Tone Monster is tone deaf, that's right

[Rick Schmidlin]

Okay here is a bit of a story:

I have loved music all my life. As child when I tried to sing people would tell me to shut up. In fact when I was a theatre playhouse group in the early 70's the music director said she could make anyboy sing. She heard me and "no no no, the only ones I can't is you and my husband." But I loved music with passion as much as I love films. When I was a pre-teen I tried guitar and could never tune it. I look at the old books of that time and I see I progressed but on a summer vaction with not one to tune the guitar I lost interest. I tried drums and had nor beat either.( in the 80's I was in the San Fernando Valley in a car with Belinda from the Go Go's when she first heard We Got The Beat on radio) I was in a pop band in 1967 but could not cut the mustard. So I worked in music on the other side and got to know the greats as friends. Eight years ago I picked up guitar and a tunner and tried for three years to learn and practiced every day for three hours, as my friend McCoy Tyner told me to.After three years I learnt a bunch but gave myself a F. Then I discovered mandolin and a good tuner. I am tone deaf but can still hear great tone. So I found a great sounding mandolin and praticed and learned with many three hour days, and almost five years from that first mando day I can say Tone Monster can play music and is a real tone monster. This is a report of my first five years and what the mando did for me.

My question is who else do you know or yourself is tone deaf?

[fredfrank]

Since you are such a Collings fan, I would question whether you are tone deaf. I think that shows a great deal of appreciation for tone!

[Rick Schmidlin]

Since you are such a Collings fan, I would question whether you are tone deaf. I think that shows a great deal of appreciation for tone!

I can hear a tone and know a perfect sound, it is pitch that is a :(:(:(

And I can not sing on key to save my life.I know others like Dave Alvin could not but he learned,even Exene learned.

[woodwizard]

Don't feel bad Rick. I can't sing my way out of a wet paper bag either. The way I see it is there are plenty of others who can so all we have to do is pick. :):mandosmiley:

[Geoff B]

That's a cool story, man. I appreciate your dedication and sticking with it because music is clearly something you love. I wish there were more people who didn't let limitations stop them from pursuing things they are into. As a high school teacher that is one of my big things in my classroom, to stick with it, and find ways around the difficulties. Right on!

[grandcanyonminstrel]

"....in a car with Belinda...." ??????!!!!!

j.
www.condino.com

[Rick Schmidlin]

"....in a car with Belinda...." ??????!!!!!

j.
www.condino.com


The lead singer of The Go Go's

Also to the other post, I also teach (UBC University) and tell my students to persue passions and interest.

[Dan Hoover]

i would guess that some are born with it,some arn't???i arn't...some can practice and make it happen i'm sure..but,there are a lot of of "professional" musicians can't sing in tone,but can play a instrument beautifully ...like a lot of great directors,that you wouldn't want to see in front of the camera,but behind it,they're masters...music producers too..they have a final vision..i'm happy i can figure a tune out (somewhat)and enjoy playing it (somewhat) but start singing along,that's when the dog runs...

[Skip]

Rick, if this makes you feel better Chet Atkins could not sing but the man sure could play!!!!

[mandocrucian]

Biological Tone Deafness seems to be the audio equivalent to color blindness. Interesting topic. Has T.M. tested himself?

wikipedia/Tone deafness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_deafness)

NPR: Born To Be Tone Deaf? (http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/jan/tonedeaf/020116.tonedeaf.html)

National Institute of Health: Test Your Sense of Pitch (http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/tunetest/)

http://www.bored.com/musictests/

Harvard medical School: Tone Deaf Test (https://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/tone-deaf-test)

NH

[farmerjones]

Rick,
Can you tell when a mandolin string pair if off or out?
Mando's don't have a lot of sustain so it's pretty tuff to hear the quaver. i listen for a quaver between two tones that are within a few cents of each other. Sort of a wah-wah sound. I find something that has a drone to it like an exhaust fan, or a vacuum. Then i learned to hum the tone or harmony to the tone by sliding into it. That's how i figured out harmony. Humming with the exhaust fan.
You probably just sing in some odd key that is a semi-tone off. You gotta be able to adjust either your voice or the accompaniment. Don't give up. Learn to slide.

