# 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:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**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, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/41 "2020-02-29T13:01:16Z")
Just did the tone-deafness test and am not tone-dead _at all_. Feel a bit better now. ---
**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:** [March 1, 2020, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/42 "2020-03-01T02:38:14Z")
> [@PookahMacPhellimey](#): > > 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. 🙂 Hehehe, yeah. My primary weapons as a musician are my being generally easy to work with and somewhat charming/entertaining on stage for a bass player. The test is not very good at accounting for that, either. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2020, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/43 "2020-03-01T03:42:55Z")
I got 108: Melodic Discrimination 107 Beat Alignment 97 Mistuning Perception 120 ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2020, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/44 "2020-03-01T05:07:40Z")
109 overall. Mistuning Perception: 127 Melodic Discrimination: 117 Beat Alignment: 82 > [@commasense](#): > > 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. I noticed that, too. I also noticed that on melodic discrimination it was harder for me if the first melody was the odd one. Maybe that’s because it’s harder to know which is the odd one of the first two, because you have to remember both of them to check against the third. If you only remember the second, and the third doesn’t match it, which one of them matches the first? Not impossible, but as I said, harder. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2020, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/45 "2020-03-03T16:50:45Z")
FWIW, Adam Neely scored [118](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b15BrgrctPs) on this test. And there is no possible way Adam Neely’s musical IQ can be a point lower than mine. It’s clear to me he has a better ear, better sense of rhythm, and just overall better understanding of music, etc., so I would take this test with a big, big grain of salt. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/46 "2020-03-17T00:52:59Z")
I got 110, which is overall about what I would have expected - I’d rate myself as “on the high side of average” in terms of musical ability. What amazed me was my score breakdown among the three categories: hearing what was out of tune (102), following the beat (109), and differentiating melodic lines (120). In real life, I’m extremely good rhythmically and pitch-wise, and absolutely terrible at audio recall, which is essential to the third category. So while I’m not surprised to average out at 110, I’d have thought that result would be arrived at through scoring something like 130, 130, and 40. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/47 "2020-03-17T03:11:06Z")
> [@raspberry\_hunter](#): > > Mistuning perception: this was the easiest one for me. As a string player and someone who used to be in a choir for which tuning was The Most Important Thing, for most of these I was able to pick the answer based on which one set my teeth on edge 🙂 Same thing happened to me. Version 1 - “That’s ok” Version 2 - “I want to rip out my ears, so that’s obviously the wrong one.” Apparently, I did really bad on the rhythm section, which surprises me, because I think I have a fairly decent sense of rhythm. In my defense/excuse, the beeps were so loud, I couldn’t always hear the music below them. Of course, maybe I’m just delusional. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2020, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279/48 "2020-03-17T10:08:10Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > Same thing happened to me. Version 1 - “That’s ok” Version 2 - “I want to rip out my ears, so that’s obviously the wrong one.” > > Apparently, I did really bad on the rhythm section, which surprises me, because I think I have a fairly decent sense of rhythm. In my defense/excuse, the beeps were so loud, I couldn’t always hear the music below them. Of course, maybe I’m just delusional. Yeah, I can’t remember my score breakdown, but I was surprised, too, that I got any of the rhythm section questions wrong. While I do have the tendency to rush the beat when performing, when I listen to recordings of myself, I can totally hear when I’m pushing the beat. Like you, I found it somewhat difficult to clearly hear the music behind the beeps, and wished there was a way to replay the two snippets to compare, but I guess not having that option was part of the point of the exercise. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/test-your-musical-iq/848279.md?page=2)