

Find Out If You're Tone Deaf; Plus, Are Asians Naturally Better Musicians?

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Perfect pitch is a rare and mysterious quality, and when you see it demonstrated, it has freaky, otherworldly air about it.

You always hear people talking about how their friend or cousin has it - chances are they don't, they just have really good pitch. Those with perfect pitch - those who can say with certainty that the sound of a passing bus is a D-sharp, or that the squeak of your chair an F-flat - are about 1 in 10,000.

Anyway, some researchers believe speaking Mandarin and other tonal languages give you perfect pitch? Some say so, other say not. It's actually kind of a bitter debate within the field. (BTW, those in the know don't call it "perfect" pitch, but "absolute" pitch. I'm not sure why.)

I'm thinking of this because New Scientist today has a short article today on psychologist Diana Deutsch's theory that being raised speaking a tonal language will probably give you perfect pitch. The thinking is that in languages like Mandarin, the tone at which you speak a certain syllable will determine its meaning. For instance, "ma" could mean "mother," "hemp" or "horse" depending on how you say it. Therefore, people who have spoken it all their lives have a far greater sense of pitch.

Deutsch has been working on this theory since early this decade, when a study she conducted indicated that speakers of Cantonese, Vietnamese and Mandarin had a far greater instance of perfect pitch (about 80 percent of them had it). It's an enticing theory because it takes away the notion that "some folks have it and some don't." Anyone - so long as they're raised in a tonal language-speaking household - can share the same gift that contributed to the incredible musical abililities as Mozart, Beethoven, and Yo-Yo Ma.  

However! Not everyone agrees. Others in the field say that the Asian students Deutsch tested overwhelmingly displayed perfect pitch not because of the language they spoke, but because of genetics - Asians simply have a better sense of pitch than the rest of us, goes the theory.

However! Deutsch strikes a blow for her side with her most recent study. She tested more than 200 students, this time including 27 Chinese and Vietnamese students of varying degrees of fluency in tonal language. As it turns out, the non-fluent Asian students showed no better sense of pitch than the non-Asian subjects.

So, getting to subject of this post's headline, here's a test to rate your sense of pitch. The test takes about 5 minutes and is one of many that are floating around on the Internet (most are conducted by researchers). I just took it, and if it's accurate, goes a long way to explaining why my rock star plan hasn't quite panned out yet.


Hello! Very interesting article. I have taken the tone deaf test. mY concern is that everyone speaks about tone deafness but no one sugests what should a person do if he/she is tone deaf. So I am asking the question, what can a person do if he/she is tone deaf? Please respond to my email also if possible.

Hi. I am Asian, Cantonese actually(not that different from Mandarin as far as the tone thing goes) and i actually said Ma in horse and mom whil reading that lol. but i wasnt raised in China...or really spoke it 100% of the time. Im much more fluent in English because ive never been pro at chinese.
my accent is pretty good though o.O

in your article: "because of genetics-Asians simply have a better sense of pitch than the rest of us, goes the theory."

nope. i got really close to tone-deaf. about 70% which is "Normal".
and btw my entire family is asian my genetics got messsed up!?

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