The BBC asks: How musical are you?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/labuk/experiments/musicality

Enthusiasm for music: 73%
Musical perception: 86%
Emotional connection: 34%
Social creativity: 80%
Musical curiosity: 78%

Enthusiasm for music 92%
Musical perception 99%
Emotional connection 51%
Social creativity 98%
Musical Curiosity 99%

Woah, you killed it.

Enthusiasm for music: 83%
Musical perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 47%
Social creativity: 40%
Musical curiosity: 90%

really wasn't expecting 99% on perception.

I found the first test really hard, the clips were just too short. There were a few that were definitely rock, jazz and hip-hop, but the rest I was just guessing.

i had it as rock, jazz, uh weird electro, and kinda classical but with some beats wtf. lots of guessing too. jazz was easiest (i know my enemy).

Enthusiasm for music: 97%
Musical perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 51%
Social creativity: 67%
Musical curiosity: 71%

Bah, I thought by musical perception score was good!

Low emotional connection scores: we are all borderline aspergers geeks.

This is stupid.

Enthusiasm, Connection and Curiosity were all very high for me, HOWEVER:

I scored terribly on musical perception despite only doing really badly in the first test (I found the short bursts incredibly annoying to listen to so put most of them in randomly - the only group I got right was jazz), but then I worked out that it incorporated the self-evaluation questions too, and I rated myself terribly. It doesn't expect people with low self-esteem, I guess, but it knocks the science right out of it.

It scored me even worse for social creativity, I guess because I never sing in public and answered all questions accordingly. But I'm a fucking musician, I'm not a singer. I can't sing. I do however do stupid invisible synth mimes all the time and have been in a band for 11 years and come up with songs all the time. So piss you, BBC.

Enthusiasm for music: 98%
Musical perception: 69%
Emotional connection: 82%
Social creativity: 70%
Musical curiosity: 49% (lol wut)

Enthusiasm for Music 97%
Musical Perception 99%
Emotional Connection 89%
Social Creativity 44%
Musical Curiosity 65%

I wonder how my 'Emotional connection' can only be 51% when I answered 'Completely agree' to questions like "Do you use music to lift your mood"?

maybe i was being hard on myself

LOL rockist aspie:

Enthusiasm for music: 92%
Musical perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 41%
Social creativity: 72%
Musical curiosity: 49%

Sinister BBC agents are being dispatched to emil.y's house to confiscate all her musical equipment as we speak.

Musical perception: 99%
dammit BBC gimme the other 1% you tightwads

Ha, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying I'm a great musician or anything, in fact I'm pretty crappy, but I've done some good work, really I have. Why do you want to destroy me, BBC?

Just had another thought - I answered 'I think so' every time it prompted me to rate my surety, but I'm NEVER sure of myself - all that was measuring was how insecure I am, not anything to do with my actual ability to perceive music.

xpost

Looking at the results for the different tests:

- I misplaced 3 of the 16 music clips.
- I missed 3 of the "beep test" ones; two that I said were on-beat were wrong, and one that I said was off-beat was wrong.
- The "tap to the beat" test, I got 7 "high accuracy" and 2 "medium accuracy."
- The melody memory test, I missed 3 of 12. In all three cases, I though there was a difference where there was not.

Just had another thought - I answered 'I think so' every time it prompted me to rate my surety, but I'm NEVER sure of myself - all that was measuring was how insecure I am, not anything to do with my actual ability to perceive music.

Yeah, I did this too.

Enthusiasm for Music 97%
Musical Perception 99%
Emotional Connection 86%
Social Creativity 47%
Musical curiosity 100%

I echo Emil.y's point though - I'm another musician who can't sing, and never had training so, the social score comes way down - I don't sing along to stuff because I know my pitching is crap.

^ exactly the same, i don't sing because i know how out of tune i am when i do!

hmm. i got 13 wrong overall, out of 55. that apparently equals 99%.

