BBC -how musical are you

[asterix]

Hello everyone

I have been a silent spectator on this forum for a while (mainly bec. I'm a musical novice and almost intimidated by the knowledge of the members).
This post is just to share something I came across on the BBC website

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

-Srinivasan
Scotland

[Nick H]

intimidated by the knowledge of the members

Don't be! Our 'elders' (agewise or knowledgewise) are very friendly and generous to those of us lower on the ladder

Saw that BBC thing, as I look at the BBC news site every day: might give it a try, although I know I'll score badly at things like repeating phrases, because the way music works with me, is that it enters one ear, does something magical, and then exits by the other. Wish I could retain, but not complaining too much as I still get the magic that happens!

[bilahari]

Thanks for the link, asterix.

I took the quiz - it's pretty time consuming and expectedly skewed towards Western genres. I did awfully in the music categorisation test, and the melody memory quiz was also very average. However, I did well on the rhythm tests. I apparently have high musical perception, which is a flattering (the 99% score was way too much given all the mistakes on the objective quizzes), but no emotional connection to music? I found that hard to digest.. Oh, but they did get it absolutely correct in judging my lack of musical curiosity - CM (and some HM and film music) is really all I ever need in music! It was an interesting quiz for the sake of the tests but the results aren't too illuminating.

[mohan]

Did the test too and agree that unfortunately skewed for Western music. I got medium scores for most categories and a high for curiousity!

[Suji Ram]

100 % on melody memory. (That's what I do at home- yell! when I hear a wrong note being played on piano )
did well on tapping, but not good on test for judging the rythmn.
high on emotional, curiosity, and enthusiasm

[arasi]

Suji,
Happy Pongal (Sankaranthi)! Good to see your post after some time. If not others, this BBC quiz seems to know you and your musical side well!

[vasanthakokilam]

I agree with all of you that it is skewed towards western. The site itself is well done, especially on the audio side. Tools like this used to cost money. I wish they had a 'listen again' option to some of those, but then that may mess with the scientific aspects of the test. Same thing with providing little more lead-in music for a few more measures before the 'beeps' started, so we have little more time to get set with the beat. But that is a very good test, and so is the 'tapping to the beat'.

I have difficulty believing "According to a recent study, most people can identify which genre a piece of music belongs to from tiny snippets less than half a second long.". The genres in the quiz were Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop and Jazz. Funny thing is, I did not perceive Hip-Hop at all, I thought the fourth genre was South American/Carribean!! My issue is with the word 'most' in the statement 'most people can identify based on less than half a second'. I am sure some can. But they provided enough degree of difficulty in that question for the benefit of those who are really good at it.

I scored extremely poorly in social creativity. The site says it is about "creating music and sharing in group activities where music is involved".. I guess the very low score is because I answered 'strongly disagree' to the various questions related to public singing in a group.

In other areas, the assessment is in the right ball park: High for musical perception, enthusiasm and curiosity, and medium for the rest.

Suji, that is pretty good on melodic memory. Mine was 75% on 'melodic memory' and 'match the beat', and medium-high on 'tap to the beat'. I wish I had done better on the 'tap to the beat'.

[Nick H]

There are many genre names in modern Western music that mean nothing to me. I don't really know what "hip-hop" is.

I remember a friend trying to explain the difference between House and Garage music. After listening to him for a while, I said, "So... House is bad enough that it can only be played at home, and Garage is so much worse that they send you out to the Garage* to play it". He sighed, and said, "Maybe you have a point!".

Then there is the fact that many of us describe the output of numerous cultures over several hundred years, simply as "classical".





*car shed in Indian English.

[squims]

Am I the only one for whom the test isn't working? I click on the 'I agree. Start Experiment' and then nothing happens.

EDIT: Never mind. Started working.
Did average on the tests. Totally mixed up hip-hop and pop. Correctly identified all of the jazz numbers though (love Jazz).
The rhythm and melody tests were pretty accurate.
Scored 'High' in all the categories though!