Talk:Tone deafness

Need A Standard
There must be a study done somewhere of how accurately people can discriminate between different pitches. Then "tone deafness" could be defined as being below, say, the 0.1 percentile on the histogram. Does anyone know of such a study? 99.105.233.207 (talk) 18:06, 24 April 2012 (UTC)Duncan

Merge with amusia?
I'm no expert on this topic, but judging from what I've read and the fact that the introductions states that tone-deafness is also known as "amusia", surely tone-deafness should be a subsection of amusia, if it isn't in fact already covered in that page.
 * Tone deafness is, according to the amusia article, synoymous with congenital amusia, as opposed to acquired amusia. I have tagged the appropriate section in the amusia article with a link to this article. However, this does only make sense if this article has more comprehensive information than the section in amusia. The amusia article contains a lot of pertinent information such as discovery, diagnosis, etc. that is not found here, therefore a merger makes much more sense. Andreas  (T) 01:03, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Style Issues
Can you please make this article easy to read and understand? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 158.135.11.6 (talk) 21:37, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

the entire topic is entire bullshit. because anyone who can hear can tell the difference of pitches, even if he has a cochlear implant. When you sing and try to hit a note, your voice will naturally fluctuate in the frequency range of more of an fourth than a semi-tone. so it will always depend on your subjective impression whether the singer hit the note. dynamics adapt throughout the frequency spectrum, and you won't be able to tell whether he took the note from the middle, above or below. Equalizers compensate for that. When i try to tune my guitar, it's usually 5 cents off. I can tell I hear it at 7 cent. however, even guitar strings fluctuate. if you press harder, bend a little, or pluck harder. Even there, it's hard to tell whether it's perfectly in tune. but there's a neat trick to figure out whther you're in tune: resonance: sing along with the tuned pitch of a string, and the string will start to swing, too. The better it fits, the louder. Es heißt nicht "Schwebungen", sondern "Resonanz". However, it doesn't matter. As long as it ain't more than 45 cent off. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.200.148.2 (talk) 09:34, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I have a suspiscion that APHASIA may be somehow or in some cases related to this. I'd also (while im here) like to point out the obvious that we do not hear with our ears. Nothing needs to be amiss with what's inside, either (though I'm pretty sure some conditions could) but we DON"t knOW eNOuGh about our brains (the brain, if you prefer!) we don't know enough about our brains. But enough to know that the Temporal Lobes for example PROCESS in the sense of COMPREHending sounds. (capitals for my Benefit.) And Speech. And sound as a sense is also a memory source - we have sensory memory - so if you met me last week and we got on really well and we see each other on Monday and don't know your name or remember what we talked about - one of my senses my be incapacitated, rather than my intellect. I def. think this has something to do with Aphasia. - Yashi — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.101.78.186 (talk) 10:12, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

POV
POV issues, or at least my POVs: Hyacinth 21:30, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Musical ability is a species-specific characteristic or at least a species wide activity.
 * Thus people with normal hearing (the ability to discriminate pitch) and no musical training and are unable to sing in tune are not tone deaf.
 * Tone deafness is not the opposite of absolute pitch, but seemingly the lack of relative pitch (or, rather, part of the pitch discrimination skill that is lacking)
 * I'm not sure if there is such a thing as a "musical disability". If that is not a common term or concept then it should not be used.

I'm not so much worried about the POV of this article - though the tone (no pun intended) does seem a bit condescending at times - I'm disputing the truth of what the article says. Several things seem to be totally mis-labeled and mis-defined.

Tone deaf is analogous to deaf deaf, and refers to what a person can hear or discern, not what he can vocalize. What this article discusses might be properly labeled "tone dumb," because it's analogous to people who are dumb (not meaning stupid, but in the original sense of inability to speak.) Someone with (passive) absolute pitch could still theoretically be "tone dumb" and unable to carry a tune. And of course tones can sound quite different to the speaker/singer (coming from within their body) than they do to others.

A tone deaf person is one who can't tell if someone else is singing out of tune, or who couldn't tell that he was singing out of tune if his voice was played back to him.

So yeah - I'd say this article should either be totally re-written or deleted. Maybe the vocal parts of it could be relabeled and moved to a "tone dumb" article?...

As for the inability to play musical instruments - well that's just something that people don't know - I guess you could call that "musically illiterate" (analagous to "computer illiterate.")

--Blackcats 07:20, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

PS - Here's some links to how several dictionaries define it:



Maybe the article could mention how some people confuse it with "tone dumbness."

