Thanks, we'll call you...
December 1, 2016 9:12 AM   Subscribe

Is it possible for those who are tone-deaf to appreciate music or become better singers? Author and journalist Tim Falconer- a self-confessed “bad singer” — is one of only 2.5 percent of the population that has been afflicted with amusia (he is scientifically tone-deaf).

Bad Singer chronicles his quest to understand the brain science behind tone-deafness and to search for ways to retrain the adult brain.

Imagine that you deeply love music but are 'diagnosed' as verifiably tone-deaf. Would you doubt your ability to truly appreciate music? Could you improve your atrocious singing?
posted by I_Love_Bananas (63 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks to Oliver Sacks, I'm that guy who corrects people who claim to be tone deaf when they're actually not.

Looks like Falconer will be on The Nature of Things tonight (region restricted, though).

"Likely includes an embarrassing clip of me singing."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:23 AM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


I organized a library program at my old branch with Mr. Falconer last spring; it was very interesting and he seemed like a nice guy. He did a good job of explaining something that really can only be experienced. I mean, I listen to a *lot* of music, and something like this...

Perhaps the most powerful example of his tone deafness is when he listens to a version of REM’s “Losing My Religion” digitally shifted from minor to major key, and he notes that it sounds virtually the same as the original to him; the average listener would find the profoundly melancholy song suddenly cheerful in the altered version.

...is just unfathomable to me, in a way that someone being colour-blind is not.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:29 AM on December 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


Thanks to Oliver Sacks, I'm that guy who corrects people who claim to be tone deaf when they're actually not.

Doing the Lord's work. This enrages me, perhaps because I can barely sing at all, but have good aural skills for an amateur musician.
posted by thelonius at 9:34 AM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Is there a opposite of tone-deafness, something like tone-hyper-awareness? Because that's what I've got. If something's off-key, even in the background, it drives me nuts.
posted by gottabefunky at 9:49 AM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Tim Falconer also did an episode of the CBC Radio program Ideas on this subject a few years back: The Ballad of Tin Ears. It's a good listen.
posted by Johnny Assay at 9:49 AM on December 1, 2016


I wish there was a word for my particular thing. I'm not tone deaf, in fact I score high on tests for recognizing changes in musical sequences, but whatever the wiring is that allows you to reproduce music in your head when you sing does not work for me. I seriously cannot sing Happy Birthday in tune, when solo. Oddly, I *can* sing with other people and match their voice.

I usually shorthand it to 'tone deaf' when explaining to people why I don't do karaoke or whatever, if they don't recognize 'can't sing' as an option, but it'd be nice if there was an accepted phrase.
posted by tavella at 9:55 AM on December 1, 2016 [6 favorites]


(The problem with 'can't sing' is that a lot of people will respond to it with 'aw, you are just shy! everyone can sing!')
posted by tavella at 9:57 AM on December 1, 2016 [12 favorites]


Tim Falconer’s Singing Debut on Vimeo.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:59 AM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I never sing. I can't come anywhere near hitting the correct notes, let alone be on-key. I even avoid singing "Happy Birthday" at parties. But, I sure as hell enjoy music. Just don't ask me to hum it back to you accurately.

Occasionally, when playing games, I'll run into a puzzle where I have to reproduce musical tones or notes as they are played to unlock something. Unless it's almost spelled-out for me, I often just bail on the game at that point, because I just can't hear them right.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:00 AM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Amusia is no laughing matter.
posted by sensate at 10:04 AM on December 1, 2016 [12 favorites]


As a musician who gets a lot of pleasure from "bad" intervals, people often assume I'm tone deaf. I can tell these patterns clash and I'm dressing like a clown on purpose.

I'm convinced that people underestimate the degree to which these sorts of things can be learned. We expect years of wailing and nonsense before a human is a good public speaker, but give up within weeks on complex musical skills.
posted by idiopath at 10:13 AM on December 1, 2016 [10 favorites]


(The problem with 'can't sing' is that a lot of people will respond to it with 'aw, you are just shy! everyone can sing!')

When I first started dating my wife she would say that. She's a classically trained singer, sang with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus for many years, and kind of knows a thing or two about singing. After a couple of years she changed her attitude and would say "well, I guess maybe not everyone can sing."

