Can’t dance? Test to see if you’re rhythmdeaf!
Posted by
jake in
Uncategorized, Music and the Brain
“But I’ve never heard of being rhythmdeaf,” you may ask. Someone who is “rhythmdeaf” has difficulty perceiving changes in a beat. This handicap would make it extremely difficult for such an indivual to succeed in a career of reality television cavorting with the well-toned, too-tanned B-list crowd.
If you think that you may have this problem, please take a new test I just made. It is very similar to the tonedeaf test that has so far had more than 100,000 submitted scores. Any comments you may have on this new test are very welcome.
Interesting. I have no musical training, and have never been a dancer, in fact have actively refrained from dancing, but I got 96% on this test. On the other hand, I though I had a fairly discerning ear, but I scored 1.125Hz on the adaptive tone test, which is only the 59th percentile. Perhaps its time to bust out the super sweet moves on the dance floor that have been hiding all these years.
I would be interested in a tinnitus test, if you are still considering new test ideas!
I wonder if genre-familiarity affects the scores. For instance in the tone-deaf test I found it very easy to spot differences in classical-sounding sequences, but that’s because it’s my own genre and it’s easy for me to recognize structures in it. The pitch test in turn was completely neutral, with no cultural burdens whatsoever… Just some quick observations… and I think of course everything depends on your viewpoint too - whether you are researching the perception of rhythms etc. in the prevalent forms of music or rhythmic/melodic/harmonic perception per se.. I really enjoyed the tests, though.
These tests were interesting, and fun to take! I scored 77.8 on Pitch, and 72% on rhythm, so it seems to me that tones and dancing are very likely linked.
I liked the music!
hi,
I’d scored 91.7% in the tonedeaf test and 80% for the rhythm test. Seriously, I wish I knew how this could be useful. Short of going into singing, I’m curious about what else is available for someone with a good ear. I’d appreciate your thoughts on that.
Hi i don`t think the test is acurate I got 68 and what was graded normal. but im defenitly rhythmdeaf.
” a party trick that never fails is to ask me to keep the rytem by klapping my hands”.
But on higher scores the test is probly acurate.
low-normal on tonedeaf test 69. (did not felt acurate )
pitch 54hz differce on pitch (the pitch test felt more acurate)
I don’t know what the deal is with this test, but the sound seems to be skipping an awfully lot. I’ve also discovered that I can make the skipping resume much faster by quickly moving my mouse on/off the replay button as fast as I can. heh… Is that the rhythm test?
Maybe I need a reboot or something, I’ll check this again in a few hours.
I would like to try your test, but it doesn’t seem to load completely. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Doesn’t seem to work for me. I see the volume test button, and when I click it the button moves, but I hear nothing, even after setting all my volume sliders to the maximum. I tried both Firefox (where at least the page renders correctly) and Internet Exploder (where the page looked ugly).
Would be nice to have a moment of aural “cleansing” between the clicking of same/different and the onset of the next excerpt.
I made a 76 but know that I stupidly clicked on the wrong button 3 times. Such absent-mindedness comes with age, I guess.
Made 89.9% on pitch test — these were fun!
You need to be more specific in the instructions. I’ve been a drummer since I was in Jr. High (a long, long time ago), and it took me about halfway through the test before I realized that you weren’t asking if the time signatures were different. What you want to know is whether thatre are any accents whatsoever in the two cuts that are different. That’s something else entirely.
It would seem that for me the most difficult thing about the test is recognizing when the samples are the same more-so than when they are different. It would be nice if we could go back to the ones we missed and re-listen so we could see how we missed them.
i got 84 yay i’ve got rythm coz i play the cornet. put a message on here if u play the cornet you gr8 person!
This is incredable! I scored 84.0% and I thought I would be pretty bad rhythmically! Very well done, on this and the Tonedeaf test too. Kudos! ~ LFD ^__~
HUH, as I always suspected I am tone deaf and new to me also rythmn challenged.
