Tone deaf test
Find the smallest pitch change you can hear, then tell short tunes apart. Get your result in cents. Most people who think they're tone deaf aren't.
Find the smallest change in pitch you can hear.
Takes about 4 minutes. Headphones make it more accurate, but speakers work.
How it works
- 1Press Start. Use headphones in a quiet room if you can.
- 2Two tones play. Say whether the second was higher or lower. The gap shrinks while you're right and widens when you're not.
- 3Then hear pairs of short tunes and say whether they were the same or different.
- 4You get your pitch threshold in cents (100 cents is one semitone) and your tune score, with what they mean.
Questions
Am I tone deaf?
Probably not. True tone deafness, called congenital amusia, affects about 1.5% of people (Peretz and Vuvan, 2017). Most people who say they're tone deaf hear pitch fine and simply haven't practised singing it back, which is very trainable.
What's a good score?
Most people hear differences well under a semitone (100 cents), and trained musicians often hear 10 cents or less. Under 25 cents is fine pitch hearing. Above 100 cents together with a low tune score suggests pitch is genuinely hard for you to hear.
Is this a medical test?
No. It's a quick screen, not a diagnosis. Congenital amusia is diagnosed by specialists with longer tests, such as the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia. If you're worried about your hearing, see an audiologist.
Why does the gap keep changing?
It's an adaptive staircase: two right answers make the next pair closer, one wrong answer makes it wider. It homes in on the difference you hear about 70% of the time, which is your threshold, in about 40 pairs.
I can hear pitch but I can't sing in tune. Why?
Hearing pitch and producing it are separate skills. Researchers found that most people sing in tune when they sing slowly (Dalla Bella and colleagues, 2007). The singing test measures it.