I have no control over my voice. Well, very little. I can sing along to a few Red Hot Chili Peppers songs (really difficult to do, I'm sure) and I once nailed Here Comes The Sun while playing Rock Band. So I can occasionally get something right if I have a backing track and it's not too tough. Without something to sing along with, though, I'm hopeless.

I don't know how to describe what I experience musically and attempting to describe it almost always results in answers like "oh no, you just need more practice!" or "you just need to find the right note!" as if that's just something I can choose to do. I have been "practicing" for almost 30 years.

I know what i experience isn't tone deafness. Just the other day a friend sent me an online test and I was able to do things like tell which notes were higher and lower, or which notes match. It was a very easy test though, the notes were sign waves or something very simple.

I play guitar, but I am limited to playing only what is written down for me. I tell people I can't play by ear and I again get "it just takes practice!" but... no. I can't do it. It is very, very frustrating.

If I learn the chords to a song I can play along with people as long as we don't deviate from the progression. Add another chord or change out the order and I am lost. I often can't even tell that there's been a change.

God help me if someone says "Take it, Jim!" Even if you tell me the key of the song, even if I know one of the pentatonic positions in that key, I'm still lost. All I can basically do is play random notes in that scale with no sense of how things are going to sound.

I can't come up with the most simple of melodies. I have tried and cannot pick out Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on a piano.

Yet people will tell me I can. They'll tell me everyone can do it. They'll tell me I'm just not trying hard enough. I seriously want to punch these people in the face. I would never tell a color blind person that they can see the color red if they practice or try.

I have learned guitar strictly through learning where to put my fingers. And while I know the names of the notes and understand a small bit of theory that sometimes helps me learn things form a technical standpoint, I cannot play by sound. Again, I don't even really know how to describe what I mean by that. I know that if I play two frets up it's a whole step but I don't have any idea how it's gonna sound until I get there.

Yet I can often tell when my guitar is out of tune. I can't understand it.

It is amazingly frustrating and really ruins music for me in so many ways. I enjoy playing guitar but I feel so limited in what I can do.

I would give up a pinky toe in order to change this one thing about me.

Is there a opposite of tone-deafness, something like tone-hyper-awareness? Because that's what I've got. If something's off-key, even in the background, it drives me nuts.

Whatever it is, my wife has it. One time I was playing along with a backing track where the instruments were all tuned down a half step. I was unaware of this and I was just playing how I normally play, in normal tuning, a half step off, and my wife stormed into the room screaming "YOU'RE IN THE WRONG KEY PLEASE FIX IT YOU'RE DRIVING ME INSANE!"
posted by bondcliff at 10:21 AM on December 1, 2016 [18 favorites]


While I believe people who say that they really are tone deaf, I'm a bit skeptical that amusia is actually congenital. For example, in this study they've only ensured that the subjects had:

(ii) music lessons during childhood, to ensure exposure to music in a timely fashion; (iii) a history of musical failure that goes back as far as they could remember, to increase the likelihood that the disorder is inborn;

What if the exposure wasn't actually early enough? What if it was poor quality exposure? Etc. etc.
posted by kitcat at 10:31 AM on December 1, 2016


Thanks to this post I found a theme song for Inauguration 2017.
posted by maggieb at 10:37 AM on December 1, 2016


"I never sing. I can't come anywhere near hitting the correct notes, let alone be on-key. I even avoid singing "Happy Birthday" at parties."

As someone with a semi-trained ear, let me assure you, "Happy Birthday" at a party never *has* a key.
posted by floppyroofing at 10:48 AM on December 1, 2016 [14 favorites]


So odd to me. And that 2.5% of the population is that way; I would have guessed much lower.

