When we say somebody is tone deaf, what we normally mean is they can’t or don’t sing the right notes.
That’s not tone deafness.
Tone deaf is when a person walks over to a piano and can’t hear the differences between higher and lower notes when played. Tone deafness would appear 1st in your ability to listen, not to sing.
That causes a person to be unable to duplicate the notes correctly, as they where unable to hear them in the first place!
How Often are People Actually Are Tone Deaf?
Researchers have found that less than 5% of people on the planet, suffer from this condition.
Most of the time when someone is called “tone deaf” what they really have, is poor pitch duplication, meaning they don’t know how to make their voice match all the notes they hear. They will make frequent mistakes if they try to sing or play an instrument.
Often this is treated like a diagnosis of a fundamental trait which that person cannot change.
However the truth is that there are only a very small number of people who suffer from true amusia: a clinical cognitive impairment.
Meaning the brain cannot process musical sounds properly to make sense of them.
Many People Will Go a Whole Lifetime Believing They Are!
A vast majority of people who believe they’re tone deaf in fact, will go a whole lifetime thinking they can never learn to sing.
Believe me! I Meet them every day.
And honestly they almost never actually are.
In particular, it is often an inability to sing in tune which leads people to think they might be tone deaf. Even musicians sometimes worry about it for this reason. Fortunately singing off key can be easily fixed with some simple singing practice to learn to match pitch with your voice.
To summarise, we can classify people who think they are ‘tone deaf’ into two groups:
People who suffer from the brain impairment amusia: a very small number of people
The vast majority of people who believe they are tone deaf in fact do have the basic pitch discrimination skills necessary to tell notes apart. They can enjoy music, recognize melodies, and have just as much musical potential as anybody. They simply lack the correct musical training.
SO before you right yourself off, do me a favor and take this test!
