about singing poorly, it's about not being able to discriminate tones. This includes you vocalizing them, yes, but it also includes you hearing them. In fact I would hazard a guess that if you are able to tell you are off-pitch while you're singing, then that might in and of itself preclude tone deafness (although my understanding may be off there).
What I do know is that most people with amusia cannot and do not enjoy listening to music. Many say it sounds like noise, or just sounds unpleasant. And People with amusia tend to have other, related issues -- difficulties discerning pitch in spoken sentences (was that intonation representing a question or a statement? that sort of thing).
What I do know is that most people with amusia cannot and do not enjoy listening to music. Many say it sounds like noise, or just sounds unpleasant. And People with amusia tend to have other, related issues -- difficulties discerning pitch in spoken sentences (was that intonation representing a question or a statement? that sort of thing).
I knew someone once who loved music - we met through dancing, actually - and would sing aloud any time music was on in the car, even with other people present.
She was also, from my perspective, the most tone-deaf person I've ever met. Every single note she sang was horribly irrelevant to the song that was playing. But she belted it out anyway.
I'm curious where she would fit in this model
She was also, from my perspective, the most tone-deaf person I've ever met. Every single note she sang was horribly irrelevant to the song that was playing. But she belted it out anyway.
I'm curious where she would fit in this model
It is not uncommon for someone to not be able to distinguish the pitch difference from two sound sources, especially being able to tell if they're singing in tune or not.
That's not at all the same thing as not being able to distinguish the two pitches from each other coming from the same source.
I can tune a guitar relatively (ie. start with one string "in tune") by ear very easily. I can't for the life of me tune a guitar to a pitchfork or someone else in the band playing a tone that I need to match. And I can't produce a specific tone with my vocal chords or play along a melody by ear.
That's not at all the same thing as not being able to distinguish the two pitches from each other coming from the same source.
I can tune a guitar relatively (ie. start with one string "in tune") by ear very easily. I can't for the life of me tune a guitar to a pitchfork or someone else in the band playing a tone that I need to match. And I can't produce a specific tone with my vocal chords or play along a melody by ear.
Interesting, I didn't know this distinction existed
Probably as someone with an interesting character quirk ;)
I'm curious: how do people who are tone deaf learn and use tonal languages? Are such languages redundant enough that they can get by, or do they find other ways of adapting, or do they struggle to speak fluently even if the tonal language is their first language?
I grew up in Hong Kong and speak Cantonese as my first language, which is one of the most brutally strict languages in terms of tones. 9 tones, some very similar, words that have the same sound but different tones can have very different meanings, sometimes ones that make the situation embarrassing or make you sound like you're swearing (in a formal situation). Kids in school like to mock you endlessly if you even accidentally say a word in the wrong tone that means something different (especially if it sounds close to swearing words).
With all that pretext in mind -- having grown up there until I was 13, I had never met any native speaker in HK who couldn't pronounce words in correct tones. Not a single person.
With all that pretext in mind -- having grown up there until I was 13, I had never met any native speaker in HK who couldn't pronounce words in correct tones. Not a single person.
Cantonese and other East Asian tonal languages are, more specifically, contour tonal languages; the distinctions between the different tones are based on the change in the tone through the syllable (rising vs. falling, etc.), rather than absolute pitch. This may be easy enough for tone-deaf people to deal with. However, there are other tonal languages, e.g. in Africa, which make use of absolute pitch distinctions.
I researched this a while back, and it turns out that while they can't hear tones (if you play minimal pairs in isolation, they won't be able to hear the difference), they still understand people and reproduce them correctly when they speak. They can also be trained to recognize recognize the difference. There's really no such thing as tone deafness.
Tone deafness is when you sing something badly, people make fun of you, and you stop trying to sing. Not an option when you speak a tonal language, instead you just learn pitch without realizing you're learning pitch, just operating from "feelings" and what "sounds right," which is of course based on an enormous amount of lifetime feedback.
It's like how actual blindsight (when the eyes or their connections to the brain are actually damaged or destroyed) is unrecognized echolocation. We are not aware of our own conscious experience, or the processes we go through to reach some of then conclusions we reach.
Tone deafness is when you sing something badly, people make fun of you, and you stop trying to sing. Not an option when you speak a tonal language, instead you just learn pitch without realizing you're learning pitch, just operating from "feelings" and what "sounds right," which is of course based on an enormous amount of lifetime feedback.
It's like how actual blindsight (when the eyes or their connections to the brain are actually damaged or destroyed) is unrecognized echolocation. We are not aware of our own conscious experience, or the processes we go through to reach some of then conclusions we reach.
That is not true. I know person who cant tell piano keys from each other almost as far as an octave. She cant tell whether you you have hit one or two at the same time. She cant tell whether you have hit different one you you play two keys consecutively. She does hear well.
That is tone deafness and it has zero to do with singing. Tone deafness is not measured by having people sing.