I'm one of the 0.1 (0.01) % with perfect pitch. It made 'drop the needle' exams in music school, and theory classes, trivially easy, like -- "what is the color on the wall?"
posted by Dashy at 10:52 AM on December 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


0.1 (0.01) %

Do you know which it is?
posted by thelonius at 11:00 AM on December 1, 2016


Clearest proof for me that I have pretty good relative pitch, but damn sure don't have perfect pitch: last time I put strings on a guitar, I tuned it up to my memory of what guitars sound like. OK! Played happily for a while, then eventually played along to a recording of something and found that I had tuned to E flat, not E. (Which a lot of people do, maybe I should too, if that's what sounded right to me).
posted by thelonius at 11:03 AM on December 1, 2016


Ooooh I have that thing where I can hear things just fine, but can't reproduce for shit. I finally figured out that, for me, I think the problem is auditory memory. Mine is terrible. And it goes beyond music -- words or names that are new to me take a weirdly long time to gel in my brain as sounds; I remember them visually. If I don't have a visual representation of the new thing there is no chance it will stick. Plus I have difficulty with auditory processing -- it overloads me very, very quickly (do not give me spoken direction while driving, I will lose my mind), and I have great difficulty parsing things.

I think I probably can train my brain to improve these things, but somewhere along the way I figured out that other musical issues -- with rhythm, particularly -- had more to do with the sense of disembodiment that can come with PTSD and chronic pain. So that's the first project.

Bodies are weird and amazing.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:05 AM on December 1, 2016 [7 favorites]


Do you know which it is?

Sorry, I didn't mean that to sound so demanding. Just curious.

This article says 1 in 10,000 people have it: that's .01%
posted by thelonius at 11:06 AM on December 1, 2016


I have an ex who would be able to sing along to music that was playing... just not in the same key. He loved doing karaoke, so I'd sit at the bar table closest to him and motion my hand down until he hit the correct key.

He was internally consistent! Just consistently like a half key higher than the music. (That was actively playing, I stress.)
posted by XtinaS at 11:08 AM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


"Is there a opposite of tone-deafness, something like tone-hyper-awareness? Because that's what I've got. If something's off-key, even in the background, it drives me nuts."

I'd say perfect pitch, though I don't have that, just excellent relative pitch, and it still drive's me crazy if things are out of tune relatively, (pitchy).
posted by jetsetsc at 11:10 AM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Whereas I have trouble listening to the power-on tinkly sound of our washer/dryer because the final note is just barely not right and it drives me absolutely bonkers.
posted by XtinaS at 11:15 AM on December 1, 2016 [5 favorites]


I was unaware of this and I was just playing how I normally play, in normal tuning, a half step off, and my wife stormed into the room screaming "YOU'RE IN THE WRONG KEY PLEASE FIX IT YOU'RE DRIVING ME INSANE!"

Could she hear the backing track, too? Having the melody be a half step off the backing is actually musically about the wrongest.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:40 AM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Could she hear the backing track, too? Having the melody be a half step off the backing is actually musically about the wrongest.

Oh yes.

There's a video out there of Van Halen playing Jump when Eddie's guitar is a half step off and he doesn't notice it and they play the whole song that way. That was me.

That A-Ha video sounds mostly fine to my ears. I can tell the chorus is off somehow but if I didn't already know something was up I'd think the verses were just fine.
posted by bondcliff at 11:48 AM on December 1, 2016


In the choir I sing in, we sometimes need to drop certain pieces a whole step or half-step lower. Looking at sheet music in one key and singing in another is VERY hard for me. It's just not right!!!
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 11:48 AM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Huh, so does this affect the manner in which the amusical speak? Do these folks also have trouble differentiating the voices of others, say over the telephone?

In my skim of the study, it seems some folks also experience a similar issue with rhythm. I wonder about how they might speak as well...
posted by Matt Oneiros at 12:20 PM on December 1, 2016


He was internally consistent! Just consistently like a half key higher than the music.

This. Ever so entirely, this.

What we need is an audio-processing plugin like AutoTune that simulates your own internal head reverb and pitch shift, so that you can dial in an output that sounds like what you sound like inside your head. (aka "Why does my voice sound so stupid on a recording?"). AutoTune might actually be able to do this, come to think of it. Applying a (relatively) constant offset shouldn't be too much work.

I suspect a large part of choral training (not that I've had any) is basically just training yourself to compensate for this pitch shift.
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 12:21 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Internal pitch shift? Is there really such a thing?
posted by floppyroofing at 12:27 PM on December 1, 2016


I cannot play by sound

For some people, playing by sound is instantly as easy as repeating words after somebody. I do not know how they accomplish such voodoo.

