Are you tone deaf? Take this quiz.

[Chris Reesor]

From what I understand, someone who is profoundly tone deaf can't tell one pitch from another at all.
Apparently not very common, and one would expect rather rare in the ranks of musicians, let alone steel players.
I think hearing damage can affect pitch perception in ranges where the loss is severe. Any other tinnitus sufferers care to comment on this?
Oliver Sacks' book Musicophilia has some interesting case studies and observations that could be enlightening here. It is a good read in any case.

[Ian Worley]

Thanks for the tip Chris, I just read the description for Musicophilia, it sounds like a fascinating book. Going to check it out.

In addition to the tinnitus I have some high frequency hearing loss, but this is mainly in the range of overtones and harmonics, not fundamental tones. So my experience of sound is certainly not as rich as it was when I was young and could still hear 18kHz, but it doesn't seem to affect my ability to hear fundamental tones clearly in the frequency range of common musical instruments. I do have a gap between ~7k-7.7k where the perceived volume of test tones drops noticeably, it comes back, then pretty much disappears to nothing above about ~10kHz.

The tinnitus ring is a much lower frequency, it's right around 5kHz, a D#8. For reference, the highest note on a 22 fret six string guitar is D6, 1175Hz, the highest note on a piano is C8, 4186Hz. If I play D# chord on my guitar in a quiet room I can definitely hear the harmonic agreement with the ring, but for the most part I don't notice it when playing, it doesn't make other frequencies seem out of tune.

For others with tinnitus who may be interested, you can find the frequency of the ring(s) with this tool: http://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/

[Charlie McDonald]

10/10 at 5c is pretty darn good Charlie, if you can do that consistently you have some finely-tuned ears!

No more than many, or some. Surely I've told the story: tuning for Brubeck after the piano was delivered cold, he played an A and told the orchestra,
"It's a little sharp" and that it would be in tune by the evening. I measured it after rehearsal, and it was 2 c. sharp.
Of course, it was the A he's used to hearing all the time.

The test (is it really scientific, or entertainment?) would be suitably harder if given one tone and then a separate one rather than sliding into it.

Musicophelia is highly recommended, an enjoyable read for any musician (or anyone else); Sachs was a musician himself.

[Paul Sutherland]

I took the test a second time. I paid attention to each answer and clearly noted that I got two wrong. But in the end they said I got 31 out of 32. What's up with that?

I can't help but wonder if this hearing test is really not about hearing at all. This is from the Psychology Department.

[b0b]

[Aaron Johnson]

Well it finally started to work with FF.

I failed compared to all of you.... The first time through I used studio monitors and scored 22/32 at 1.2 sec. The second time I used headphones and scored 25/32 at 1.1 sec. I guessed on all of the close ones. My wife says I can't sing to pitch to save my life and I enjoy the PSG because I can slide in between notes. It seems I may be tuned differently than most of you

They posted a link to a 20 minutes study and I plan on taking it when I haven't had a beer and have time to focus on it. Wish me luck!

[Jerry Horch]

32 of 32...with tinnitus.

[Johnie King]

Tone deaf is a myth right. But how about a person who has perfect pitch wouldn’t they here tones better than the average listener.

[Jim Smith]

It will not download.

Takes a while to start up, and it requires a modern browser (uses HTML5).

I've tried it twice and get no sound at all! This is on Windows 10 64 bit with the newest security update and the newest Chrome 72 64 bit. What am I missing?

[Bobby Nelson]

I got 27 out of 32 also bob - better than 45% of the pop. I honestly missed one, guessed at maybe 2 more and my trigger finger missed the rest of them for me.

[Steven Pearce]

[Clark Doughty]

30 of 32

[Dave Meis]

Couldn't make it work with my iPad.. no keypad available on the site....

[Jim Cohen]

31 of 32.

A few of them were just slightly out of tune, nothing near a half step, nor even a quarter step. Those were the tough ones...