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| This auditory test from the Neuroimaging lab at Harvard University uses 36 pairs of musical phrases and asks you to choose whether the two phrases are the same or different. I scored an 89, putting me in the 93rd percentile. I'm betting most of us would score at least that high. |
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Location: North Carolina | Interesting that you didn't get any responses yet. I took it and got an 86. I suspect most here thought they would ace it, as I thought I would. |
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Location: SoCal | I took this before and flunked it.... |
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Location: Tychy, Poland | i got 89 too.
but i took it after drinking 4 beers.
it's too long and boring test to take it when you don't drink. |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | 82 on my laptop. |
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Location: Hot Springs, S.D. | What's with all the "female" questions you have to answer before they tell you your score? It scared me into thinking it was a bogus site with viruses or something. |
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Location: Keepin' It Weird in Portland, OR | Yeah CS, it's kinda like that Pop-Up IQ test I keep seeing...
"Are you smarter than George W. Bush? ( :confused: duh) His IQ is 125, what's yours?... Take test here."
Then they want your vital info so they can spam/scam/or steal your identity!
Well... I'm smart enough not to give it to them...
[BTW- My IQ was 137 in 1980, after I was up all night getting high...
So How does a jerk with a barely average IQ get to be President?] |
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| I didn't answer any of those stupid survey questions, just left 'em blank and clicked next. |
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Location: Upper Left USA | The last survey question asked me what my score was... before it would give me a score.
Must be a govmn't low bidding programer.
86.1 |
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Location: Sydney, Australia | I flunked, but from training in giving IQ tests I know I have very bad short term memory (e.g. when read a series of numbers, I have trouble repeating them once it gets beyond 4 numbers). I found the same in this, I had trouble remembering what the first piece was by the time the second was played. i.e. I could detect a tonal difference when I could remember what the first piece was. This seems more of a memory test than a musical tonality test. |
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Posts: 1126
Location: Omaha, NE | Originally posted by The Artist (FKA Richard):
This seems more of a memory test than a musical tonality test. I got an 86.something.
I agree that it seemed more like a memory test than a music test, and here's why: Musically, its not particularly important if (for example) during the middle of a phrase the notes go root-third-fourth-third-root or root-fourth-third-third-root. (Or I could give a million other examples, but you get the idea).
A lot of the pairs of phrases were like that: Trivial substitutions within the phrase. Those substitutions are not particularly meaningful from a musical perspective. I don't think it says much about your musical ear of you fail to accurately match those pairs.
On the other hand, there were some phrases that had musically meaningful differences. In particular, some would resolve back to the root, where others would not. For those, any one with any musical training should instantly recognize the difference.
This reminded me of a study of chess players I read about years ago. If you take the average, non-chess-playing person and show them a chess board (with pieces arranged as they might be during the middle of an actual game), let them study it for maybe five or 10 seconds, then take it away and ask them to recall all the pieces, they will typically get four to six of them right.
If you do the same thing with a grand master, they will get it all right.
Why is that? Because the master is not memorizing individual pieces. He is recalling common patterns.
But here's the cool part: If you take the board and scramble it up to where the pieces are no longer in coherent locations that would correspond to an actual game, the grand masters do no better than the amateurs! Without the ability to interpret the pieces relative to his collection of memorized patterns, the master has no advantage.
We all have the same inherent short term memory capability, which boils down to about four to six "memory registers". The difference between the amateur and the master is that the amateur is storing individual pieces in his "registers" where the master is storing patterns.
Same thing on this test. Some of the phrases approached a state of complete, atonal nonsense. Recognizing differences there is nothing other than a test of short term memory, and of course dumb luck. |
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Location: North Carolina |
So How does a jerk with a barely average IQ get to be President?] [/QB] Without speaking for against the current president or anyone that might become president, let me say I did the Mensa thing for awhile but let my membership lapse. I came away convinced that intelligence alone does not make a competent human, but is only one component useful in completing one's total worth. |
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Location: Sydney, Australia | Yeah, but I'd kinda like the man with the finger on the button to be able to tell the difference between Australia and Austria - just in case those Austrians get bolshy and we get bombed by mistake! |
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Location: North Carolina | What, they're not the same? |
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Location: Location Location Location | I did ok, 80 something. I agree that a large part of the test is memory. But musical memory is important in the total package. In Amadeus, Salieri proudly plays his piece for young Mozart. Mozart first plays it back note for note, and then revises it in several ways; of course each way was better than the original, and that was the huge genius of Mozart.
Add a strong musical memory to perfect pitch, to a strong sense of relative pitch..well, not too many come along with the total package. |
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Posts: 1126
Location: Omaha, NE | Originally posted by Brooklyn:
But musical memory is important in the total package. In Amadeus, Salieri proudly plays his piece for young Mozart. Mozart first plays it back note for note, and then revises it in several ways; of course each way was better than the original, and that was the huge genius of Mozart. Its hypothetical of course, but I would propose that such a feat of memorization would be impossible unless the melody followed a set standard. In other words, I don't think Mozart would be able to hear a string of a thousand random notes and repeat it. |
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| 77.8
I'd had about 7 beers and 3 or 4 shots of whiskey when I took the test so I was a bit drunk at the time.
I'm afraid to try it again sober because I might get a lower score..lol |
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Location: Slightly northwest of Trader Jim | It said that I should give up the guitar and pick up the banjo! :eek: :D |
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Location: Sydney, Australia | It said I should stay away from the banjo as well. If I had any rhythm I could try out for drums. |
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Posts: 5567
Location: Blue Ridge Mountains | Now try this:
Shamless Plug
:D |
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How good is your musical ear?