I do know that part of the Royal Conservatory of Music examinations is based on aural pitch and interval identification. And I know that that was a skill that I had to work very hard to develop (especially since I also struggled with musical theory). I know that being able to repeat a song after hearing it twice is much harder than, say, identifying a diminished 7th, but I am confident that had I stuck with the mind numbing practice (listen to note, guess note, ad nauseum) I could have gotten there.

I also know that I have lost pretty much all of my aural id skills in the decades since I stopped playing piano (God dammit my parents are right that I regret that decision).

So what I am saying is that while I understand that it's built on abilities that a person might lack, I have always considered playing by ear to be a learnable skill for the non-tone deaf. I wonder why that isn't the case.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:30 PM on December 1, 2016


Internal pitch shift? Is there really such a thing?

Ever notice you sound different on recordings from how you sounded to yourself? My understanding is this is due to the sound taking a different path to your ears when played back vs. originating in your neck.
posted by Matt Oneiros at 12:36 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also also, for that hot second I had to take a music theory class I discovered I was actually quite good at writing it, even though I had no idea what it would sound like, just that it would sound good. Math and symmetries, man.
posted by schadenfrau at 12:36 PM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


I have always considered playing by ear to be a learnable skill for the non-tone deaf.

I have been trying for 30 years, including a year of guitar lessons and another year of banjo lessons. He'd play three notes in a row and I could only repeat them if he showed me each note he was playing. Even if he showed me the first note I still couldn't figure out the second note.

I'm still hoping it is learnable. I'm still hoping that in 30 years I've somehow neglected to learn the one piece of information that would make it possible for me to do this.

There is no skill I would rather have than to be able to have any kind of a musical ear.

I often wonder if it's related to ADD. Like I just can't pay attention enough. I dunno.
posted by bondcliff at 12:42 PM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


Hmm, timely.
I was thinking of posting an AskMe about this very thing. I am a terrible singer and so never ever sing.
My wife is an excellent singer (and often doesn't sing because she'll show other people up) but some of her friends are up and coming prize winning opera singers and they are basically magical creatures who can defy the laws of physics with their voices.
Also, they've been training obsessively for years and years. More than I trained to become an engineer, more than doctors train.
So I was wondering what, if anything, could be done to take me from crime against humanity singing up to normal.
I don't think I'm tone deaf.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 12:42 PM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


tavella , I think you're talking about audiation.

I suspect that proficient musicians are great audiators, have better than normal pitch perception, have a better than normal sense of rhythm, and have developed whatever psychomotor skills it takes (vocal flexibility, manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination, etc.) to produce music on their chosen instrument. If they can also translate an internal state into musical expression, they're artists. I've spent all my adult life with one. My musical expertise, however, stops with being able to sing lullabies and Christmas carols in tune, if the listener isn't too fussy about key and meter.
posted by angiep at 12:42 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


last time I put strings on a guitar, I tuned it up to my memory of what guitars sound like. OK! Played happily for a while, then eventually played along to a recording of something and found that I had tuned to E flat, not E.

It's entirely possible that you were tuned to E at the beginning, and the strings ended up closer to E-flat as they stretched during the first bit of playing.
posted by mitabrev at 12:46 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Huh, so does this affect the manner in which the amusical speak? Do these folks also have trouble differentiating the voices of others, say over the telephone?"

And I wonder if amusicality is rarer in languages like Mandarin, where pitch and inflection are so important.

edit: Nope. apparently it is just as common:

"Our results show that speakers of tone languages such as Mandarin may experience musical
pitch disorder despite early exposure to speech-relevant pitch contrasts. The observed association between the musical disorder and lexical tone difficulty indicates that the pitch disorder as defining congenital amusia is not specific to music or culture but is rather general in nature."
posted by jetsetsc at 12:47 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sounds are perceived to be shifted lower in frequency when transmitted through a denser medium as the speed of sound is faster in a denser medium; perhaps you've heard a sound recorded underwater? Your head is basically liquid and solid; and hopefully not much gas and air.

This sound from your vocal cords via direct conduction will get to your eardrum slightly faster than the vibrating air coming around your head from the outside, or bouncing off nearby objects.

so.. pitch-shift down, probably with a "bass boost" EQ; then slightly delay the dry signal... hmm.

.... but this is straying off topic...
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 12:48 PM on December 1, 2016


I do know that part of the Royal Conservatory of Music examinations is based on aural pitch and interval identification.

