On Music Perception, Singing and Tone Deafness

          I have discovered, after teaching and researching on voice and choir for many years, that many people do not hear pitch, (pitch color) tone quality, (tone color) melodic movement, dynamics and harmonic progression. And that has nothing to do with their ears. When they first heard music, unfortunately, they were intuitively drawn to many other elements such as sounds, sights, color and movement, but they missed the most important thing, the finer elements of music. Music to them is only pleasant "background" noise that produces good "feelings" coupled with their chemical process in their bodies when they admire the singers' glamour, beauty, riches, and fame plus the packaging and promotional fiasco. So they could listen to music of their choice all day long without getting tired. I could never do that. In the extreme cases, some people simply cannot tell the difference between the sounds of falling pots and pans in the kitchen and the beautiful music in the best symphony halls of the world.

          I am afraid that these people have missed out on one of the greatest pleasures of the world, a gift of God - beautiful music. What a pity indeed!! If they could hear the pitch color, tone color, texture, structure, melodic movement, dynamics and harmonic progression, they would immediately move on to more sophisticated art music and would abandon most "Pop" and "Merchandize Music" which often time only offer indulging, habit forming "sweet nothings". I attribute this unfair phenomenon to our capitalistic society, the media and merchants who sell music blind, purely for profit, without preserving variety, the dynamic, the finer essence and beauty of music. (an moral and integrity issue) After a person is grown, it would be impossible to turn back the clock and begin again from childhood with the proper guidance. From cradle to the grave, many are deprived of this beautiful gift of God. God, thank you for creating me. Hay, guys, and girls, you need to be born again in music!!

          You may ask me how come some people could sing very well and yet are tone/pitch challenged. (Is there such a thing? Oh yes.)

          Experiments by physicians, psychologists and neurologists (extremely rare, on music.) has discovered that the human mind can process, store, and analyze almost all sounds, (within the range of the human ear, from 20 Htz to 20K Htz) including music unless there are physical problems relating to their sense of hearing. Music that people have learned to like, by exposure would encourage their frontal lobe (Emotion) of their brain to be activated more.

          Tone deafness problem is usually caused by the cognitive means of music perception (which is the most common way teaching and learning are to take place) is associated with the wrong/different area of sound storage in the brain. If cognitively perceived pitch is match/associated with pitch storage in the brain, we have a musician and so forth. I invented the following story to illustrate this process of association.

          Three three-year-old kids were sitting before a TV when MTV is played. The first kid noticed (intuitively) the movements of the dancers. So he jumped up and dance like them. The second kid went in his room and brought our crayons and began coloring on a sheet of paper the colors of the MTV show. The third kid began singing the tunes in his octave and jumps octaves when the pitch goes beyond his to imitate the singing. After that experience, every time they sat before the TV and watch MTV, the three kids would do the same thing. (intuitive learning process, they will probably respond the same way until somebody wake them up to other elements in the MTV show early on.) Among these three kids, who do you think will probably be a musician/singer? The first may become a dancer/athlete. The second may become an artist and the third, a musician.

          When one hears a pitch, (which is always mixed with numerous elements such as tone quality, rhythm, structure, melodic movement, chords and chord progression, dynamics, etc. within and around the simultaneously played pitch which he/she was to pick up or perceive.) He/she could associate the given pitch with a variety of sound/music elements other than pitch. This mismatch causes tone deafness.  

          For example, some singers respond to tone color more than anything else. (a very common mismatch) So when I play the piano (a percussive music instrument) to suggest a pitch, (must always be within their voice range) they may/could miss the pitch element and try to sing anything as asked but the right pitch. When I use my voice to sing the given pitch, because I have a human voice, as a male singer, he/she probably would imitate my tone color closer to the pitch but miss it. In the case of a female singer, she most likely could not imitate a male voice in its rich tone color and lower range but probably just try to reach way below her range to imitate my voice at my pitch level and tone color. If I sing in falsetto and expand my resonance to my pharynx which makes my voice to sound like a female voice, they usually could do better but still would miss the pitch because they mismatched pitch with tone color. This disassociation causes tone deafness.

          How about the singer who sings well but is tone challenged?

          If the mismatch between the processed musical elements in the brain, and the cognitive process of music in learning to sing, is limited to just pitch, (which is harder to perceive) and if the range of the sample singer on CD or in the media is the same as the singer, he/she could just rely on the natural ability to imitate tone quality and thus sing very well without the ability to perceive pitch. That is why some good natural singers may not do well when given voice lessons. (We better not teach them, because they would become worse once they have to cognitively perceive pitch, different from what they are intuitive used to do.) Our learning process is usually through cognitive communication which could be made complicated by language, music elements and music nomenclature. I would not say anything that would produce adverse impact on a person who is a natural singer.

          Well I have tried. It is a very difficult teaching technique that I have dealt with for many years.