While working at the music and neuroimaging lab at Beth Israel/Harvard Medical School in Boston, I developed a quick online way to screen for the tonedeafness. It actually turned out to be a pretty good test to check for overall pitch perception ability. The test is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct. Give it a try!
In our research, we were looking for neuro-anatomical correlates of tonedeafness (called "congenital amusia" in the scientific literature. We gave several dozen subjects a high-resolution MRI scan and used a statistical package to analyze the images. This technique, called VBM (voxel-based morphometry), has been used to study the changes in the brain caused by Alzheimer disease and many other neurological conditions. The test you are about to take was used as a screening test to roughly characterize patient’s pitch discrimination and musical memory abilities. Even though musical memory is strongly tested here, we have found that people who are tonedeaf tend to have normal musical memories.
About me:
I graduate from the university of massachusetts medical school in 2008, and will begin radiology residency after an internship in internal medicine. I am interested in applying radiological technology to brain tumor treatments, neurodegenerative diseases, and acute treatment of stroke. My medical school research at the music and neuroimaging laboratory at harvard medical school got me interested in brain function and music perception. Before I started medical school, I had a career as a musician, composing several electronic music albums under my own name. My fourth album has recently been finished and will be released soon (exciting anouncement coming soon about that). If you wish to contact me, you can find my contact info here.
Flash is necessary to take the tonedeaf test. It may take a few moments to load, please be patient.
After completing the test, your score will be automatically and anonymously submitted.
I've taken the test, now what?
1) Test your associative musical visual intelligence with my new test. A completely new way to measure an often overlooked aspect of intelligence: This test attempts to measure one's ability to associate musical phrases with abstract shapes and symbols.