And apropos of nothing, in writing up my comment I remembered that part of why I hated ear test practice was that you needed another person*, and I realized that this Internet Age must have an App for That™. But not wanting to fiddle with apps I figured I'd settle for what must be one of thousands of such videos on YouTube and I was not disappointed. So if you all want to learn what my middle school hell was like, here you go.

*at least in the actual exam, the examiner wouldn't tell you if you were wrong like my piano teacher always did (which, you know, was her job as a teacher but also the worst).
posted by sparklemotion at 12:50 PM on December 1, 2016


"Ever notice you sound different on recordings from how you sounded to yourself? My understanding is this is due to the sound taking a different path to your ears when played back vs. originating in your neck."

Sure, I can easily believe that this would affect the tone quality. But the fundamental pitch, no.

"This sound from your vocal cords via direct conduction will get to your eardrum slightly faster than the vibrating air coming around your head from the outside"

So there are different latencies, but not different frequencies. A permanent drop in the frequency would require that the entire sound be stretched out to take longer--so the latency would be constantly increasing. That's the doppler effect. Fancy DSP can approximate pitch shift without stretching time (I guess by converting small samples to the frequency domain, shifting, then converting back?), but I doubt there's a simple way to get that effect otherwise. Am I missing something?
posted by floppyroofing at 1:05 PM on December 1, 2016


It's entirely possible that you were tuned to E at the beginning, and the strings ended up closer to E-flat as they stretched during the first bit of playing.

I don't think they slipped that much - I strech them a lot when restringing, like until they stay stable
posted by thelonius at 1:05 PM on December 1, 2016


And apropos of nothing, in writing up my comment I remembered that part of why I hated ear test practice was that you needed another person*, and I realized that this Internet Age must have an App for That™.

Sure, there are a bunch. I use Tenuto, which also has free training on their site (more here).
posted by thelonius at 1:09 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


Whereas I have trouble listening to the power-on tinkly sound yt of our washer/dryer because the final note is just barely not right and it drives me absolutely bonkers.

OH MY GOD I thought I was the only one. I can't stand it! I also have an LG oven and its "oven preheated" chime does the same thing.
posted by Daily Alice at 1:15 PM on December 1, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm in the same position as Just this guy, y'know. I would love, love, love, love, love to be able to sing in public without cringing. I have a good enough sense of intonation to know that I am not always hitting the correct note, but apparently I am unable to correct myself and sing with tbe proper internation. Dear musicians and musical educators of MetaFilter, is there any help for us? I'd be most appreciative of any suggestions.
posted by LeftMyHeartInSanFrancisco at 1:15 PM on December 1, 2016 [4 favorites]


"I have been trying for 30 years, including a year of guitar lessons and another year of banjo lessons."

I took years of piano lessons and they didn't work on this sort of skill at all. So that sounds normal. Instrument teachers don't necessarily cover aural skills.

"He'd play three notes in a row and I could only repeat them if he showed me each note he was playing. Even if he showed me the first note I still couldn't figure out the second note."

Again, sounds totally normal. That exercise--play a note, hear a second note, name the second one--is basically the same as learning to recognize intervals. For adults, learning to recognize intervals takes daily practice (a few minutes?) over a period of weeks to months. It's the sort of thing they'd drill in an intro music/theory class, I think? I've gone through this long ago, but I'm not an educator, so take this with a grain of salt.

If you just want an app, Functional Ear Trainer v2 is a simple one.
posted by floppyroofing at 1:22 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


While I believe people who say that they really are tone deaf, I'm a bit skeptical that amusia is actually congenital. For example, in this study they've only ensured that the subjects had:

(ii) music lessons during childhood, to ensure exposure to music in a timely fashion; (iii) a history of musical failure that goes back as far as they could remember, to increase the likelihood that the disorder is inborn;

What if the exposure wasn't actually early enough? What if it was poor quality exposure? Etc. etc.


There's a lot to be said for your point of view, kitcat:
Scientists have discovered an unusual tip for parents who want their little darlings to grow up to be musical geniuses - teach them Mandarin Chinese.

Psychologists at the University of California in San Diego found that children who learnt Mandarin as babies were far more likely to have perfect pitch - the ability to name or sing a musical note at will - than those raised to speak English. Perfect pitch, though common among the great composers, is extremely rare in Europe and the US, where just one in 10,000 is thought to have the skill.

