How musical are you?

[Baroque Mongoose]

The BBC and a university department would be interested to know, apparently. I thought someone else might have shared this link first, but they don't seem to have done, so here are the details, along with a link to a test for anyone who's interested in taking it. I haven't done so myself yet, but hope to have time this evening.

From the blurb: "We're interested in finding out about the many different ways people can be musical, even without setting foot inside a music school.''

Sounds fun to me.

[Baroque Mongoose]

And if anyone is at all interested, I have just taken the tests and these are my results (comments added in italics):

Enthusiasm for music: 92%

Your ‘Enthusiasm for Music’ score shows how important music is to you in your daily life. It also indicates how much time and money you devote to music.

You scored high for enthusiasm, which suggests that music is a major part of your life. You almost certainly spend more time than most people just listening to music or with music on in the background while you do other things.

You probably also spend more money and use more of your free-time than average on music-related activities. You are also likely to enjoy reading and writing about music, as well as talking about it with other people. [Can't argue with that assessment!]


Musical perception: 99%

This is perhaps the most traditional measure of musical skill and indicates how well you understand the qualities of music, such as rhythm, pitch, tuning and genre.

You scored high for perception, which suggests that you have a good ear for music. You can probably sing in tune and are better than average at keeping a beat. You can also tell the difference between types of instruments and musical genres. People with high ability are often able to create music on their own or with others. You are likely to have performed well in the other musical tests. [I'm probably more than averagely musical, but if I'm getting 99% in this category there is something wrong with the test.]


Emotional connection: 19%

This looks at how music affects your moods and feelings.

You scored low for emotional connection, which indicates that music doesn’t influence your feelings and that you rarely, if ever, use music to manage your mood. Your results suggest that music doesn’t generally have the power to reconnect you to past events or change your emotional state. [Huh?! I routinely use music as a stress reliever. This part of the test needs even more work than the one before.]


Social creativity: 59%

This looks at creating music and sharing in group activities where music is involved.

You scored medium for Social creativity, which suggests that you have a fairly good memory for melodies and are able to recall many of the new songs or musical phrases you hear. If you feel confident enough, you can probably contribute to group activities where music is involved, and are able to join in, singing or clapping along with others. You may not find it as easy as some people to imagine new melodies in your head. [OK, I'll go along with this.]


Musical curiosity: 71%

This assesses how open you are to new musical genres and experiences.

You scored medium for music curiosity, which suggests that you are open to exploring some new music, but may prefer to listen to the genres and artists you are already familiar with. As a result, you are likely to be exposed to a reasonably limited range of musical styles and have a similar breadth of musical taste to the average person. You probably rarely, if ever, attend events just to experience live music, but may enjoy going to see familiar artists perform. [And this is about right, too.]


If anyone else has taken the test, I would love to see what you got... and your thoughts on it. Perhaps it works better for you than for me.

[Despina41]

Enthusiasm for Music: 97% (only 97???? what did I miss?!)
Musical Perception: 99% ok...
Emotional Connection: 89%
Social Creativity: 90% (What is this?, oh yeah, I don't like choirs)
Musical Curiosity: 99% (yeah, that's why I was listening to Pizzetti's Fedra today...)

But I'm looking at my scores, and I totally bombed the musical genres. I was like, "what is this crap..." They should have told you the genres beforehand, because I was thinking more along the lines of, "Ok, this is the boring, easy-listening stuff..." "this is the real instrument section," "this is the fast beat section..."



I don't know why they gave me 99 on the musical perception. I didn't do very well matching up their beats (blame it on my spacebar). I did get 11/12 melodies right. They were hilarious: "annnnddd now a random non-scale tone in ths one!" "uh..."

[Baroque Mongoose]

No, I didn't do too well matching up the beats either, and for much the same reason as you. As for the musical genres, they were all completely unfamiliar to me apart from jazz; the other three all sounded pretty similar to me given that the clips were so short, so it was sheer guesswork. Now if they'd chosen baroque, 1930s dance band, romantic classical and jazz, I'd have had no problems.

[oiying]

Interesting experiment! Is there a published working paper or something? Not too sure what they're really trying to find out...

Enthusiam 90%
Perception 99%
Emotional 64%
Social 63%
Curiosity 99%

I agree the perception test doesn't seem right, considering what the detailed results showed. I did terribly for the matching beats section. Plus I couldn't tell the genres apart other than jazz - think I heard a couple of hip hop and rock but the rest were all a mess.

They should also have mentioned what the percentages actually mean (did they?), like if it was a percentile relative to a population sample. Did they just put up the test? Maybe if you repeat the test a while later the results will be radically different after they've gathered a larger sample size...

[Baroque Mongoose]

Good point about the percentiles. I wonder if everyone gets 99% for perception?

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Baroque Mongoose

Good point about the percentiles. I wonder if everyone gets 99% for perception?

I'm scared to take the test now in case I score less than 99%

[Baroque Mongoose]

Fear not! If I get 99% for perception, I suspect the results for that section of the test have little meaning. (I mean, I'm not bad in that area - I can sing in tune, recognise when someone's not in tune with everyone else, spot duff notes, that sort of thing - but I'm not brilliant either. Rhythm is the worst thing with me. I'm fine with simple to medium rhythms, but I tend to trip over Purcell.)

[Despina41]

When I get time later, I'm going to go back and try to flunk it. We'll see if it dares give me above a 70%!



Test results: "Dear BBC reader, it would seem that you have a tin ear---or, as the Russians say, a bear stepped on your ears."

[Herzeleide]

Enthusiasm: 96%
Perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 89%
Social creativity: 92%
Curiosity: 99%