[Rick Schmidlin]

Rick,
Can you tell when a mandolin string pair if off or out?
.

Yes

[SincereCorgi]

My question is who else do you know or yourself is tone deaf?

Does every public singing of 'happy birthday' I've ever heard count?

(I think we ought to officially put that song to bed, what with the octave jump that isn't exactly layman-friendly...)

[Santiago]

Bob Dylan's not tone deaf, but he sure can't sing.

[tree]

I was thinking the same thing about Neil Young . . . and yet I find myself oddly captivated by his microtonal excursions.

[D C Blood]

To post #9..Hey Skip...Chet may not have had an "American Idol" voice, but he sang quite credibly and well, when he wanted to sing...Check out a song he and Mark Knopfler co-wrote, "The Next Time I'm In Town"...beautiful song and good job to both of them singing it.

[journeybear]

Bob Dylan's not tone deaf, but he sure can't sing.

Hey now, Dylan gets more out of a half octave range than anyone other than Stevie Nicks! :))

But seriously, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Tom Waits - these are among my vocal role models. Mostly because if they can find success with their voices, there's hope for me with mine. That's why I play so darn hard, so people will forgive me when I sing. :grin: :crying: ;)

BTW Blender's list of The 50 Worst Artists in Music History (http://www.blender.com/lists/67198/50-worst-artists-in-music-history.html) includes this gem:

32 THE HOOTERS
The great folk-rock scare
Philadelphians Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian assembled a quintet that specialized in a vile blend of folk-rock and New Wave, in the process proving that the mandolin is more irritating than the synthesizer. [My italics]
Worst CD Zig Zag (Columbia, 1989)

[Rick Schmidlin]

Leo Kottke

[GRW3]

It sounds like you have frequency related hearing issues. Have you gone back to guitar to see if your mando training helped any? The mando is considerably higher than the guitar and the (I assume) male voice. Can you sing a falseto in tune? Could be you might be able to do that high lonesome tenor.

It's great that your hard work has paid off.

[Rick Schmidlin]

It sounds like you have frequency related hearing issues. Have you gone back to guitar to see if your mando training helped any? The mando is considerably higher than the guitar and the (I assume) male voice. Can you sing a falseto in tune? Could be you might be able to do that high lonesome tenor.

It's great that your hard work has paid off.


I just get bored with guitar. I can sing Tip Toe Thru The Tulips but that will drive most out the door, I can sing Hey Babe You Wanna Boogie and they stay and like it.:))

[Ignatius]

Not to quibble with an otherwise great story, Tone Monster, but as is noted in the articles that mandocrucian linked, I don't think you can be tone deaf if you are able to discern when mandolin strings are out of tune. Like color blindness, tone deafness is the inability in virtually all situations to discern the problematic sensory input (certain colors in typical color blindness, or the difference among tones in tone deafness).

My grandmother was tone deaf. Not only did she sing out of tune, but she did not even know that she was singing out of tune. If you played her a recording of her voice in comparison to a proper version of a given melody, she literally could not hear the difference, except maybe in terms of octaves or other large intervals. Trying to explain "out of tune" to her was like trying to describe a sunset to a person born blind.

The fact that you know you are singing out of tune at any given moment likely proves you are not tone deaf. Not being able to sing in pitch is not tone deafness; it is a lack of skill in controlling the instrument known as the human voice. The structure of that instrument is incredibly complex and requires a LOT of muscle memory and training in order to manipulate all the parts correctly. I suspect it also requires a great deal of ear-training as I have found that many good singers also pick up tunes by ear very well on their instruments.

As GRW3 said, I wonder if you actually have some frequency range loss in your hearing, especially if you only lose tone perception in a given octave range.

[Rick Schmidlin]

Two things that music teacher from the theatre may have been wrong, she may have damaged me away from musical confidence. And of 1975 I have a had loss of hearing from a puntured ear drum. I should have ducked, it was a sucker punch.

