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Wow, this sounds like a living nightmare!!!

 

Listening Displeasure

 

It would be like all music was techno!!!!!!!! eek2.gif

 

There is a test in the link to determine if you suffer from it, can't load it here at work but will try it later. Here's the text...

 

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Not being able to sing Happy Birthday might mean you're tone-deaf. But what if you can't actually tell the difference between it and the National Anthem? That's where a condition called amusia comes in - and here's a test to find out if it affects you.

 

More than one in 10 of us claim to be tone-deaf; but despite the term, most tone-deaf people can hear music perfectly well - they just can't sing.

 

A different condition, however, does involve a problem in making sense of music. Research has shown that some people, termed "amusic", can neither produce nor perceive music.

 

It isn't a problem of the ears - they can understand other sounds perfectly well - but when it comes to music, all tunes sound the same (See links below for the test).

 

While most of us are sensitive to small changes in pitch, amusic people need two notes to be very far apart before they hear them as different. It's no surprise, then, that music, which tends to move in small steps, is literally "lost" on them.

 

THOSE WITH AMUSIC...

 

Can't recognise familiar tunes

Think they sing in tune, but other people tell otherwise

Don't "get" music and rarely choose to listen to it

 

 

Click here to do the test (Site currently very busy)

Though most amusia sufferers find listening to music pointless, some even find it annoying and unpleasant.

 

Anne Vere, an amusic from Newcastle, describes music as an "irritant". When she heard the theme tune to Brief Encounter, voted the UK's favourite piece of classic music for the past five years, she described it as "banging that would be best avoided".

 

But unless willing to shut themselves off from the many social occasions in which music plays a role, amusics must endure whatever life's jukebox throws at them.

 

Anne recalls times when she was asked to go to a friend's house to listen to music: "Parties, dinner dances, work dos, I really, really dreaded these occasions."

 

The behaviour of another amusia sufferer goes beyond passive endurance. She confesses that she puts a CD on the stereo whenever she entertains guests as a way of covering up for her own lack of musical affinity.

 

Lost in music

 

For some amusia sufferers, avoiding music is not an option, for the simple reason that singing is part of the job description.

 

Until he retired, the Reverend Jim Cross was required to sing in parts of his Sunday services. He says of his singing ability: "I am told that sometimes I get the right note, and sometimes I do not, but I cannot tell."

 

His congregation, however, had no trouble in spotting when Jim went off-key and eventually gave him special dispensation to simply say the lines aloud.

 

 

I am told that sometimes I get the right note, and sometimes I do not, but I cannot tell

 

Ex-rector Jim Cross

Although anecdotal reports suggest that figures in history such as Che Guevara and American President Ulysses S Grant were afflicted with amusia, the condition has only recently become a topic of scientific interest.

 

A team headed by Isabelle Peretz at the University of Montreal has pioneered research into the disorder, devising a test which can diagnose whether people are likely to be amusic or not. In the test, two tunes are played which may be identical or may differ at a single point.

 

If the difference is a change in pitch, people with amusia will not spot it, even if the change is glaringly obvious, causing the tune to go out of key. Comics such as Les Dawson may have built a comedy career out of such musical blunders, but people with amusia just don't hear the joke.

 

Family affair

 

In the general population, there appears to be a great deal of variability in people's capacity to spot differences between tunes. The individual differences in this ability have been shown to be, in large part, genetically determined.

 

Denis Drayna, from the National Institute of Health in the United States, measured performance of identical twins (who share all their DNA) and non-identical twins (who share only half their DNA) on a test of musical listening.

 

He showed that the identical twins performed much more similarly on the test, and estimated that between 70% and 80% of the variability in performance can be accounted for by the genes.

 

 

The ability to differentiate is genetic

The recent surge of interest in amusia has started to de-stigmatise the condition and many sufferers have come forward to participate in the research. While a musical awakening is not on the immediate horizon, the participants take comfort from the finding that they are "not the only ones".

 

And as researchers learn more about what amusia sufferers can and can't perceive, there is always the possibility that this knowledge could help sufferers gain access to a musical world.

 

Just as deaf people learn to enjoy music through its vibrations, people with amusia may be able to choose their listening material according to their residual abilities.

 

Most amusia sufferers can hear rhythm in music, and most can dance. If the banging of Rachmaninov's piano concerto doesn't make it on to their iPod, perhaps some drum and bass could set their feet tapping.

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Originally posted by Hard Truth

Interesting........"Research indicates that people with amusia tend to become radio programmers or pop music A&R staff."

:)

Ha!

Though I wouldn't really wish the affliction on anyone, sometimes I think it would be great if the audiences I play for would have amusia....

"Okay, thank you, thank you. Since you liked it so well that time, we're going to play it for you again...Takin' Care of Business!".

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I know I can't sing in tune.

 

It's never stopped me.

 

 

And I'm only half kidding.

 

;)

 

________________

 

While most of us are sensitive to small changes in pitch, amusic people need two notes to be very far apart before they hear them as different. It's no surprise, then, that music, which tends to move in small steps, is literally "lost" on them.