That is tone deafness and it has zero to do with singing. Tone deafness is not measured by having people sing.
Isn't there a theory that native speakers of tonal languages are better at music because they're better at recognizing tones?
I've definitely made this distinction before about myself - "I can't sing, but I can at least sing badly in tune"
Jokes aside, I doubt this. If you sing a song in your range on pitch, it'll probably sound OK. Maybe not amazing singer good, but a lot of rock singers aren't "good" singers, they're just good enough to get a good take.
If you're curious, record yourself and put it in Melodyne.
If you're curious, record yourself and put it in Melodyne.
Wow, never thought that getting 70% right would put me right into the bottom quartile of people.
And I took the test in a quiet place with good headphones. Guess I am partially tone-deaf...
And I took the test in a quiet place with good headphones. Guess I am partially tone-deaf...
Aaaaand a lapsed ssl certificate.
10/21/2020, 11:59:59 PM (Coordinated Universal Time)
Apparently https://letsencrypt.org/ is too hard!
It is, when you write a cronjob to update it and then Certbot autoinstalls a competing (daily/monthly, can't remember) cronjob that breaks the one you had set up a year ago.
> Sorry! It seems there was an error preparing your experiment. Please try reloading the page in a few minutes. If the error persists please contact us here.
> Error creating a user. Is the database offline? Original Message: Error: Network Error
Hug of death?
> Error creating a user. Is the database offline? Original Message: Error: Network Error
Hug of death?
No, just the certificate expired. The site is hosted on AWS and there are valid AWS related certificates registered in public logs [0], but they aren't deployed on the website, instead a certificate with 2 year long validity that expired just a few minutes ago [1].
Even if you click on the "I know the risk, I accept" button, it tries to connect to api.musiclab.org through CORS. This fails due to the same certificate issue and gives the error you report. Bad luck I guess that it expires right when it gets viral on hn.
[0]: https://crt.sh/?id=2886689176
[1]: https://crt.sh/?id=882377045
Even if you click on the "I know the risk, I accept" button, it tries to connect to api.musiclab.org through CORS. This fails due to the same certificate issue and gives the error you report. Bad luck I guess that it expires right when it gets viral on hn.
[0]: https://crt.sh/?id=2886689176
[1]: https://crt.sh/?id=882377045
Also, after doing that, I had to open dev tools and delete the main node for the modal that was covering the page. After that I could take the test.
> it tries to connect to api.musiclab.org through CORS. This fails due to the same certificate issue
Thanks for the hint! It works now that I visited the api subdomain separately, accepted the warning, and go back to the test. The test sound now plays (though you might need to give it a second).
Thanks for the hint! It works now that I visited the api subdomain separately, accepted the warning, and go back to the test. The test sound now plays (though you might need to give it a second).
I couldn’t get this to work, but setting back my clock to October 20th did the trick (along with deleting the modal’s element via dev tools as jonahx mentions).
> Bad luck I guess that it expires right when it gets viral on hn.
This right here is the problem with privacy and security. low expectations.
It isn't bad luck, it's below baseline level secops/SRE. I mean, sure, it's probably a low effort, low investment toy site, but this is very baseline stuff. If you aren't going to manage a cert properly, just don't use TLS at all!
This right here is the problem with privacy and security. low expectations.
It isn't bad luck, it's below baseline level secops/SRE. I mean, sure, it's probably a low effort, low investment toy site, but this is very baseline stuff. If you aren't going to manage a cert properly, just don't use TLS at all!
It's an engineering mistake that it expired, but bad luck that it expired today.
(That said, everyone makes mistakes now and again)
(That said, everyone makes mistakes now and again)
Certificate of Death.
[deleted]
Out of curiosity, how bad do your speakers need to be for a 1/64 input signal difference to be more similar than 1/64 in the output tone?
I'd guess the DAC has more to do with it than the speakers because speakers should reproduces waves pretty reliably. But I'm just guessing.
Most DACs are nearly perfect. There's an incredibly large number that will do better than 96dB of signal/noise, including the $9 Apple dongle. Electronics are highly consistent for this purpose.
Speakers are up to 3 orders of magnitude worse.
Speakers are up to 3 orders of magnitude worse.
For reproducing a frequency, shouldn't speakers also be nearly perfect because of the physics involved? Yes, the frequency response might be all over the place, but does it matter when playing a tone?
I don't know what you mean by "because of the physics involved".
Suppose you send a 440Hz square wave, amplitude -1 to +1 V, to a speaker, and use a top-quality microphone and a reasonable oscilloscope to look at the resulting wave in the air.
Here are perfectly normal things that you can expect to observe:
- the wave is no longer square
- the beginning of each cycle (attack) is louder than the middle
- the middle of the cycle is louder than the attack
- the attack and decay are both ringing with new high frequencies that you didn't send in
- integer multiples of the frequency are audible
- the sympathetic vibration of the speaker enclosure is nearly as loud as the signal
- it's very good as long as you hold the mic in exactly the right spot, but if you move it you get different distortions
- the speaker catches on fire (this excludes plasma speakers, which are supposed to be on fire when active)
All of these things are because of physics.
