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There has been some discussion about learning to identify intervals and chords and such. The term "tone deaf" has come up. What do you take that term to mean?
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I imagine the closest to "tone deaf" would be someone who has never been interested in music. I've always been very interested in music (as a listener) but have 0 structured, conscious knowledge of all that world of chords, triads, major/minors, etc. For all that big world, I confess myself tone deaf. 
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Far from it. Tone deaf, you can't carry a simple melody even, forget the piano. You can't find a single note singing, that could be tone deaf. It's rare. Everyone can improve. Maybe not the actual tone deaf, but they are few. There is hope for the rest of us.
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"Tone deaf" is way overused as a term. It means a specific insensitivity to higher and lower pitches, not a lack of aural or singing or pitch matching skills.
Most people who find interval identification, or singing in key, or matching pitch difficult, are probably not clinically tone deaf. They have probably simply not learned those skill yet. Yes, even matching pitch, or even being able to *tell* whether or not you're matching pitch, is a learned skill.
Edited to add: if someone can recognize different pieces of music, they are not tone deaf.
Last edited by PianoStudent88; 10/21/16 05:10 PM.
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Since I'm German, I consider the translation of tone deaf into German. Only to realize, that there is no exact translation. Dictionaries give the circumscription "ohne musikalisches Gehör", meaning: to be without a musical ear.
So that's what I consider tone deaf to mean: not having a musical ear, i.e. having difficulties recognizing melodies, matching pitch, recognizing relative pitch, etc.
Most people that fall into this category would likely be able to acquire some of these skills, in various degrees. So being tone deaf does not necessarily mean that you have to stay tone deaf. Although I guess there are probably some cases that are hopeless.
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To me it means a person who is incapable of telling the difference between an ascending versus descending scale; cannot tell relative pitch.
Example - if this was a G, is this an F or an A (playing it on the piano)? "I don't know." "They both sound the same to me." Is the second tone higher or lower than the first one? "I don't know, they both sound exactly the same but maybe one is slightly louder?."
I did this "test" for one family member who claimed he was tone deaf. However, he does have preference for some songs over others. It is true that he has very little interest in any kind of music in general, and doesn't listen to music of any kind very much.
I did the same test for my kids when they were very young, (around 3-4 years old), and they were able to tell immediately, even minor versus major key sounds when told what's minor versus major. People are wired differently.
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It's normal for people to exaggerate to get the point across. It's more life a figure of speech than the actual condition.
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The term "tone deaf" has come up. What do you take that term to mean? those who think One Direction are musically talented 
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To me it means a person who is incapable of telling the difference between an ascending versus descending scale; cannot tell relative pitch.
Example - if this was a G, is this an F or an A (playing it on the piano)? "I don't know." "They both sound the same to me." Is the second tone higher or lower than the first one? "I don't know, they both sound exactly the same but maybe one is slightly louder?."
I did this "test" for one family member who claimed he was tone deaf. However, he does have preference for some songs over others. It is true that he has very little interest in any kind of music in general, and doesn't listen to music of any kind very much.
I did the same test for my kids when they were very young, (around 3-4 years old), and they were able to tell immediately, even minor versus major key sounds when told what's minor versus major. People are wired differently. Using a piano to test pitch recognition is a very poor choice. A flute or sine wave generator would be better. Each note on the piano has a large number of partials with varying amplitudes and not harmonically related. It is possible to play middle C (C4) and the C (C3) below it and have the second partial of C3 be louder than the first partial of C4. I had a student, many years ago, who could not pass the aural interval training tests for the RCM piano exam, yet, when I sang the intervals, she had no problem discerning pitches and interval sizes.
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Like color blindness, I think tone deaf is an old terminology that does not describe the situation adequately. Those who suffer from color blindness generally can see color. They do not see the world in black and white or shades of gray. I suspect the condition for tone deafness is similar to color blindness where only the most severe form is complete tone deaf but most people lies somewhere on a spectrum from complete perfect pitch to total tone deaf.
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Having heard many people describe themselves as "tone deaf" when they are just inexperienced with music or have a hard time singing, I prefer to reserve that term for those who truly cannot distinguish pitches, meaning they cannot recognize tunes or enjoy music.
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Like color blindness, I think tone deaf is an old terminology that does not describe the situation adequately. Those who suffer from color blindness generally can see color. They do not see the world in black and white or shades of gray. There are three photopigment genes - red, green, and blue. You have to lose two of them to be a true monochromat. Dichromats are missing one, and can't distinguish some color differences that most of us (trichromats) can. But there are color differences that they can see. There's an easy test for this, Ishihara's idea, those circles full of colored dots. You'll see for instance a 7 if color blind, and a 2 if not.
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My idea of "tone deaf" on a colloquial level means someone who cannot carry a tune, such that everything sounds the same when they sing in a dreadful manner. For instance, if they were thinking of a song, and were to sing it, you would have no idea what they were singing. I always joked that I could not marry someone "tone deaf", as we sing a lot in our church, and to sit next to that would be unpleasant. However even someone I knew who was tone deaf could in fact kind of carry a tune, so long as she was sitting next to someone who was singing. Somehow it helped her.
Last edited by hello my name is; 10/22/16 01:36 AM.
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I once had an extremely advanced student who had a hard time telling apart a major triad and a minor triad. Teaching him interval ID was like pulling teeth. So we just randomly guessed that portion of the test.
Some of the parents I work for can't tell if one pitch is higher or lower than the other. It's scary.
On the other extreme, I've worked with numerous kids who have perfect pitch--but it doesn't necessarily mean they are great students, or "musical" in any sense of the word.
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It's normal for people to exaggerate to get the point across. It's more life a figure of speech than the actual condition. You are wrong. It's an actual clinical condition and not just a "lack of musicality": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia
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And BTW there is a simple test available on the following page to see of you are tone deaf: http://tonedeaftest.com/
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If you did the test, tell us what it is about, please. I am not sure I want to do it...What if it tells us we are tone deaf??? 
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It's really nothing to be scared of, Albunea. It simply tests whether you can tell that a pitch is higher or lower or the same as another pitch.
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Great! That means you can learn to recognize all the intervals. It's just a matter of training. Really! At some time I was also completely unable to do many of these ear training exercises but with time and practice they are all learnable, if you are not tone deaf (in the clinical sense).
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