FYI, I also have menierre’s which my mother and grandfather also had. I took these tests during a time when my ears feel “full” -max pressure and slight tinitis…
tone: 50%
rythmn 48%
I’ll try again when I feel more normal
nice site!
the both the tone and the rythmn test were much harder than i expected, the only thing that seemed a little off was in the rythm test, some of the changes were tonal changes.
tone test: 86%
rythm test: 78%
hi,
i’d be interested to know, if the data which you give in the end, especially the length of musical training, does change the test-result in any way, or if it is for statistics only…
thanks in advance
Love the tests, it confirmed what I’ve thought for decades… the only way I’ll ever carry a tone is in my hand. When I was 7, the teacher hit a note on the piano and had each person sing the note. For the life of me I couldn’t understand how. When I was 12 my Sunday school teacher said I was, “unique”. I took the hint… it has now 38 years later and the only time I sing is in the car alone. Just goes to show that a score of 44% fits. As for the Rhythm I did a bit better 60%, however I don’t dance either… two left feet. Hmm maybe I’ll try some dance lessons, at least I have a half a chance. Love the tests! Anyone interested in a color blind, tone-deaf, rhythm challenged woman, that loves the arts?
The rhythm test says nothing about a persons sense of rhythm. It is a memory test.
Fun and great to have vision about own skills -or other DJ brother… Hust good to use also as a part of some contest, like a karaoke with no singers (joking!=OK)
I think the reason that there are tonal changes is because it’s a rythm test, not so much a “is it the same sample” test. And if not preventing, it lessens the ability for people to just use thier memory to detect changes. It requires actual rythmical skill.
On the other hand, there was one sample in the tone-deaf test that’s sposed to be the same, but the actual pitch of a low-frequency component is lower on the second one. So I’m not entirely sure the tonal changes are on purpose on either test.
Sub 50% on tone & rhythm and only 5.1 Hz reliability on differentiation. However. this just confirms what I always knew. I am one of the tone deaf rhythmless people.
As a percussionist for over 10 years, I would say i have a good ear for rhythm. And i did score 80%, but i believe that the test could be improved by putting the different rhythms on the same instrument for each test, and in each test to take the idea of melody, or differing tambres in each playthrough out of the equation for the subject of the test. for this i would recomend two things. The first is this: the samples should be played on a percussive instriment, so although different rhythms are present, these are all on for example wood blocks or temple blocks. My second suggestion is that, in the event that you continue to use different instruments or you choose an instrument where vast changes in the tambre can be detected, such as a timp, or snare drum, then it might be an idea to use a synthesiser to produce sounds which are more similar than that produced by an acoustic drum or instrument.
Don’t consume 12 beers before taking this test… even so, got 83% on rythm test… What some dude said was right, it seemed to skip a bit.. from past experience, i think this is what happens with midi files. anyway, it was fun.
I promise you these are my scores:
tone test: 94.4%
rythm test: 92%
Is it because I make music since 15 years now? Am I a normal person??
Very interresting test!
John.
oh I forgot to say that I’ve never learned music lessons!
My family always complain that my rythmn is poor (play keyboards self taught), and this test confirms that with a 52 score. Sometimes I cant tell the difference between 2 time signatures even.
I’d be interested in a correlation between this and ability in morse code (I’m also a radio ham), as I’ve always thought that morse ability is a rythym thing. (I am also poor at morse)
I think the test has nothing to do with rythm. It’s irrelevent to how people dance. Rythm should be tested upon simple beats with ONE instrument. Multiple instruments contain different rythm within their own parts of the music. I’ve been playing instruments for 4 years, and manufacture my own speakers. I think I know my own capabilities. As others would get false results too.
I got no sound on this test … The other tests worked, so theres nothing wrong with plugins or hardware …
Jonas - thanks very much for letting me know. I recently added a preloader, and that killed the sound.
For the Flash programmers out there, when you load a flash movie with the MovieClipLoader object, you must initialize your Sound objects with the this handler:
var mySound:Sound = new Sound(this);
Have fun!
Jake
I took the test while my 19-month-old and husband played, watched TV and fixed a glass of ice water in the background. The big revelation to me was how much rhythm is in our home! Also, I found it much easier to distinguish between clips 1 and 2 when they sounded less synthesized. But maybe this is all because I’m 23 weeks pregnant?
Interesting test. Leave a few seconds inbetween test questions. Not enough time to eliminate the preceeding test question in my minds ear. I am refering to numbered examples-1-then some time-2-then some time-3 etc. Also agree with being able to somehow see which ones were incorrect and to be able to hear them again for comparison. Thanks.
