[Dixielandjazz] How Well Do You Hear Music?

[Stephen G Barbone]

>  Gluetje1 at aol.com  wrote   about the test at: http://jakemandell.com/tonedeaf/OnlineScreen450.swf
>
>
>
> This test is curious.  It does not, in my case, have much retest
> reliability.  I took it about a year ago, scored somewhere in high  
> normal  range, took it
> again a few hours later and increased my score by about  25 per cent  
> as I
> recall.  I don't consider tone deafness  correctable in a matter of  
> hours.  Focus
> IS correctable within minutes  or hours.  I agree it is testing  
> musical
> memory which Jake  Mandell says it does during his discussion in  
> other web pages.
> Just took it again tonight, was back to high normal. LOL.  It was also
> interesting in reviewing the results that I missed 5 of the last  
> 8.   Did the last
> 8 suddenly get more complex or was there another  variable?  Could  
> not find
> anything about whether the last samples were  considered more  
> complex.  I
> suppose from the standpoint of research, once  Mandell defines his  
> terms then his
> test can measure relative to his definition,  then he can have  
> conclusions.  But
> from a research point of view their  are various kinds of validity and
> reliability.
> Ginny


Dear Ginny:

I agree with your thoughts that "focus" might be one variable. I  
listened carefully, in my home office, no distractions. I expected to  
hear them all correctly, I missed 2 out of the 36 samples.

Could be in the last samples of the test you took were simply a result  
of less focus due to boredom. One of the two I missed, was out of the  
last eight.

Then again, it could be the variety of sounds that the test includes.

I think (based on opinion, not research <grin>) that all of us hear  
music quite differently. I also think that many people don't "hear"  
what is going on in music. Especially when listening to chords. I'd  
love to take a similar test with chords instead of single note runs.

As an aside, one of the thing Marsalis said about Jonathan Russell to  
the audience at Lincoln Center earlier this month went something like:  
"Did you hear his improvised line during his solo? He played correctly  
within the subtle passing chord changes in the tune. He heard them.  
Most jazz players would simply skip over them, not hearing them, and  
play what they want, but he heard and made all the correct changes."

You know, as a jazz musician, how hard we work to improvise correctly  
and swing.  Among all the band noise, and crowd noise and other  
distractions (pretty girls in the audience in my case) we must hear  
the changes and correctly fold our improv into them and swing. How  
much of that does the audience really hear or understand?

Perhaps that explains my main beef with non-playing critics. <grin>

I guess that, like most opinion research, the results depend largely  
upon how one asks the question. And, how well the responder  
understands the question.

In a week or so, I am going to re-test myself from a less focused  
standpoint, (adding a little OKOM background noise) and expect to  
score lower.

Cheers,
Steve