What's behind the Musicality Test ...

I must say I was far from impressed by the test. Where were the classical music tests? Only rock, pop, hip hop and jazz? Not good enough Im afraid. Moreover, clapping to a beat is not really a good measure of musicality. What about sight reading scores, notation, composition etc? Musical perception and sensitivity seemed to be graded by whether one's mood was affected by music, or whether one selected music to change one's mood. The fact that one can appreciate the emotional range of a piece of music without it impacting on the listeners' own mood does not appear to have been entertained... Another gimmick I'm afraid.

I thought the initial popular music tests were completely biased towards pop music listeners & that the rest were pretty unimaginative, not requiring much genuine skill - sorry, BBC!

Most unimpressed - the bias towards popular music (not really explained and I wondered if my computer was working correctly as the clips were so short), the lack of sufficient explanation, probably to avoid being to complex (or perceived as elitist) and the less than satisfactory analysis would not encourage more participation in this type of experiment from me. It might be that my 'lack of musical curiosity' is because I don't like music as background - because I can't concentrate on it - and I am sufficiently knowledgeable to know what I want to explore and don't actually need to be given - 'you liked Poulenc, so you'll like Ibert' help!

Again, sorry BBC.......

I strongly agree with Panjandrum, the so called music test was only the noises generated by pop music, and completely alien to my finely tuned ears . I had eagerly anticipated a serious test dealing with actual music. But noooooooooo. I suppose this is yet another nod to being 'unstuffy and hip'



HO HUM. I gave up on the test after a few seconds. Couldnt'bear the racket coming through my speakers.

Let me provide some balance to your earlier comments. This is an interesting exercise which may lead to some new insights. I found it fun and engaging and far from being "a nod to being "unstuffy and hip"", it actually recognises a breadth in music and a range in the ways people engage with it. I wonder what scores these people (those that managed to finish it) got?

No, daveyrules, it didn't "recognise a breadth in music" - as others have said the clips one was supposed to recognise came from a very narrow range - mostly what I would call 'pop music'.



The survey would have had much more value if it had been posted on the Radio 1 & 2 sites as well - it would have got a much wider range of people, & some who might have had some familiarity with hip-hop etc! As it is I don't think it has much more value than the trivial quizzes in women's magazines.



& why was it so important to run it while the Mozart fest was on? Because there would be fewer people listening to Radio 3 than usual during that time, & the ones not listening might want something to while away the time?

The questions were the problem for me. Did it make any difference to the final assessment whether you were a Completely/Strongly Agree/Disagree person, or an Agree/Disagree person? What about if you have lots of Neither agree nor disagrees - how do you know whether this isn't simply a difficulty establishing exactly what the question wants? What if you were always 'completely sure' rather than an 'I think so'? Does it all prove that if you're a wishy-washy personality who doesn't react strongly you are not emotionally capable of appreciating music? And what about self-assessment? Is someone who 'knows' that they sing in tune necessarily correct? Or someone who 'knows' a good singer when they hear one? Then of course there's the kind of person who, when asked whether they've ever been praised for their musical ability, replies, No, on the grounds that, although it isn't literally true, the people doing the praising didn't know much about it ... :o)



I'd be very interested to know whether you were trying to establish personality types and whether you really think musicality is closely allied to personality. That would seem to me to be what you were concluding.

Were the sounds we were supposed to categorise in the first test supposed to be hardly a second in length?? I found it impossible to do this test.

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I feel that a lot of the people above who are criticising the experiment do not fully understand its purpose. The test was designed to test innate musicality not musical ability. It is meant to be objective so that there is no bias towards musicians or non-musicians. This is a quote from the Lab UK website: ‘A lot of what we know about music comes from comparisons of musicians and non-musicians. It has become increasingly clear that a more sophisticated view of musicality - one which takes into account musical listening and engagement - will yield even greater insights.’ Tests such as sight reading scores, notation, and composition are tests of musical ability acquired through training not a test of innate musicality.

However, being musically trained myself, I do agree that the test needs some improvement.