Check this out - it's a study being carried out by one of the universities in my home city. I'll wager a lot of you are surprised at the results - at least I hope you are, otherwise I'm just musically retarded!
It basically plays two musical phrases and you have to say whether they are identical or not... There are 30 phrases, and the test takes about 4 minutes - worth a look (listen) anyways...
But I must admit that the test (whatever its purpose now was...) surprised me. The "wrong ones" were always just the pitch of the note wrong, never the tempo or note duration. And when it was wrong, it was always "off scale". If I knew that before I started the test, I guess I'd have 30/30... And, it was never the first example that was off scale, only the second.
Well, well... preparing oneself by singing a lot of a cappella should probably be considered cheating!
(Oh - I also got some email from them asking me to participate in the 'next level' of the test - I'll see what it is - perhaps it's reserved for people who got poor scores - like me )
Lagerfeldt wrote:28, eew it tricked me in the beginning because I was also listening for tempo changes and psycho-acoustically I was listening for something else.
Me too. I once saw a very interesting thing on a show called "Brainiac", where lots of people were passing a box from person to person, and you had to concentrate on the box. So I did.
Then they showed the clip again, and you were told not to concentrate on the box any more: and there was a man in a bee costume comes into the shot and leaves after a few seconds. 80% of people apparently don't notice him while they're watching the box!
)
