asterroc ([personal profile] asterroc) wrote2007-08-10 12:14 pm
Entry tags:

"This won't tune!"

Test your sense of pitch. The quiz has 26 midi song clips, each around 10sec long. They come from US children's tunes, US patriotic songs, and Christmas carols. If you did not grow up in the US chances are you will have difficulty just b/c of familiarity w/ the songs. After you hear each, you have to pick whether it was played correctly, or incorrectly. I got 26/26 correct.

[identity profile] kadath.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm *shocked* that I got 26 out of 26. I even got the tunes I didn't know--they just sounded off.

[identity profile] zandperl.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Good work. I guess we're used to most songs being in major key or minor, not weird other keys, so if we hear a note that doesn't fit into that key, those of us w/ a sense of pitch can tell something's off. Except for accidentals at least. I knew all the songs, though sometimes I couldn't tell on the first listen b/c the notes were so off.

[identity profile] framefolly.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 04:39 pm (UTC)(link)
I, too -- got 100%. I guess it might be like color-blindness -- ppl who don't have it find it hard to imagine experiencing the world differently.

[identity profile] zandperl.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 05:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I took a voice class in college, around 10 students in the class, and at the start of the semester there was one student who was tone deaf. I was really curious what could be done with her, but she dropped the class before add/drop was done.

[identity profile] calzephyr77.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 05:23 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm glad you tickled by that link! On my first try I got 22 right, on the second, 25, which makes me wonder which one I got wrong!

I knew most of the songs, although there were a couple that were tricky. It's funny how "My Country Tis of Thee" sounds a lot like "God Save The Queen" :-)

[identity profile] kadath.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 05:31 pm (UTC)(link)
That's 'cause they're the same song. ;)

[identity profile] zandperl.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
That what I thought, but I wasn't sure.

[identity profile] calzephyr77.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL! I must look them up on Wikipedia now :-)

[identity profile] jrtom.livejournal.com 2007-08-10 10:33 pm (UTC)(link)
26/26.

What particularly surprised me is that there were duplicates of some of the songs--e.g., there was a right one and a wrong one of "Daisy, Daisy". (I don't know if everyone gets the same clips or if they're in the same order, but in my case they were #6 and #20.) Seems like this would taint the results somewhat; I know that I first marked #6 wrong because it didn't sound like what I remembered, even though it sounded 'right' in the sense of following the usual musical conventions.

[identity profile] zandperl.livejournal.com 2007-08-11 12:11 am (UTC)(link)
I noticed that as well, though I didn't take note of whether they were always right or wrong - I was speculating that maybe there were multiple "wrong" versions to help determine the extent of the person's poor pitch.

[identity profile] blahblahboy.livejournal.com 2007-08-12 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
25/26. Oops!

I thought #25 was missing a note (a passing note from A to F) from Auld Lang Syne.

If it was trying to trick you, it would never have though. It looks more like a test to figure out if people can hear and accept conventional (and non-conventional) chord progressions from one voice. Also, none of them seemed to have only one wrong note. They'd have several so you could pinpoint them. I'm sure if you had a II# => V => I progression, you could trick someone by changing it to ii => V => I (in other words, in C, the F# in the II# chord is substituted with an F natural).

[identity profile] zandperl.livejournal.com 2007-08-12 01:34 pm (UTC)(link)
*nods* it's really only testing for a *super* bad sense of pitch, not a kinda bad one.