Diana Deutsch, who led the research, believes the explanation lies in the different use of tones in the two languages. While the meaning of English words does not change with tone, the same is not true for Mandarin and other tonal languages, such as Vietnamese, Thai, and other Chinese dialects.

For example, in Mandarin, the word ma has four meanings. Depending on tone, it can mean mother, horse, hemp, or be a reproach.

Professor Deutsch discovered the connection when she tested first-year students from the prestigious Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, all of whom spoke Mandarin, and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, who all spoke English.

Each of the students was asked to name 36 notes played at random from a keyboard. The researchers found that of the students who began music lessons between the ages of four and five, 14% of Americans had perfect pitch, compared with 60% of Chinese. When children began music lessons later in life, their chances of having perfect pitch dropped dramatically.
. . .
Is there a opposite of tone-deafness, something like tone-hyper-awareness? Because that's what I've got. If something's off-key, even in the background, it drives me nuts.

This bears obliquely on something I've been thinking about for a long time, gottabefunky.

Some native Chinese speakers of my acquaintance seem to have a much greater tolerance than I do for clattery background noise, perhaps even a preference for it, and your remark has me wondering whether they might like it for the very reasons I don't -- because for them it masks tones that would evoke a perception of speech where none is taking place; whereas for me, clattering, staccato noise often hovers just on the threshold of intelligibility as speech, and drives me crazy.

I've also often wondered how often schizophrenics and others hear voices which are largely or exclusively singing, though the phenomenon is certainly not unheard of.

I also wonder whether there is -- or could be -- a sign language equivalent of singing.
posted by jamjam at 1:26 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I also wonder whether there is -- or could be -- a sign language equivalent of singing.

Well, there's a gestural mapping of Solfege names for pitches, called the Kodaly method ...
posted by Xyanthilous P. Harrierstick at 1:42 PM on December 1, 2016


Whereas I have trouble listening to the power-on tinkly sound of our washer/dryer because the final note is just barely not right and it drives me absolutely bonkers.

I actually really love that your washer jingle is microtonal, and furthermore it makes me giggle to imagine what ringtones and appliance jingles would sound like in the world imagined by the Second Viennese School wherein children grew up listening to pantonal music and had the same intuitive relationship with it that we mostly have with tonal music. Like some jagged Webernian motif sounds out of nowhere and everyone around is like "UGH so tired of that cloying default iPhone ringtone"
posted by invitapriore at 1:59 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am unable to distinguish between slight changes in pitch (perhaps a note or two) and changes in volume. I know that something has changed but can't quite determine what in similar fashion to the moment between when you run into someone you haven't seen in a few weeks and before you realize that they've changed their hairstyle. In those few instances where I attempt to sing I interchange the two again, rising in pitch when I intend to crescendo and vice versa. I simply tell people that I'm partially tone-deaf.

As I get older I find that I also have a harder time distinguishing the exact direction that a sound originates from. I suspect that the two are related.
posted by dances with hamsters at 2:14 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


angiep: tavella , I think you're talking about audiation.

Hmm. The problem is, I can recall and replay the music in my head fine. I can mentally sing Happy Birthday to myself and it will sound just fine (I wouldn't say I have a particularly *vivid* auditory recall and replay ability, but for simple melodies I'm fine). I just can't reproduce that vocally without wandering off key even on the simplest melodies.

Yet if I'm singing *with* people, and as long who I'm singing with is in my range, I can reasonably smoothly match my voice to theirs. I don't know that I sound great, but I'm staying with them and not wandering, and you get that nice vibration you get when voices are in harmony.

Whatever paths in the brain that handle ear to mouth, those work. Whichever paths handle auditory recreation to mouth, there seems to be a defect. Which I wish had a recognized name so I could stop falling back on 'tone-deaf'.
posted by tavella at 2:35 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


If I don't have a visual representation of the new thing there is no chance it will stick. Plus I have difficulty with auditory processing -- it overloads me very, very quickly (do not give me spoken direction while driving, I will lose my mind), and I have great difficulty parsing things.