 

 

That ABSOLUTELY describes me during the time I was trying to learn how to tune a guitar. (Long, long before affordable tuners.)

 

If a note was really distant from another note I could tell it was lower or higher. But if it was, say, less than a fifth... I could tell they were different pitches -- but I could NOT tell you which was high and which was low.

 

I broke A LOT of guitar strings. (And this time I'm absolutely not kidding.)

 

After a while I COULD tune a guitar from another (in tune) guitar -- but I could NOT tune a guitar from a pitch pipe. The notes could be dead on the money -- but because of the very different timbre I just couldn't hear it.

 

I had to use the "tuning track" on a how-to-play guitar record.

 

That was when I was 13 and even after I got to the point I could sort of tune -- and learned the 6 'main' chords of G major (and a couple others) and got so I could change positions fairly quickly, I never (until I tried again at 20, anyhow) got to a point where my playing sounded anything like, well, music to me.

 

[it may be worth noting that I was 'certified' as having "absolutely no musical talent whatsoever" by two different music educators when I was a kid. That hurt. But I do understand now why they decided that and, in the case of grade school band, why the 'triage' nature of it precluded wasting time on people like me.]

 

 

When I was 19 I started trying again. First I tried bass... but I had a lot of problems identifying the bass tracks on records (odd, since, even when I was 12, I amazed my music appreciation teacher by my unusal [in that class] ability to identify all but 2 of the standard orchestral instruments.)

 

I sort of had to relearn how to tune (and I broke a whole lot MORE strings doing so) but happily someone showed me how to use string harmonics as an aid. Within a couple years I got so I could tune a guitar from slack strings to within a whole note or two of pitch.

 

But after using A tuning forks for many years, I developed the ability to (usually) hear an accurate A-440 'in my head' (really a sort of hard-coded memory it feels like). Too bad I now tune my acoustic guitars down a half-step... ;) (I'm kidding about that being a problem.)

 

And in the 80s I got so I could pretty much tune a guitar straight across to pitch without using harmonics or fretting. (But I usually 'cheat' anyhow.)

 

One odd thing was that my tuning abilities often became 'confused' when I was in the presence of other guitarists... it sounds wildly unscientific, I understand, but my gut sense is that I somehow pick up the other folks' hearing of my string. If I'm alone, it's not a problem. If I'm with non-guitarists or tyros, it's not a problem. But sometimes I just feel like I'm hearing my guitar through other folks' ears. (Yes. That sounds very weird. I'm well grounded in science and scientific skepticism. I'm offering my impression of what's going on. Not a theory.)

 

Oddly, by the same token, I find that this phenomenon often helps when I'm actually performing. I almost always hear myself quite differently when I'm singing (especially) in front of others. It's not self-consciousness, per se, I don't think, since I'm highly self-conscious when I'm recording myself but never get this 'extended auditory experience' (let's call it). OTOH, several times when I participated in online concerts from the privacy of my little studio, I really had that sense of others listening. (Well, I did KNOW they were. Or at least they were logged on and PRETENDING to listen. :D ) Anyhow, I found that having an audience almost always helps my sense of my own performance and I usually enjoy it. (Except when they're screwing up their faces and looking around for things to throw at me.)

 

___________

 

Took the test. I got a score of 25... I think I could shave a couple of wrong answers off now that I've got a sense of what to listen for. A couple of the longer note sequences I found myself wishing I'd listened a little 'harder.'

 

But I guarantee you I would have scored far lower when I was a kid -- or after I'd been playing 5 or 6 years.

 

 

[Another issue I now feel was problematic for me was the issue of imprecise intervals in the even-tempered scale. Picking out melodies on a piano used to drive me crazy. And some chords -- particularly major 7ths on an even-tempered instrument drive me nuts. A true major 7th interval is so very different than how it works out in even-temperament. But that's probably for another day.]

 

 

 

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I was surprised I did as well as I did (even considering that deaf people would get an average score of 15 :D ) as I, too, am a bit fuddle-brained when it comes to remembering melodies.

 

Strangely, I think I sometimes have a good feel for melody and movement in my playing but my problem with improvisations has always been a lack of coherence and discipline (imagine). Perhaps that's why I've found myself over the years gravitating to incorporating more double stop work in my guitar lead improvs, since they tend to demand a bit more of a formal approach. Or disguise lack of coherence... ;)

 

 

Anyhow, I'm going to take it again in a week or so and see if I can't do a little better. (Don't worry, I couldn't remember the motif from the first movement of Beethoven's 5th for a week if I hadn't drilled it into my head after paid 3 weeks allowance for the LP in junior high. Sure wish I'd bothered to lisen to the 2nd and 3rd movements back then. That's where the money was. Ah well. Baby steps.)

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Hmm... guess I have very good relative pitch:

 

"Musical Listening Test

 

Thank you for your participation. You scored 30 out of 30.

 

A score of 30 is a perfect score; if you were randomly guessing you would get a score of around 15. Most people score somewhere in between. Depending on your score, we may wish to invite you to participate in further testing in the future."

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