I am a music major and I have to say that these tests, while fun, do not accurately measure ability, particularly this one, however the tonedeaf one was fun and pretty precise. With the melodic recognition, it was not accurate because of the fact that most of them were maybe one note that was differed in a series of about ten chords and there was no repeat option to hear that one note if it was missed in the first place. The rhythm test was bad because the melodies distract from the rhtyhm, so if you really want to test rhtyhm, then just have the beats and such with no pitch difference.
i agree that this test doesnt really test a persons “rhythm” so to speak, more the ability to recognize differences in beats(which means something) and memory, of course.
Still, a fun test. That hip-hop sounding beat at the end was hot!
If you only score average like me and think you should’ve been better because you are a musician, don’t be frustrated. You are comparing with people in the music field, not average people. Its mainly people who are interested in music would visit this site and take the time for the test.
If you go out to the street and randomly grab people for this test, I am sure the average would be much lower.
So this average is not the average of regular people.
Good tests, but you should know who you are comparing with.
Lousy and unpresice tests. I got all form 61 to 40 on the tone and the rythym, and 6 to 16 on the pitch test.
I enjoyed taking the test-70% range here on the tests. I have zilch for musical training, and a significant hearing loss. I cranked the volume up during the tests. I have an awful time singing as part of a group such as in church, and my children groan when I sing and tell me that I’m really off. I can remember shying away from choirs because once a director stopped and said, “Someone’s flat!” while he was staring straight at me. I can tell when others are off on their pitch or rhythm, but I can’t make myself do it right either.
td:83.3%(79%); pitch:1.95Hz; rythm:76%(58%)
Thank you for the tests and site - I’ve missed tests like these. I would dare to give you some suggestions :
1) limit repeats in pitch test (in example to two repeats per one difference)
2) add answer summary (same-different) also to rythm test
3) add ‘play’ button to deaftone&rythm and ‘autoplay’ option ( dislike when the next sample starts immediately after my answer)
4) in the end ask if it was the first time testing ( I plan to test myself again and again and watch, hopefully, an improvement - that could ruin the statistics )
After being told in high school that I was tone deaf I took up drumming. I scored 86.1% on the td test and 60% on the rythym!
I’m average in both tests but I would have appreciated being able to have a second chance at hearing the phrases.
What a lovely site.
The tone deaf test was exceptionally good, 97,3 the rythm test was in the normal range, but the test discerning between one sound and the next was not good. I was asked to do the test again. Saying that or I had problems with the test, or the test could not measure my range. How is that possible? And what does that mean?
Greetings,
Hanne
I agree with Craig. This is not a rhythm test. It is just another form of tone test.
Ah, this proves what I’ve said for many years, I don’t know up and down on rythms. I score over 90% in both the tonedeaf and the pitch test, and here I got 52 or something like that. Strange, since I’ve played in an orchestra for 13 years now.
I agree with Craig about being clearer about what you are asking. I had to go through a few questions before I got the hang of it, which affected my score. My score was so bad on the Tone deaf test that I took it again and increased my score from 66% to 83% once I knew what I was listening for. Perhaps you could give a couple of examples before starting the test proper. Also agree with the person who referred to the genre of music one is more used to hearing. I’m an oldie so found some of the current rythms very hard to register. Still managed to get most right though !! Very interesting anyway and at least I know my hearing is OK!!
I have no musical training and I got a pathetic 67.7 on the tone deaf test but a 92 on the rhythm test. I think sometimes the music with the rhythm varied a little but the beat itself stayed the same, am I wrong? Because that is confusing. I don’t consider myself tone deaf by any stretch of the imagination, but I pressed “different” for the vast majority of the comparisons during the tone deaf test because I thought I heard a single note that was different. It was still fun. I’m a good dancer.
My family always told me I was tone deaf, with a score of 53% it seems they were right. I scored 72% for the rythm test. I have always enjoyed dancing but worried that I was out of time. My son (8) plays piano, his teacher thinks he has near perfect tone. He struggles with his timing though. Anyway, thanks for the entertaining tests.