Same here. I see names rather than remember how they sound. And I can't listen to audiobooks; I get distracted by something visual and literally lose the plot. Non-fiction--something unscripted like a chatty podcast--is fine, but any kind of narrative is hard for me to listen to. I'm a reader.

For me I can sing at a certain pitch, like a tenor, so in other words easy songs. But my voice just won't make those higher sounds, no matter how I will it. Or rather, I make those sounds, but ...they don't sound pleasing.
posted by zardoz at 3:29 PM on December 1, 2016


whatever the wiring is that allows you to reproduce music in your head when you sing does not work for me. I seriously cannot sing Happy Birthday in tune, when solo. Oddly, I *can* sing with other people and match their voice.

This is me! Only it's an issue with my voice specifically, because I can totally pick out that vocal line on guitar while the backing track plays, and then sing along to that. But backing track and just expect me to sing? I'll be all over the place.
posted by Dysk at 3:35 PM on December 1, 2016


Perhaps the most powerful example of his tone deafness is when he listens to a version of REM’s “Losing My Religion” digitally shifted from minor to major key, and he notes that it sounds virtually the same as the original to him

That's fascinating, I wonder what film scores sound like to him. Is it all just non-emotional background music apart from whether it's energetic or slow, or do the chord progressions still produce a feeling?
posted by lucidium at 4:05 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


What tavella describes is exactly what I experience. I have a terrible time learning to speak other languages because of it. People will say, "make this sound" or "say it like this" and I'll just stare blankly. I can hear it in my head but I have no clue how to make the sound in my head come out of my mouth. I started taking music lessons for the first time in my 40s and after a while I could identify notes and play them on my instrument. But vocally? I'd basically just be making a random sound and hoping it was right.
posted by atropos at 7:21 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I also have a terrible time with languages, while my sister and brother both are excellent singers (my brother has something close to perfect pitch and my sister was all-county chorus and the like) and very good at languages. So I think it's probably closely related wiring and genetics.
posted by tavella at 7:41 PM on December 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


My wife's a really good amateur singer...no training, but she can still sing all kinds of songs and just seems to effortlessly pick up keys and sing in them (although she says she can't harmonize very well). She also has an amazing capacity for memorizing song lyrics, even for tunes she hasn't heard in years; she'll just start singing along to deep cuts from albums she had in high school, while I often can't completely memorize songs I've heard probably hundreds of times.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:55 PM on December 1, 2016


Hmm. The problem is, I can recall and replay the music in my head fine. I can mentally sing Happy Birthday to myself and it will sound just fine (I wouldn't say I have a particularly *vivid* auditory recall and replay ability, but for simple melodies I'm fine). I just can't reproduce that vocally without wandering off key even on the simplest melodies.

Yet if I'm singing *with* people, and as long who I'm singing with is in my range, I can reasonably smoothly match my voice to theirs.


I think you're overestimating others abilities; this sounds perfectly normal to me, even for a lot of professional musicians.

In my skim of the study, it seems some folks also experience a similar issue with rhythm.

In my experience most people experience a similar, if not much worse, issue with rhythm. Most people can somewhat work their way around a melody, but ignore the timing, and I'm amazed at listening to a group of people try to clap on the beat, much less anything more complicated. It even seems to confound some professional musicians, but I'm not here to insult orchestra players.

I finally figured out that, for me, I think the problem is auditory memory.


Good phrase. I'm not a great musician, or even a good one, but I can hear music in my head from 20-30 years ago. But until recently, I believe in a MF discussion, I didn't realize that when people say they picture something in their mind they actually saw something. I always took that as a colorful phrase.

I'm completely fascinated lately with how people process information differently.
posted by bongo_x at 10:37 PM on December 1, 2016 [2 favorites]


I'm a pretty bad singer, and I wanted to get better, so I started taking voice lessons. For some reason, this surprises a lot of people. Maybe because people hear "voice lessons" and think you only take voice lessons if you're already a good singer.

But I figure it's a skill like anything else which you can improve if you work on it. And I think a lot about something one of my old basketball coaches used to say: "Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect." Or, in other words, I think you have to practice the right things in the right way in order to improve, and I've always found that easier with a teacher to guide me.