Enthusiam for music: 99%
Musical Perception: 99%
Emotional Conneciton: 100%
Social Creativity: 100%
Musical Curiosity: 65%

this seems about right

sorry we are firing u as Musical Director becuz ur Enthusiasm for music isn't 100%...

those "is it on the beat" things were maddening because I feel like there were a couple that were JUST OFF the beat but still in the exact same tempo, which depending on how you're defining "on the beat" could change your answer

Meanwhile, Zane Lowe..

I was one of those annoying kids that'd always clap on the off-beat when everyone else clapped on the on-beat.

Nowadays, I clap on the quarter-beat.

Wonder what Chris Moyles' scores would be?

ha Mark, I did that too

But in the end it was the scat singing that got you expelled from Julliard.

also, I know one thing that happens a lot in music education is, regardless of your main instrument, they make you take keyboard and voice classes so that even if it doesn't sound pretty you can plunk out or hum a tune so that's probably the angle that "do you sing along to things" is coming from

clapping on the quarter-beat = keplok!

i got lots of the first test really wrong - i was like 'this one is light jazz? this one is... samba? this one is... nineties europop?' i do not understand genre :/

ha yeah, my problem with the first test was I was microgenre-ing and, due to the era of hip-hop I really really love, conflating a lot of jazz and hip-hop

i think if they'd said what the genres were at the outset i could have done it but as it was i was like 'this noise is annoying blues-rock, this noise is heavy, they are just miles apart' and then 'aha! this genre is casio keyboard presets! i can do this!'.

I stacked all the piano ones into one category, then all the 'rock' ones, then the 'jazz' ones, then guessed the rest.

If In Doubt Leave It Out guess

I think being completely adamant about my answers are what pushed my percentiles so high

are the percentages based entirely on yr self-reporting ? i did v well on the musical test scores and am kind of miffed to only have 83% ~musical perception~

Enthusiasm for music: 94%

Musical perception: 83%

Emotional connection: 70%

Social creativity: 72%

Musical curiosity: 90%

(on the musical tests that weren't group-by-genre that is)

tbh if i hadn't done well on the melody/beat tests i would have felt awful given the years of practice/classes/etc i've put in! this thing is slightly too close to the bone to be fun.

I was actually surprised I only missed one entry on the melody test.

One of the beat tests said I did poorly but I am certain it was keyboard latency combined with me subdividing the beat too much.

Enthusiasm for Music 5%
Musical Perception 100%
Emotional Connection 64%
Social Creativity 56%
Musical Curiosity 14%

I had trouble with the sound snippets. I got 3/4 with pop (obvious synth sounds) and 3/4 with jazz (saxophones and so on; old-sounding recordings) but had more trouble distinguishing rock and hip hop (2/4 in each case). As has already been suggested, it is a bit flawed, for one thing because samples can be taken from one genre and used in another.

5% enthusiasm, 14% curiosity, though??

Enthusiasm for music: 97%

Musical perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 64%

Social creativity: 93%

Musical curiosity: 90%

Enthusiasm for music: 67%

Musical perception: 99%

Emotional connection: 55%

Social creativity: 86%

Musical curiosity: 96%

The melody matching was pretty easy I thought. If they were different the second one often shot off into some weird atonal key at some point.

ha yes, it basically was like "are all of the notes in the key? okay then it's the same"

yah it's not very punishing. i was thinking "does this sound right to u?" wld be an easier q than "do u remember the melody"

not sure i can trust scientists who have a typo on one of their q's

5% enthusiasm, 14% curiosity, though??

I am just not interested any more, plus I very much prefer to do things in silence, not with music playing. I also detest background music in shops and pubs etc.

ha yes, it basically was like "are all of the notes in the key? okay then it's the same"

Yes, obvious deviation from a major or minor scale was a giveaway. It was sometimes made even easier by there being a big jump where previously there had been a small interval.

i had more trouble distinguishing pop & hip hop

THAT'S THE TROUBLE WITH HIP HOP THESE DAYS AMIRITE *gets thrown out of swag*

The portion of the test in which you hit the spacebar to coincide with the beat I thought was both extremely easy and very fun. It seemed to me you had to be deaf not to coincide - I get the results and find I only got a 12%???

heh

jsut picturing u tapping away like crazy having a whale of a time

I actually found it quite stressful and not enjoyable at all. I used to be a pretty tight drummer and was quite often complimented on my accuracy when playing along to a click track or drum machine, but I haven't played seriously for a very long time indeed. Plus I always suffered from stage fright.