I spent most of the test trying to distinguish tempos, then it appeared that it was phrase differences we were supposed to be detecting. Please make it more clearer what we are supposed to be distinguishing.
I used 1 replay and I thought I was confident taking the rest of the test without replaying, thinking it had something to do with the percentage. It was a necessary feature and I completely ignored it. Another way to test this is to play a certain game I know called Audition Dance Battle Online (http://www.auditionsea.com). Good test!
I agree with Shirley, Craig, xengh2 and Nyman. It should be more precisely said what we have to do and perhaps more kinds of music used. Nevertheless I think the test is nice and I like this idea.
Although the pitch test is imo the best one from these three, I don’t understand why the differences between pitches change so rapidly (each difference is two times smaller then the previous one).
I’d be very interested in any improvements in these tests and I’d like to look at them.
I am 63. Ther was no category under age selection for me.
I felt that this test is not very accurate to test for rhythmic ability, as it focuses a lot on memory too. I have musical training in percussion for over 6 years, but only scored 76% in the test. In the adaptive pitch test that does not require memory, however, I scored a 0.4125Hz.
Perhaps the rhythms played could be shortened to be more accurate for people like me with a poor short term memory.
these tests seem somewhat sketchy. the first time i took the tone diferentiation test i scored 6Hz. this confused me as i am told by my guitar/vocal teacher that i have good pitch, so i took it again. the second time i scored 1.5Hz. i went and got my sister who has been playing piano for over 10 years, and she scored over 16Hz once again i was confused.
this rhythm test also gave odd results, giving me 55% the first time. i have always thought i had pretty good rhythm, so i took it a second time and scored 77%. i did not write down or memorise the previous answers, or cheat in any way. which of my scores should i actually trust?
the tone deaf test seemed more like a memory test than anything. again, i am told i have good pitch but scored borderline average. overall i would think these tests are incorrect, but i see professional musicians do quite well on them so i don’t know what to think.
I love music but sadly have absolutely no sense of rhythm, pitch or tone, as the people who are near me whenever I try to dance or sing so kindly remind me. I was surprised, however, to score an 86.1% on the tone deaf test. On the pitch test I began with 43hz (the bottom of the bottom percentiles) but took the test several times to see if my ear could learn. It seems like it can, as the series of scores attest to: 43hz, 29.4hz, 7.2hz, 6.9hz and then 1.2hz. After that I seemed to hit a plateau.
75% on tone, 5.2 Hz on pitch, and 72% on Rhythm.
Caucasian, Male, 18 years old. No legit musical background, although I taught myself to play the guitar.
There’s so much that the average human doesn’t know about, just because he/she doesn’t have the ability to know about some things.
Great job on the tests; they’re not only fun for us, but also helpful in a way that helps us find out a bit more about ourselves.
weird!!, i’ve always tought i was bad on rhythm, a rhytm deaf!!!, but it turns out i got an 84, not bad at all, but i mean, i can’t dance!!, well i suposse there’s the intimidation factor, given the fact that everyone in my family dances like a pop star or something (i’m hispanic, so it wouldn’t exactly be pop but salsa, merengue…that kind music)… it also surprised me to know that i got a 3.5 in the pitch perception test, i expected a higher score, and got what i expected in the tonedeaf test: an 86%. Perhaps my lack of skills at dancing has something to do with coordinating the rhythm i sense and moving my body, or perhaps my sense of rhythm it’s too sophisticated and my family and friends and the world just don’t get it…lol… anyways it’s been a great oportunity to know a little more about my musical skills
So under the questions of menstrual cycle y’all left out postnatal nursing. Having an irregular cycle due to nursing is different from PCOS or pre-menopausal reasons for the variability, which makes it less of a useful indicator in trying to link variations in ryhthym with cycle in women.
I love your site! I think these tests are great ideas. I have almost no musical training but sung in church choirs for many years as a kid. I always thought I had a decent ear for music but it turns out I am average. The interesting part to is that I have no training in rhythm in the musical sense but taught dance for a number of years. Apparently this was enough to score 88% on the rhythm test which seemed quite a bit higher than the 75% on the music test. (especially considering the percentiles) So it appears that dancing and being sensitive to rhythm really are connected even without formal music training.
