For Amusia

Not sure if we have blogged this before, but the test is worth taking. Note that it takes about 20 minutes, but we think it is time well spent: Brams Online test : "This test has been designed for people with little or no formal musical training; anyone interested can thus take the test."

According to new research in the journal Nature Neuroscience: "What sounds like music to us may just be noise to a macaque monkey." Apparently, "a monkey's brain appears to lack critical circuits that are highly sensitive to a sound's pitch." Human Brains Are Sensitive To Musical Pitch, Unlike Those Of Monkeys : Shots - Health News : NPR One of the lead researchers  Sam Norman-Haignere , has also done work on amusia, like this:  Pitch-responsive cortical regions in congenital amusia (.pdf). I have emailed Sam to see if he needs more research subjects.

This study "investigated the impact of congenital amusia, a disorder of musical processing, on speech and song imitation in speakers of a tone language, Mandarin." Individuals with congenital amusia imitate pitches more accurately in singing than in speaking: Implications for music and language processing | SpringerLink :

Amusia — SYNC PROJECT : "there are individuals in whom the mechanisms function in a way that even normal processing of musical sounds is not possible...called tone-deafness or amusia, typically affecting around 4 % of the population."

Unfortunately, this article costs over $50, but it does address "the work that has been done concerning singing among nonmusicians, focusing on pitch accuracy, which is one of the most important aspects of singing." Will review it if we manage to get a copy. Perception and action in singing - ScienceDirect

This very detailed look at the brain as it processes pitch does not address amusia directly, but it may be of interest to amusiacs looking to learning more about how our brains handle music: Pitch Processing Sites in the Human Auditory Brain

Here is the study that puts amusia at 1.5% of population, not the more commonly cited 4%. It does look like a solid study and I appreciate the point noted below; if there's one thing more frustrating than not being able to sing, it's being told that the reason for this is "you're not trying hard enough". Prevalence of congenital amusia. - PubMed - NCBI : "the deficit is not attenuated by musical training"

Another article that glosses over the obstacles that congenital amusiacs face. Why not direct people to a suitable test so they can benchmark their ability ? Also, the 1.5% figure cited might be low. Can anyone learn to sing? For most of us, the answer is yes : "Do you have a pair of vocal folds that can produce sound? Can you tell the difference between a higher note and a lower note? Good news! You and about 98.5% of the population absolutely can be taught how to sing."

I have mixed feelings about this article - the explanation of amusia is not wrong and the tone is encouraging (pun intended), but it still leaves the impression amusiacs don't try hard enough, and fails to address the struggles faced by amusiacs. Tone deaf? Why you can still hit the right notes | Pursuit by The University of Melbourne : "Tone deafness, also known as amusia, is a recognised condition that means someone cannot distinguish between different pitches or tones in music, and cannot hear that their voice isn’t rising and falling with the melody when singing."

This article examines "sensitivity to emotion in speech prosody in a sample of individuals with congenital amusia, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in processing acoustic and structural attributes of music". Reduced sensitivity to emotional prosody in congenital amusia rekindles the musical protolanguage hypothesis :

This 2013 article in the Atlantic states: "People who are tone deaf -- unable to hear differences in pitch and tone -- aren't just awful singers. At the most extreme, they're unable to perceive music, period." This may sound a little harsh, but it reflects common attitudes to those of us with tin ears. Tone Deafness: A Broken Brain? - The Atlantic :

Amusia in general, and congenital amusia in particular, have attracted a lot of attention from researchers over the last 20 years or so. This article lists some sources to explore, with more being added as time permits. Note that some papers will appear in multiple collections: Google Scholar is a great place to start - I like to use the Chrome browser for this, with the Lazy Scholar extension. Here are the results for:  congenital amusia in Scholar . Several articles are listed in this page from Goldsmiths, a part of the University of London:  Music, Mind and Brain Publications . The EBSCOhost database of university dissertations: amusia results . JSTOR is a massive research repository, some of which are free to access: amusia results in JSTOR .