--Blackcats 07:32, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Couldn't think last night, but this morning I realized what I was trying to remember was from John Blacking's How Musical Is Man? [sic]. In my opinion the main POV issue is that the article treats music only as performance, while musical ability most definitely includes audition, discrimination, and labelling and performing. Hyacinth 08:15, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

As of 06:36, 29 January 2009, this article seems to intertwine two competing POV: pitch recognition is a skill that can be learned versus pitch recognition is a genetically predisposed trait. For examples: the first sentences of the second and third paragraphs express these opposing views, the third paragraph as a whole plays both sides of the issue (I did just edit that paragraph, but that was to remove an unrelated argumentative link. I kept the spirit of the pertinent material intact.), and the penultimate paragraph is a one liner supporting the skill POV. I think these POV should be somehow segregated, but I must acknowledge that the "skill" POV appears to be common wisdom compared to the "genetic" POV, however thin the latter's evidence is.

--Raulcleary (talk) 06:58, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Revisions
I've made some major revisions with your above comments in mind and removed the NPOV/Factual inaccuracy boilerplates. Check out the new version and comment here (I'll watch this page for a while) or on my talk page. Feel free to replace the boilerplates if you find it appropriate. Matthewcieplak 03:16, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Amusia
Amusia links here, but I've never heard "tone deaf" used to refer to amusia and I think it is a probably a fairly rare usage. However, this article seems to be mostly about amusia, or at least a limited form of amusia (what the article calls the medical definition of tone deaf). I'm not very knowledgeable in this area, but it seems that there are at least two distinguishable manifestations or levels of severity of amusia: 1) difficulty or inability to distinguish the different pitches of notes, resulting in a difficulty or inability to reproduce music, 2) the complete inability to hear music as music, possibly because of an inability to distinguish different pitches. Again, I don't know much about this, but there may be other reasons a person is unable to hear music (such as damage to the part of the brain that finds the patterns in sound that most people recognize as musical). I think amusia should have it's own article, and this article should be more about the common usage, with a note that difficulty reproducing music may be due to either a lack of training or a limited form of amusia. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 20:49, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

There appears to be confusion between the terms "tone deaf" and "Amusia". This article is a good summary of "Tone Deaf", but Amusia deserves it's own page, as it is the acquired loss of musical abilities through brain lesions. The distinction between "tone deaf" and "amusia" is the same as that between "illiteracy" and "aphasia". Research into aphasia is very developed; German musicologists and neurologists have shown a deep interest in amusia but there are few writings in English (Henson's chapter in Clinical Neurology vol 45, 1985 is still the standard text). Amusia does have it's own page on the German Wikipedia but it's a stub. I am happy to write a seperate article on "Amusia" when I have time over the next month or so, please offer any suggestions. BigNorwich 16th October 2006

Tests for true tone deafness?
There are the very popular color blot tests for color blindness, are there audio samples used to diagnose true tone deafness as well? Maybe playing different tones of the same timbre & frequency simultaneously and alone and seeing whether one can decipher between them played in different orders? Nagelfar 06:44, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Irony
It's ironic that an article which is attempting to demystify the condition of tone deafness uses an incorrect understanding of colour-blindness as an analogy - thus perpetuating the misunderstanding of that condition!! Most colour blind people (such as myself) have no problem appreciating colourful artwork. Our ability to see colours is impaired, but far from non-existent. Mralph72 03:22, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Notable tonedeaf individuals?
Is it simply a coincidence that all of the individuals listed in the article are either fictional beings, constructed character roles, or not actually tone deaf (Tonedeff)?

147.129.20.214 21:40, 10 October 2007 (UTC)


 * i reworked the whole section, so this problem should be fixed now. florence foster jenkins is the only notable real-life tone-deaf person i know.  — Chris Capoccia  T&#8260;C 10:46, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Notable fictional characters
this section seems like it is filling up with non-notable characters. how do these characters affect our cultural understanding of tone-deafness? — Chris Capoccia T⁄C 12:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Ricardo Gomez
 * Horatio Hornblower
 * Overweighted towards anime and animation
 * Kirby (probably the most notable in the group, but is Kirby really tone-deaf? does it play into the game or cartoon at all?)
 * Jimmy Kudo
 * Mumble
 * Mikoto Yutaka
 * Questions of fact (does anyone have any evidence that these characters are tone-deaf?)
 * Ashley DeWitt
 * Jamie Fraser
 * Khan

I deleted this section, since being tone-deaf is a trivial aspect of all these characters personas. vroman (talk) 04:37, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed Tonedeff from see also list
This isn't how "see also" sections should be used, he is a rapper so I doubt looking at an article on a rapper is the natural progression of the quest for knowledge on tone deafness. Actually I am sure of it. Don't add him back without discussing here first, but I can't imagine any plausible reason.--AresAndEnyo (talk) 18:33, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Arguments Against Tone Deafness
Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and The Youth Philharmonic, and also a professor at The New England Conservatory of Music, gave a presentation where he posed the following argument against tone deafness:

"Nobody is tone deaf. If you were tone deaf, you couldn't change the gears on your stick shift car. You couldn't tell the difference between somebody from Texas and somebody from Rome." — Preceding unsigned comment added by BMaag (talk • contribs) 07:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Tonal language impairment?
is this phenomenon observed among native speakers of tonal languages? What about the impact on speakers of languages where tonal cues impart semantic, if not lexical, information? For example, the rising tone indicating the interrogative mood in English? Do tonedeaf people fail to distinguish between "were you ever spanked?" and "were you ever spanked!"? --24.6.228.145 (talk) 20:18, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

^yes^ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.101.78.186 (talk) 09:52, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Disgustingly Prejudiced
So this variation in how we perceive sound means we are not "healthy functional humans"? 72.66.39.198 (talk) 18:47, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's exactly what it means. Tone deafness is a disability. Perhaps it is not a severe disability (from a popular viewpoint, anyway), but it is a disability. --Stealthy (talk) 06:38, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree, Stealthysis. There are probably a lot of healthy and functional people out there that are tone deaf. You may have a pickle on your face right now. That's not a severe disability, but it is a disability nonetheless. But I wouldn't disqualify your health for that reason alone. The sentence should be rewritten. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.0.52.252 (talk) 11:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is an ability present in most of the population but missing in some - how else do you describe the lack of a normal ability through no fault of ones own?62.49.21.175 (talk) 09:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is a literal dis-ability - an absence of a normal ability. OK, describing that as "unhealthy" is probably wrong, but, don't pretend that tone-deaf people are not "differently abled", to be politically correct about it.--67.180.106.165 (talk) 21:07, 11 November 2012 (UTC)


 * That is a ridiculous assertion. The dictionary definition of disability is not merely lack of any particular ability, it is being impaired "in a way that SUBSTANTIALLY limits activity ESPECIALLY in relation to employment or education" (Webster). By analogy, the inability to complete a single pull-up, while certainly evidence of poor muscular development, implies neither unhealth nor disability. I'm rewording the sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.124.249.55 (talk) 02:15, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree with 165.124.249.55 that tone deafness is not a disability. Neither is the inability to reach the tip of my nose with my tongue.  Lova Falk     talk   13:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Self Reporting of Tone Deafness
I removed three people (Ann Widdecombe, Wendy Richard and Pope Francis) from the list of notable people who are tone deaf. All three are self-reporting in the citations given, so not necessarily reliable sources. In the cited interviews, Ann Widdecombe and Wendy Richard talk about music they like, bringing into question whether they are actually tone deaf or simply poor singers. Cimbalom (talk) 21:14, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * They may be poor singers, but that does not indicate tone deafness. Understandably, it's hard to enjoy music if you truly are tone deaf, but the interviews do indicate that they can hear pitch differences in music. Hey  mid  (contribs) 00:04, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

i guess the "trained" ear can tolerate more
Hearing can adapt to a range of almost a semitone. When the highest tone is 43 cent sharp and the lowest is 43 cent flat, until this outer limit accomodation can go exactly in the middle. Then it will not sound good, but you can still recognize every tone. You can get used to that when you permanently play with a bended neck and old strings. Many people are not used to it because they only listen to the filtered crap they hear on the radio or on MTV. Watch BTTF and read between the lines. Only the flux compensator (equalizer) makes singing in tune possible in the first place. Resonancy is an old phenomenon. Playing out of tune is annoying, but i find most of the top 40 music of today equally annoying, just in a different way. Melodyne sounds annoying, and Lou Reed certainly missed many notes, but still he doesn't sound annoying. Drums are often annoying. If they aren't arranged very well, they always sound like a metronome clicking. And today, it only takes a mouse click to generate a top 40 hit. Quote from 1984: "I'm wondering how a song that was written by a machine can sound so beautiful." All the good music was already written. And the rest can only be rubbish because the possibilities are exhausted.

I like to make an addition. Someone intentionally threw a firecracker at my right ear. Now i hear a scratching whenever it's loud, but silent noises still sound fine. Depending on the strings, i can improvise with a diatonic scale to a song either in two keys (each a half-step away) or only in one key. With the better strings, my hearing can only accept a discrepancy of less than a quarter tone. With the down-tuned electrical guitar without amplifier, it almost always works a shortened half-step upwards or downwards. Maybe because it fluctuates more (down-tuned strings fluctuate more). Lately, i wrote a frequency filter: determine the difference between the new and the prior state of the signal, and with that amplitude, let a sinus wave echo from the current position. Do that on every position of the sample and then the signal will be amplified if it contains a tone with the frequency of the tone you wanted to filter expressed through the length of that sinus wave. When someone sung a note and it fluctuates, your hearing will adapt primarily to the loudest frequency of the fluctuating basic tone. That's what a "Schwingkreis" does. This was already done with analog equpimpent a long time ago. You don't need Melodyne.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.143.74.125 (talk) 08:29, 21 February 2016 (UTC)