One more thing. Many people have been saying that this test just confirms what they thought about being tone deaf or whatever. I think there should be information on this website that tone deafness is most often not some predisposition necessarily but simply a lack of a particular skill set. Some people need extra tutoring in certain subjects (like math) but this doesn’t mean they can never get it. Some people never get that extra help and so think they can’t do it and everything around them just seems to reinforce the idea. I think there are a range of natural predispositions to certain skills but that the vast majority of people can acquire skills such as tone recognition, rhythm, mathematical understanding, etc. I’ve had experience with this tutoring elementary students in math and teaching dance to adults who thought they couldn’t dance. So take heart, it is possible to learn new things you never thought you could learn!
The rhythm test strikes me as being much more a test of textural and timbral perception than rhythmic. It also is very heavily biased in favor of pop style machine drum patterning. Further, it differs from the tonedeaf test markedly in that each musical phrase is in fact made up of two phrases, the second of which is quite often already a variation of the first. (In this it is an interesting demonstration of how hearing something twice does not mean reexperiencing afresh the same music twice, but rather hearing it a second time through the filter of the first hearing.) So I would have to say that this particular test is highly flawed and perhaps ultimately unrevealing or downright confusing in its results — and nearly all the examples are in 4/4! — and tests acculturation much more than rhythmic or metric perception. After all, rhythmic perception could also be tested on the level of ability of perceiving subtleties in rhythmic ratios, just as your pitch acuity test zeroes in on smaller and smaller Hz increments. For example, listening for the difference (in the same metronome mark) of a series of triplet quarters paried with triplet eighths versus dotted eighths with sixteenths versus a quintuplet quarter followed by a quintuplet sixteenth (admittedly a fairly rudimentary test but easily made more complex, for example, even if the rhythms were simply reversed to ’snap’ rhythms).
I also would like to comment that in the tonedeaf test I think that some of the synthesized examples are so buzzing with overtones in certain registers that it is hard to hear the gestures clearly. I would be curious to see what the results from a similar test would be if all the musical examples were played acoustically.
I feel very vindicated in saying this as I just got 100%. I’m inclined to agree with the comment above regarding genre. Inspite of getting 100% I tended to struggle a lot with a few because they were unsuited to me. Also, I think the musical deafness test, in which I got 86% vs my 1.05hz result on the pitch one, on some of the longer phrses forces you to rely too much on short term memory rather than tonal recognition.
I had refrained from further criticism in my previous comment but now that I’ve seen so many others I realise it could be taken as constructive. I think the rhythm test tests short term memory too much. I also echo the other comments regarding the tonal changes in the rhythm test. I found myself second guessing. Tonal changes confuse what is being asked and do not test rhythm.
My scores on all three tests were around average to slightly below. I’d actually expected lower scores than that. I do agree with some of the other comments that the tonal variations in the rhythms may be muddying the results some. If I heard two different “tunes” that I thought had the same rhythm, I wouldn’t know whether to count that as being the same or different.
I think it would be very interesting if you could come up with a test for the ability to *produce* tones and rhythms. My skills in that area are terrible, which is what made me think I’d do a lot worse on the tests than I did. I am utterly incapable of singing on key and always have been.
And an illustration of my inability to reproduce rhythms: Several years ago, I saw the show Stomp. There’s a part of the show where one of the performers claps out rhythms, which the audience then claps back. The rhythms get progressively more complicated until no one can keep up and we all have a big ol’ laugh.
Most of the audience was able to keep up through most of the sequences and only started falling apart towards the end. Even then, it got some of the more difficult ones on a second try. My friend sitting next to me (not a musician by the way) was easily doing even the most difficult ones on the first try.
I, in contrast, could barely keep up with the very simplest sequences. I kind of perceived it as my brain hearing the rhythms, but my hands losing track of what they were supposed to do. It’s similar with singing on key - I know I’m off key, but I can’t get my throat to do whatever it has to do to hit the right note.
I have a learning disability called Nonverbal Learning Disorder, which gives me problems with math, spatial stuff, and some abstract concepts. I’d be really curious to know whether there’s any connection. If you ever decide to pursue anything in that direction, I’d be happy to volunteer my brain for a PET scan or fMRI.