(xp) spacebar for kick drum, tap 'H' for hi-hats...

Enthusiasm for music: 99%
Musical perception: 100%
Emotional connection: 82%
Social creativity: 100%
Musical curiosity: 100%

did just strongly agree/disagree w/everything though

for iphone ppl who enjoy aural practice get the karajan app it kicks ass

Enthusiasm for music: 73%
Musical perception: 48%
Emotional connection: 34%
Social creativity: 37%
Musical curiosity: 96%

...harsh. gonna blame the imprecision of my space bar for that embarrassment of a perception score.

Enthusiasm for music: 92%
Musical perception: 100%
Emotional connection: 93%
Social creativity: 100%
Musical curiosity: 90%

Blimey!

so what the fudge did i do wrong for musical perception that's given me the worst score out of the dozens i've seen across the internet today? it's not like i even got that many questions wrong, although i did kinda half ass the first round.

Enthusiasm for Music: 80%
Musical Perception: 99%
Emotional Connection: 100%
Social Creativity: 90%
Musical Curiosity: 99%

Perhaps I is in the wrong profession. . .

~i wonder what steve goldberg got~

wow i did way better at this than i expected, can't believe i only got one wrong for beats and melody memory, and i mixed up one of each of the pop and hip-hop genres. 64% for emotional connection is a laff tho, as is 71% for curiosity.

(also 83% for social creativity, 95% for enthusiasm & 99% for perception)

Not that I'm competitive or owt, but am I winning?

Enthusiasm for music: 97%

Musical perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 100%

Social creativity: 33%

Musical curiosity: 59%

they were pretty forgiving on the musical perception ones (although i think there was only one case where i chose 'i think' instead of 'i'm certain', if that matters)—i made a few mistakes in each part. it seems like i got burned on musical curiosity for things like only having gone to one live music event in the past year, or on 'social creativity' for hating GROUP CLAPPING and PUBLIC SINGALONGS.

it helped that they did the beats-in-time test before the mark-the-beat test, because otherwise i wouldn't have tapped out such fast beats for most of those things.

enthusiasm 78
perception 99
emotional 64
social 78
curiosity 99

said i wasn't sure quite a lot, but not all the time. when answering multiple choice questionnaires i often avoid going for the extreme answers just because. in hindsight i probably should have clicked completely agree more than i did.

misplaced 3 in the groups, all the rock ones were right. 1 of each missing in the others.
got 1 wrong on match the beat.
1 low, 1 medium the rest high on tap to the beat which was a relief seeing as i'm a drummer.
3 wrong on melody memory, my attention span didn't help there, though.

can't wait to tune in to zane lowe later on.

enthusiasm 96
perception 99
emotional 28(lol??)
social 36
curiosity 71

Got 100% right on the gene groups
12 out of 18 for the onbeat
2 lows, 4 medium and 3 high taps to the beat
9 out of 12 for the melody one

Enthusiasm 96%
Perception 99%
Emotional 82%
Social Creativity 62%
Musical Curiosity 96%

So, we all like taking tests. On this one, I thought the melody matching and one-the-beat ones were pretty good, and similar to what actually happens in music education. However, the genre-matching test didn't really test much imo -- "genre" is fuzzy, and usually has as much to do with who listens to the songs as much as the music itself. Also, any test that asks you to rank how much you believe this or that about yourself is bound to suffer from personal bias. If I want to appreciate music, I will believe that I do.

