hrs@houxb.UUCP (H.SILBIGER) (05/03/84)
The question was asked what could be done about being tone deaf. There is no such thing as tone deafness. There may be a lack of discrimination skills, but a truly tone deaf person, i.e. someone a cannot recognize the difference between two tones of different pitch, and therefore cannot hear a melody, would also not be able to understand speech. There are levels of skill in tone and musical perception. Some people have the skill to hear a melody once, and reproduce it accurately, (e.g. Mozart) and others may require many trials. Any normal functioning person can learn to discriminate tones, and improve. Musically trained persons are usually better than lay persons. Even "absolute pitch" perception, which is the ability to identify the pitch of a given tone without hearing a reference tone of known pitch, has been shown to be due to early childhood training. Thus, if you think you are tone deaf, and want to change the best thing to do is to listen to a lot of music and PAY ATTENTION while you are doing it. Herman Silbiger CGE