# Test Your Musical IQ **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 21, 2020, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279 "2020-02-21T03:30:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Leaffan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leaffan/32/299_2.png) [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/21 "2020-02-22T06:33:33Z")
I had to quit. Either my internet connection or their server was the shits. I couldn’t tell when one sample ended and the next sample started from all the pausing and jittering. ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/22 "2020-02-22T13:43:49Z")
My score is nul, since 2/3 of the way through I had to allow script from a different URL and it repeated the first part of the test instead of going into the third, so… I’ll try again, later, but that is a super-badly designed site. ---
**Author:** ![Bayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bayaker/32/3454_2.png) [@Bayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/23 "2020-02-22T15:41:33Z")
Surprisingly I got 105. I _understood/heard differences_ in the Melodic Discrimination(117) and Mistuning Perception(95). The odd part was that I couldn’t (never really could) follow a beat, so I just picked randomly on the Beat Alignment test for at least 12 of the 15 and got a score of 104! That was just dumb luck and I probably deserved a 30 on that one 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/24 "2020-02-22T16:12:25Z")
I scored 97, only slightly below average. I’m surprised it was that high. While I enjoy listening to music, I seem to have approximately zero aptitude at making music. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2020, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/25 "2020-02-22T17:26:23Z")
1. Better on tone (the first test), worst on the beat (the second test), better than I thought I was doing on the third. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/26 "2020-02-23T00:02:50Z")
I saw that it would take 20 minutes, factored in my near-complete lack of musical knowledge and sense of rhythm of a Catholic woman with ten kids (does anybody still use the Rhythm Method for contraception?), and gave it up as a lost cause. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Ignotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecc23a/32.png) [@Ignotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignotus)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/27 "2020-02-23T01:53:29Z")
I got a total 88, by 71 (beat) / 102 (melody) / 91 (tune). This confirms what I already knew: I´ll never be a percussionist. ☹ It’s a fun test though! But in the first part, i never actually heard a difference, so I mostly stuck to alternative 1 (and when I strayed to 2, it was wrong!) Anyone got lower scores? ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/28 "2020-02-23T02:23:48Z")
I scored 110 overall: Melodic Discrimination 113, Mistuning Perception 122, Beat Alignment 96. Like **raspberry hunter** , I have perfect pitch and I think it was actually a hindrance on differentiating melodies because I got bogged down by recalling the identities of the notes themselves and less so the overall shape. I’m terrible at relative pitch and transposition. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/29 "2020-02-23T03:18:42Z")
97 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/30 "2020-02-23T06:31:53Z")
**Moderator Action** Since this is about music, let’s move it over to Cafe Society (from MPSIMS). ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/31 "2020-02-23T08:44:02Z")
Only 99. Which surprised me, since I can play three musical instruments (fife, trombone, and bagpipe). I guess I should practice more. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2020, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/32 "2020-02-23T17:31:10Z")
I scored a clean 100 - 103 beat perception, 98 mistuning perception, 99 melodic discrimination. For a guy who sometimes gets paid to play music and can play several instruments and sing, it lets me know that it’s yet another field that I love where I’m decidedly average. 🙂 > [@Eonwe](#): > > For me, the biggest challenge was the second test; “melodic discrimination”. Tracking a melody over three different keys, and picking out the one with a single note change was tough. Particularly not knowing which was the baseline. “Was this third melody, in a different key,” the same as the first or second?" is a doozie of a challenge, at least for me, as it means keeping both those previous melodies clearly in mind when listening to the third. Yeah, that’s the part that was the most maddening for me. All of the singers were a bit out, and telling which one was more out was hard and I didn’t think a second listen would have helped me. But I think that I could have probably neared a perfect score on that part of the test if I could go back and hear the examples a second or third time to compare them. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/33 "2020-02-24T05:35:03Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > . . . > For me, the biggest challenge was the second test; “melodic discrimination”. Tracking a melody over three different keys, and picking out the one with a single note change was tough. Particularly not knowing which was the baseline. “Was this third melody, in a different key,” the same as the first or second?" is a doozie of a challenge, at least for me, as it means keeping both those previous melodies clearly in mind when listening to the third. > . . . I found that one easiest, with the beat test being nearly impossible for me. I scored 120 overall but only 75 on the beat part. This does not surprise me in the least. It was never a problem while dancing, but playing the piano while tapping a beat with my foot was something I could never do. And I always found a metronome unbearable. Melody flows, for me, without reference to tempo. Which I suppose is why my favorite music is Irish Sean Nos, which has no tempo or volume dynamic. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2020, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/34 "2020-02-24T06:36:44Z")
105 Overall. Mistuning Perception: 111 Beat Alignment: 116 Melodic Discrimination: 89 I found with the first 2, that if the intitial clip was “perfect” I could often tell that right away, and didn’t even need to listen to the second one. If they played the imperfect one at first, it was harder for me to tell. I found the last one quite a bit more difficult and my score reflected it. I dabbled in violin as a child, piano as a teen, and guitar as an adult. I sang at church from very young, was in high school choir, and sing in my car whenever I’m alone. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/35 "2020-02-26T16:48:47Z")
I got 119, with 125 (perfect, I think) on the melodic discrimination, 123 (two wrong) on the mistuning, and 109 (three or four wrong) on the beat alignment. On the first test, I realized fairly quickly that the wrong one usually had a half-tone interval somewhere that the others didn’t. So even though the melodies got to be very long and hard to remember, if I heard a chromatic interval, that was probably the odd one. In the second test, some of the pieces had the voice much higher in the mix and the instruments so far back that it was hard to pick out the underlying key. Also, some of the tunes were kind of spacey, so hard to know what was “right.” The beat test highlighted my weakness. I’m not great on rhythm. FYI, I’m not a musician. I like music, and have been around it from a young age. I had piano lessons as a child, but didn’t like them. From high school on I fooled around with piano, played bass guitar with some friends for a few years, even tried picking up the tuba. But I’ve never been more than a dilletante. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/36 "2020-02-26T19:41:13Z")
100 on the nose, which is higher than I expected Mistuning Perception: 75 Beat Alignment: 109 Melodic Discrimination: 115 I had a lot of issues with knowing which voice was tuned to the music, most sounded the same. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/37 "2020-02-26T21:53:36Z")
I got 109. I forget what my individual scores were. I actually took it the day **x-ray** made this post and didn’t post my answer. I’m not a professional musician, but I have played in bands on and off for 30 years (trombone and baritone). I might have done better on the test but I was surprisingly quite bored halfway through each section. I thought I had better concentration ☹ ---
**Author:** ![carrps](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carrps/32/2957_2.png) [@carrps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carrps)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/38 "2020-02-26T23:29:31Z")
I scored highest on the mistuning perception which didn’t surprise me, because out of tune singers trigger an almost painful sensation for me. I was a slight bit below average (98) on both the beats and the melody tests. I only had a couple of years (3, I think?) of accordion instruction 60 years ago which was the extent of my musical training. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2020, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/39 "2020-02-26T23:48:46Z")
I just watched the recent Stanley Milgram bio-pic, so the whole time I’m taking this quiz, I’ll be wondering what they’re REALLY testing for. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [February 29, 2020, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/40 "2020-02-29T12:29:18Z")
I got 112 which is about what I would expect, though I’d secretly wished it had surprised me by being higher, because I care sooooo much about music and I do sometimes get paid for playing it. What was interesting is that I thought I’d be stronger on melody perception (being a folk player I pick up lots of stuff by ear) and I wasn’t that great at 105, and I thought I was tone deaf, but got a respectable 124 in the mistuning test. Oh well. I do think this test doesn’t (and can’t) account for being expressive and transmitting an emotion at which I’m great btw. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279.md?page=3)