What does this test actually say about our "musicality"? It seems odd to me that "musical perception" would be on average the area most people did best at, when in my experience, accurate perception of pitch and rhythm seems to be the *rarest* quality folks possess (even actual musicians!)

enthusiasm 78%
musical perception 83%
emotional connection 34%. wtf, guess i'm a robot
social creativity 70%
musical curiosity 94%

have to say perception at 83% seems embarrasingly low compared to everyone else. did misplace one hiphop clip with pop though and put two beeps as on the beat when they weren't.

Enthusiasm for music: 95%
Musical perception: 86%
Emotional connection: 51%
Social creativity: 40%
Musical curiosity: 99%

Group the music: 13/16
Match the beat: 14/18
Tap to the beat: 4 high, 4 medium, 1 low
Melody memory: 11/12 (odd, as I thought this was the hardest test)

not sure how the scores are calculated though if this
Got 100% right on the gene groups
12 out of 18 for the onbeat
2 lows, 4 medium and 3 high taps to the beat
9 out of 12 for the melody one
got 99% and mine 83%? just curious.

i got pretty similar test results but was kinda self deprecating in the questions i guess and they gave me only 3 percent for musical perception. so maybe only the questions matter?

Yep, this ^^^

not sure how the scores are calculated though if this
Got 100% right on the gene groups
12 out of 18 for the onbeat
2 lows, 4 medium and 3 high taps to the beat
9 out of 12 for the melody one
got 99% and mine 83%? just curious.

iirc i did a little bit better than this apart from on the groups, yet got the WORST SCORE EVER of 48% for perception. so, i dunno. people posting their stats rather than just their scores is making me feel like less of an idiot, though, so thx.

ooh, 3%! finally, someone to look down on.

actually i had forgotten the questions like 'can you tell if someone is singing out of tune?' and such, and my answers to those were all along the lines of 'i guess, usually'. so i'm blaming that, and running away before anyone contradicts me.

that makes sense. never thought my poor self-esteem would work to my disadvantage like that.

i got a bunch of middling-lowish scores and I aced most of the hearing tests, but was reserved with the stupid questions.

I did this at work yesterday lunchtime - can't remember my exact percentages but I scored high on everything except 'Social creativity'. Was very pleased that I got 100% on the guessing the on/off beat section, didn't do quite as well on the melody one though.

Loved this test, although I thought something was wrong so I skipped the first practical section.

Enthusiasm for music: 95%
Musical perception: 99%
Emotional connection: 10%
Social creativity: 90%
Musical curiousity 59%

The emotional connecting bit is really me in a nutshell I think. I tend to dislike exaggerated emotions in music, and for instance overemotive vocals or exaggerated aggression or brutality makes me cringe. I prefer my music cool, calm and collected.

you should check out rakim

Wow, they've nailed Geir.

Enthusiasm for Music 5%

I am actually kind of amazed seeing this on a music message board. :)

Pressing all these little wee microclips for the first test, in random succession, sounds like the bridge to a Cardiacs song.

This beat-matching thing is my exact achilles heel – unless they are completely randomly dispersed beeps or at obviously the wrong tempo, I am fucking useless.

Tap to the beat I am pretty sure I will suck at as well. I know for a fact, in fact – in Mother 3 you could get bonus combo points for hitting an enemy in time with heir personal song. I played that game 2x through and the max # of times I got contiguous bonus points was 4 – and just anomalous flukes in those cases. So, I will probably not do so hot here! I guess I hate music...we'll see...

Enthusiasm for music: 90%
Musical perception: 29%
Emotional connection: 93%
Social creativity: 67%
Musical curiosity: 84%

Which means something I could have told you before I took this test, that I love music but I am very stupid at doing it!

you should check out rakim

There are other reasons why I don't like hip-hop. De La Soul are also quite cool, calm and collected. :)

Enthusiasm for music: 92%
Musical perception: 100%
Emotional connection: 100%
Social creativity: 78%
Musical curiosity: 99%
Group the music: 14/16
Match the beat: 15/18
Tap to the beat: 6 high, 3 medium
Melody memory: 9/12

20 minutes of going through this stupid test and I get

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