So by pure luck, I found an amazing teacher and I spent all of last year working hard but feeling like I wasn't making much progress. But I'm ridiculously stubborn, so I've kept at it and this fall some things started to click into place. My goal is to get to a point where I can sing in a choir, and I can see that happening in the next year or so. Anyway, if you can't sing or would like to sing better, go find a voice teacher. It's really amazing what you can learn.
posted by colfax at 3:32 AM on December 2, 2016 [8 favorites]


Unfortunately I've pretty much stuffed my vocal register due to bad lifestyle choices but I can still sing pitched way down low. I can pick out a tune with one finger on a keyboard fairly easily.

I've noticed something similar to not being able to hit a musical note with some people during rehearsals for plays (not musicals) where they're emphasising the wrong word and the director says no, try it like this (tum te TUM te tum) and they just can't get it (TUM te tum te tum). The director will repeat it, they'll do it again and they'll be sure that they've got it but they haven't. It's weird to hear when you're not the one being directed because it seems so obvious but apparently it's not all the time.
posted by h00py at 6:51 AM on December 2, 2016


The younger you are, and to the more malleable your brain is, the better chance you have of overcoming difficulty in singing back pitches that you hear.

One of the things that saddens me the most about early childhood education in the US is there there's so little communal singing going on. If your school is lucky enough to even have a general music program, you might have a class every few weeks. In my parochial primary school, our class sang probably ten-fifteen minutes a day, and at Thursday Chapel we had at least as many hands as a regular church service. In my children's choir, we had ear-training sessions with small groups, building intervals and tonal patterns into melodies.

When I started training as a general music teacher, one of the first things our bitter, burned-out instructors told us was that there were all kinds of great things we could do to keep very young children from growing up into teens who write themselves off as non singers, but that it was highly unlikely we would have enough opportunity to use them.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:52 AM on December 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


at Thursday Chapel we had at least as many hands as a regular church service.

Unfortunately, we had no training whatsoever in not missing the edit window. The word "hands" above should have been "hymns." We weren't singing in American Sign Language or using Kodaly/Curwen hand signs.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:50 PM on December 2, 2016


Do you know which it is? ..

This article says 1 in 10,000 people have it: that's .01%


I don't know, and that's why I elided over an exact figure - reports vary.

Upthread, someone cited teens-percent of music students, which is interesting, but - not my experience. I went to pretty large music school for undergrad, and I would think that if teens-percent of music students had perfect pitch, they would have created another set of theory and literature classes. For anyone with pp, those classes are meaninglessly easy. But out of hundreds of music majors, I was the only one I knew with it.

I'm a neuroscientist by trade now, and while it isn't close to my subfield, I do follow a bit of the perfect pitch literature. In short, we have no idea how it arises. And the studies are small - I think they have problems finding enough subjects, even in cities with major symphonies.

For those who asked how to improve pitch production - I think a good intermediate step is to imagine the steps between notes (mentally sing abcdef when trying to go from a to f), or mentally produce the underlying chord (so a,c,f when trying to do that same jump in the key of F, for example).
posted by Dashy at 7:20 AM on December 3, 2016


This is all fascinating, and the interval/ear training apps linked above are going to come in very handy, so thanks, all.

I've got a good ear, and play the piano, and can play by ear as well (only the melody; of you want multiple parts you're looking a lot of repeat-every-few-seconds and slow transcription.) I've been a decent singer since high school. But I only became a better singer since I joined my present choir, and a good singer only since I started taking voice lessons. I'm with colfax—it's amazing what you can learn in terms of self-awareness and control.

But that sounds like only my mechanics improved. The fact is, my ear improved as well. I could tell if people were obviously out of tune, but a little sharp/a little flat was hard for me to detect, even in my own voice. Then I became a section leader and had to serve as Ear Extenders for the chorusmaster. All he can hear is "second soprano is a bit sharp." I'm the one who has to figure out which second soprano.

A year of intense concentration during practice, and I got much better, including hearing when I was ever so slightly out of tune as well.

I'd also like to recommend an app: Soundcorset. It's got metronome and tuner functions, but on the tuner screen you can hit a symbol that looks like it's a group of migrating geese. This takes you to a real-time-ish spectrum analyzer. You can sung into it and see how steady you keep the pitch, how accurate your jumps are, etc.
posted by seyirci at 11:45 AM on December 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


« Older Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and...   |   Zooming down alleyways in China. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments