4 ms·

Real tone-deafness (amusia) is fairly rare. Something like 20% of people self-report it, but the actual prevalence is only ~4%. What most people seem to mean wh

Real tone-deafness (amusia) is fairly rare. Something like 20% of people self-report it, but the actual prevalence is only ~4%. What most people seem to mean when they say they have it is "I can't sing at all." But really tone-deafness is not about singing poorly, it's about not being able to discriminate tones. This includes you vocalizing them, yes, but it also includes you hearing them. In fact I would hazard a guess that if you are able to tell you are off-pitch while you're singing, then that might in and of itself preclude tone deafness (although my understanding may be off there). What I do know is that most people with amusia cannot and do not enjoy listening to music. Many say it sounds like noise, or just sounds unpleasant. And People with amusia tend to have other, related issues -- difficulties discerning pitch in spoken sentences (was that intonation representing a question or a statement? that sort of thing).

magneticnorth 6y ago
I've definitely made this distinction before about myself - "I can't sing, but I can at least sing badly in tune"
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Jokes aside, I doubt this. If you sing a song in your range on pitch, it'll probably sound OK. Maybe not amazing singer good, but a lot of rock singers aren't "good" singers, they're just good enough to get a good take. If you're curious, record yourself and put it in Melodyne.
o_class_star 6y ago
I'm curious: how do people who are tone deaf learn and use tonal languages? Are such languages redundant enough that they can get by, or do they find other ways of adapting, or do they struggle to speak fluently even if the tonal language is their first language?
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Isn't there a theory that native speakers of tonal languages are better at music because they're better at recognizing tones?
- godot 6y ago
  I grew up in Hong Kong and speak Cantonese as my first language, which is one of the most brutally strict languages in terms of tones. 9 tones, some very similar, words that have the same sound but different tones can have very different meanings, sometimes ones that make the situation embarrassing or make you sound like you're swearing (in a formal situation). Kids in school like to mock you endlessly if you even accidentally say a word in the wrong tone that means something different (especially if it sounds close to swearing words). With all that pretext in mind -- having grown up there until I was 13, I had never met any native speaker in HK who couldn't pronounce words in correct tones. Not a single person.
  - housecarpenter 6y ago
    Cantonese and other East Asian tonal languages are, more specifically, contour tonal languages; the distinctions between the different tones are based on the change in the tone through the syllable (rising vs. falling, etc.), rather than absolute pitch. This may be easy enough for tone-deaf people to deal with. However, there are other tonal languages, e.g. in Africa, which make use of absolute pitch distinctions.
- pessimizer 6y ago
  I researched this a while back, and it turns out that while they can't hear tones (if you play minimal pairs in isolation, they won't be able to hear the difference), they still understand people and reproduce them correctly when they speak. They can also be trained to recognize recognize the difference. There's really no such thing as tone deafness. Tone deafness is when you sing something badly, people make fun of you, and you stop trying to sing. Not an option when you speak a tonal language, instead you just learn pitch without realizing you're learning pitch, just operating from "feelings" and what "sounds right," which is of course based on an enormous amount of lifetime feedback. It's like how actual blindsight (when the eyes or their connections to the brain are actually damaged or destroyed) is unrecognized echolocation. We are not aware of our own conscious experience, or the processes we go through to reach some of then conclusions we reach.
  - watwut 6y ago
    That is not true. I know person who cant tell piano keys from each other almost as far as an octave. She cant tell whether you you have hit one or two at the same time. She cant tell whether you have hit different one you you play two keys consecutively. She does hear well. That is tone deafness and it has zero to do with singing. Tone deafness is not measured by having people sing.
brundolf 6y ago
I knew someone once who loved music - we met through dancing, actually - and would sing aloud any time music was on in the car, even with other people present. She was also, from my perspective, the most tone-deaf person I've ever met. Every single note she sang was horribly irrelevant to the song that was playing. But she belted it out anyway. I'm curious where she would fit in this model
- chme 6y ago
  Probably as someone with an interesting character quirk ;)
- exDM69 6y ago
  It is not uncommon for someone to not be able to distinguish the pitch difference from two sound sources, especially being able to tell if they're singing in tune or not. That's not at all the same thing as not being able to distinguish the two pitches from each other coming from the same source. I can tune a guitar relatively (ie. start with one string "in tune") by ear very easily. I can't for the life of me tune a guitar to a pitchfork or someone else in the band playing a tone that I need to match. And I can't produce a specific tone with my vocal chords or play along a melody by ear.
  - brundolf 6y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know this distinction existed

magneticnorth 6y ago

I've definitely made this distinction before about myself - "I can't sing, but I can at least sing badly in tune"

dehrmann 6y ago
Jokes aside, I doubt this. If you sing a song in your range on pitch, it'll probably sound OK. Maybe not amazing singer good, but a lot of rock singers aren't "good" singers, they're just good enough to get a good take. If you're curious, record yourself and put it in Melodyne.

o_class_star 6y ago

I'm curious: how do people who are tone deaf learn and use tonal languages? Are such languages redundant enough that they can get by, or do they find other ways of adapting, or do they struggle to speak fluently even if the tonal language is their first language?

dehrmann 6y ago
Isn't there a theory that native speakers of tonal languages are better at music because they're better at recognizing tones?
godot 6y ago
I grew up in Hong Kong and speak Cantonese as my first language, which is one of the most brutally strict languages in terms of tones. 9 tones, some very similar, words that have the same sound but different tones can have very different meanings, sometimes ones that make the situation embarrassing or make you sound like you're swearing (in a formal situation). Kids in school like to mock you endlessly if you even accidentally say a word in the wrong tone that means something different (especially if it sounds close to swearing words). With all that pretext in mind -- having grown up there until I was 13, I had never met any native speaker in HK who couldn't pronounce words in correct tones. Not a single person.
- housecarpenter 6y ago
  Cantonese and other East Asian tonal languages are, more specifically, contour tonal languages; the distinctions between the different tones are based on the change in the tone through the syllable (rising vs. falling, etc.), rather than absolute pitch. This may be easy enough for tone-deaf people to deal with. However, there are other tonal languages, e.g. in Africa, which make use of absolute pitch distinctions.
pessimizer 6y ago
I researched this a while back, and it turns out that while they can't hear tones (if you play minimal pairs in isolation, they won't be able to hear the difference), they still understand people and reproduce them correctly when they speak. They can also be trained to recognize recognize the difference. There's really no such thing as tone deafness. Tone deafness is when you sing something badly, people make fun of you, and you stop trying to sing. Not an option when you speak a tonal language, instead you just learn pitch without realizing you're learning pitch, just operating from "feelings" and what "sounds right," which is of course based on an enormous amount of lifetime feedback. It's like how actual blindsight (when the eyes or their connections to the brain are actually damaged or destroyed) is unrecognized echolocation. We are not aware of our own conscious experience, or the processes we go through to reach some of then conclusions we reach.
- watwut 6y ago
  That is not true. I know person who cant tell piano keys from each other almost as far as an octave. She cant tell whether you you have hit one or two at the same time. She cant tell whether you have hit different one you you play two keys consecutively. She does hear well. That is tone deafness and it has zero to do with singing. Tone deafness is not measured by having people sing.

brundolf 6y ago

I knew someone once who loved music - we met through dancing, actually - and would sing aloud any time music was on in the car, even with other people present. She was also, from my perspective, the most tone-deaf person I've ever met. Every single note she sang was horribly irrelevant to the song that was playing. But she belted it out anyway. I'm curious where she would fit in this model

chme 6y ago
Probably as someone with an interesting character quirk ;)
exDM69 6y ago
It is not uncommon for someone to not be able to distinguish the pitch difference from two sound sources, especially being able to tell if they're singing in tune or not. That's not at all the same thing as not being able to distinguish the two pitches from each other coming from the same source. I can tune a guitar relatively (ie. start with one string "in tune") by ear very easily. I can't for the life of me tune a guitar to a pitchfork or someone else in the band playing a tone that I need to match. And I can't produce a specific tone with my vocal chords or play along a melody by ear.
- brundolf 6y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know this distinction existed