[Rick Crenshaw]

The lead singer of The Go Go's

Also to the other post, I also teach (UBC University) and tell my students to persue passions and interest.

Wow, UBC is a great university. My daughter almost went to UBC. She was accepted and even got a small scholarship offering (not bad for a US citizen). In the end she decided on staying in the states and is a junior now at University of Washington in Seattle. It's a long way from home (Memphis, TN) but she loves it. I was really hoping she'd choose UBC. I love Vancouver and the university is top notch and beautiful to boot. Of course, UW is pretty impressive also and is one of the most beautiful large school campus that I've seen as well.

Who needs tone acuity when you have all that beauty and a nice mandolin to pick?

[Doug Edwards]

I can sing harmony pretty well, as long as I blend and don't stick out. I try to sing tenor, but it comes out more like tin ear.

[mandolirius]

<And of 1975 I have a had loss of hearing from a puntured ear drum. I should have ducked, it was a sucker punch>

Uh, the definition of a sucker punch is that you don't see it coming, so how were you going to duck?

[Bertram Henze]

Tone deafness has never prevented people from singing and becoming famous - just listen to Brian Ferry (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZTsW8WKy5c)...

Bertram

[Ivan Kelsall]

For my money,all the guys mentioned above aren't great singers - what they CAN do,is to put a song over & make you believe in the words.That's why Bob Dylan is one of my all time favourite 'singers' of that genre. At the opposite end of the spectrum,there's my VERY favourite singer with a great voice who LIVES a song when he sings it - James Taylor. I can listen to either
with the greatest of pleasure & very often do. Being tone deaf,or not having a good ear for tonal pitch shouldn't put anyone off from playing. I'm unfortunately a bit the 'other way' ( NO, not THAT way !!!) :)). I can tell when a string's the minutest bit out of tune - i don't have perfect pitch,just a good 'comparative' ear - & tuning is sometimes a real pain in the butt,
Ivan:mandosmiley:

[mandocrucian]

Fwi


researchers have found that only 1 in 20 people truly has amusia, the technical term for tone deafness. Tests have shown that some people with bad singing voices hear music just fine. amusics are a smaller group with a perceptual problem: They can’t pick out differences in pitch or follow the simplest tunes, reports the september 2007 issue of the harvard health letter.



congenital and acquired amusia

"you have van gogh's ear for music." - artemus ward

congenital and acquired amusia are the two main types of amusia.

Acquired amusia is the loss of musical ability as a result of a traumatic event, such as an accident or disease. Clinical symptoms are much more variable than those of congenital amusia, and are determined by the location and nature of the lesion.

Acquired amusia often co-occurs with aphasia. Like aphasia, amusia can be categorized as receptive, expressive or mixed. Receptive amusia is sometimes referred to as ‘musical deafness’; symptoms include the inability to recognize familiar melodies or the loss of ability to read musical notation. Clinical symptoms of expressive amusia include the loss of ability to sing, write musical notation, and/or play an instrument (bautista & ciampetti, 2003). A mixed disorder would be a combination of expressive and receptive impairment.

Congenital amusia, commonly referred to as “tone deafness,” is a lifelong impairment in the perception and production of music. Research findings indicate impairment to be specific to the music domain. Likewise, there are no known effects upon prosody or the recognition of familiar voices or environmental sounds.

In general, people with congenital amusia have deficiency processing pitch variation. This is reflected in both receptive and expressive ability, and extends to the impairment of musical memory and recognition, as well as singing and the ability to tap in time to music. Latest research shows that there is a genetic component to congenital amusia, however, no specific genes have been identified (peretz et al, 2007).

References:

1. Peretz, i., cummings, s., dube, m. (2007). The genetics of congenital amusia (tone deafness): A family-aggregation study. The american journal of human genetics, 81, 582-588.
2. Bautista, r., ciampetti, m. (2003). Expressive aprosody and amusia as a manifestation of right hemisphere seizures. Epilepsia, 44(3), 466-467.
http://amusia-brain.blogspot.com/2008/02/congenital-and-acquired-amusia_25.html