Testing Tone Deafness

You probably shouldn’t do this one at work because it takes a full six minutes of concentration and silence—during which bizarre sounds are emitted from your speakers. Either that, or you need some headphones. Test your musical skills in 6 minutes! is a Flash-based test for tone-deafness / musical ear. It plays 30 pairs of musical sequences that may or may not differ in tone: that’s for you to decide. For the really bored, there is also Can’t dance? Test to see if you’re rhythmdeaf!, which tests your sense of differences in rhythm. And Measure your pitch perception abilities in three minutes! does just that.

Be patient; all the tests take some time to load. At the end, you get a percentage score and a position within the chart. Anything above 70% is considered very good; over 80% is exceptional and over 90% is world class.

I tried the tone-deaf test twice and got 80.6%, then 86.1%. The rhythm test I also tried twice and got 76% and 80%, which, if you’re keeping track at home, makes me exceptional on both counts. The pitch test measured me at being able to reliably detect a 5.1Hz difference in pitch, which makes me once again mortal; I didn’t try this again, as it was apparent that it would go much better with headphones. I highly recommend them.