Suppose you send a 440Hz square wave, amplitude -1 to +1 V, to a speaker, and use a top-quality microphone and a reasonable oscilloscope to look at the resulting wave in the air.
Here are perfectly normal things that you can expect to observe:
- the wave is no longer square
- the beginning of each cycle (attack) is louder than the middle
- the middle of the cycle is louder than the attack
- the attack and decay are both ringing with new high frequencies that you didn't send in
- integer multiples of the frequency are audible
- the sympathetic vibration of the speaker enclosure is nearly as loud as the signal
- it's very good as long as you hold the mic in exactly the right spot, but if you move it you get different distortions
- the speaker catches on fire (this excludes plasma speakers, which are supposed to be on fire when active)
All of these things are because of physics.
What I meant is that a sine wave drives the speaker at its frequency, so I'm not sure where frequency distortions would come from.
Except for moving the mic and getting a doppler effect and maybe sympathetic vibration, all of those distortions retain the fundamental frequency. To the original question, I guess all these distortions might make it harder to to distinguish between similar tones. My point was that even shitty speakers should reproduce the frequency reliably.
Except for moving the mic and getting a doppler effect and maybe sympathetic vibration, all of those distortions retain the fundamental frequency. To the original question, I guess all these distortions might make it harder to to distinguish between similar tones. My point was that even shitty speakers should reproduce the frequency reliably.
-> Try to visit site: Error: Sorry! It seems there was an error preparing your experiment.
Please try reloading the page in a few minutes.
-> Try to send feedback: Form with high barrier required fields rapidly drains any enthusiasm to send feedback.
At least there's no captcha, no requirement to register, and it appears to work (I've reported the same issue). I'd prefer a working email address, but there are worse feedback forms around.
@parsianka if you own this website letting you know that the TLS cert has expired
That doesn’t work on HN in any useful way, unfortunately.
I emailed this to one of the site owners, though!
I emailed this to one of the site owners, though!
Sort of the opposite, is there a way to train perfect pitch? I know it isn't supposed to be trainable, but I've dabbled in guitar for 10+ years and singing for 5+, and I'm at a point where I'll randomly hear a chord--nothing fancy, just a triad--and I suddenly place it in song with the same chord in the same key. I'm not sure if I'm actually matching pitch, or if I'm picking up on timbre differences.
I watched a video once of an adult that taught himself perfect pitch. It turned out the way he learnt it was a little different than how a child might learn it as he had to use reference points in his mind and then use relative pitch to calculate the actual note. This would take him quite a long time compared to someone who had learnt it young who could tell you the note straight away almost without thinking. I can't find the video now but there are many other similar videos on YouTube.
Relative pitch can definitely be trained. And I've heard people with perfect pitch say that when they hear a note they just relate it to a known note. Though I don't know if that's true perfect pitch or a different means to the same end. Then again I've heard other musicians say that perfect pitch is like seeing colors. You and I just know red is red, they might just hear C is C.
I believe it's possible to infer pitch from comparison with memory like this.
The issue is that you need to remember a note in a song which sounds like the note you're hearing -- quite hard, given instruments/context/etc.
The issue is that you need to remember a note in a song which sounds like the note you're hearing -- quite hard, given instruments/context/etc.
Their SSL certificate appears to have expired as of October 21, 2020.
And the site itself seems to be broken.
And the site itself seems to be broken.
Yes, and to make matters worse, if I politely ask for the HTTP protocol, which wouldn't exhibit this problem, I'm rudely redirected to the brokwn HTTPS version..
Seriously, I couldn't care less who sees that I'm visiting this site, I don't need privacy here, I just want to try the funny internet thingy..
I'm getting this warning about certs being out of date and that the site might be an attack vector
As a kid, I struggled in music class and could not follow music, sing or keep a beat. I couldn’t clap in time and we were just expected to do it without any real teaching...still to this day I struggle with all these things despite loving music. I also take longer than others to reproduce sounds and speak in foreign languages. I have good understanding but my difficulty is in recreating the sounds in both verbally/talking and musically/singing
I took this twice, the first time without headphones and panicking slightly at the 1/64ths - I got 27; the second time, I did it with a (decent) pair of headphones and with less panicking, and got a perfect score. The 1/64ths were still hard, but I found, amusingly, that I shifted my head slightly in the right direction each time!
For reference, I have no musical ability whatsoever and am broadly regarded as one of the worst singers anyone has ever met, but I do enjoy listening to music very much.
For reference, I have no musical ability whatsoever and am broadly regarded as one of the worst singers anyone has ever met, but I do enjoy listening to music very much.
I failed some tests because I pressed wrong button. It's something not related to music, I've never been able to play games with QTE, and this looks much like those QTE I loathe.