Tone Deafness (Amusia) and Other Causes of Persistent Pitch Problems
We have all heard individuals who can’t ‘carry a tune’. They are the people whose attempts at vocalizing are usually met with laughter, mockery or criticism, as well as insensitive comments like, “Don’t quit your day job!”
For the person who desires to have a good voice, however, this inability to sing a melody correctly is likely to be a source of great frustration, embarrassment and shame. The voice, unlike all other instruments, comes from within the singer. It is very personal for most people, and when that voice is perceived by others as being unpleasant or deficient in any way, the individual often internalizes these criticisms and takes them to heart, as though it reflects his or her own worth as a person.
The term tone deaf tends to be applied indiscriminately to a constellation of music processing, perceptual and production deficits, which leads to a lot of misdiagnoses. In reality, though, there are few truly tone deaf people - it is estimated that only between two and five percent of the population is medically tone deaf - and there are varying degrees and types of tone deafness.
Many people who often hit sour notes or whose singing voices are simply not good inaccurately diagnose themselves as being tone deaf. However, a person who simply sings off key, even frequently, may not be truly tone deaf, by medical definition, as there may be numerous other possible reasons for his or her ‘pitch poorness’, which I will list and explain shortly.
The Causes of Tone Deafness
Most truly tone-deaf people not only do not enjoy music, but they have trouble understanding what makes it special to everyone else. If they are unable to distinguish between musical notes that may differ only slightly – by a semitone, for example – these people may not be hearing music as ‘tone hearing’ individuals do. If differences in notes are not perceived, then the melody of the song is also not distinguished. This is likely to be a source of confusion and frustration to some because they may feel as though they are missing out on something that is widely appreciated and enjoyed by most everyone else in the culture.
Tone deafness, which is sometimes also called ‘tune deafness’ and is medically known as ‘amusia’, is a term that covers deficits in four conceptually distinct domains: musical perception, production, memory and the loss of symbolic manipulation skills. It is characterized by a cognitive inability to discriminate between pitches (musical notes) – a lack of relative pitch– to remember melodies long enough to be able to vocally reproduce them after hearing them, to accurately match the pitch of the voice to that of another singer or musical instrument, or to identify changes in melody, despite having normal hearing. It is an auditory processing disorder in which the internal hearing of the individual lacks the ability to recognize when his or her pitch deviates from the desired note to be sung.
The etiology of these perceptual deficits is poorly understood, but it appears that they can result from organic trauma, such as a brain injury, or some combination of genetic and environmental factors. Research also shows that tone deafness is largely hereditary.
While normal brains process sounds in a series, with the front and parietal cortices receiving signals that have been processed previously in the auditory cortex, the tone deaf brain has a disrupted path for this information, routing the two regions in parallel and independent pathways. Thus, information about the wrong note never makes it to the auditory cortex, while the information that does arrive at the front parietal cortex is never consciously recognized.
Although someone who is tone deaf cannot ‘feel’ the difference between two notes in a song, his or her brain is actually able to perceive that difference. There is a dissonance between registering a wrong note and the person’s awareness of the wrong note. In other words, although the brain itself might be able to acknowledge the difference between changing notes, the individual will not generally be aware that he or she is singing the wrong notes. Some tone-deaf people believe that they are actually singing the correct melody of a song, until someone else tells them differently.
Being tone deaf often doesn’t refer just to poor hearing, but also to poor singing. A study by cognitive neuroscientists Pfordresher (State University of New York at Buffalo) and Brown (Simon Fraser University) showed that poor singers were significantly worse than good singers at vocally reproducing notes but equally accurate as good singers at recognizing or identifying changes in pitch. This shows that while the tone deaf have the ability to hear differences between musical notes, they do not have the ability to produce good music. This means that when a singer is truly awful, the problem may be more than just faulty perception.
Pfordresher and Brown’s research has also shown that most ‘pitch poor’ singers are more than just a little off when asked to repeat notes, whether they are a few notes in sequence or just a single note. They are typically off by a semitone or more, therefore singing a dramatically different note than what they are hearing. In studies, they also performed worse when accompanying someone else, unable to match a simultaneously presented pitch.
This study concludes that neither amusia (tone deafness) nor poor perception of sound are likely to be the cause of bad singing. Otherwise, bad singers would also be bad listeners, and good singers would be good listeners. In the general population, most bad singers can discern musical notes just fine. It may not be bad memory, either, since the tests in this study consisted of very short ‘tunes’ of no more than four notes and also accompanying a professional singer on a recording. Bad singers still sang badly. Poor motor control doesn’t necessarily explain the difference either, since bad singers have a similar vocal range as good (untrained) singers.
What bad singers don’t seem to have is the coordination between music perception and music production. Tone deafness seems to be a case of poor voice-ear coordination.
Other Causes of Pitch Errors
A common mistake is confusing or associating all persistent pitch problems with tone deafness. In the case of people who sing poorly, their poor music perception may be caused by a number of factors, including bad hearing, poor memory of the notes that makes them forget the notes quickly after they have heard them and then can’t sing them back accurately, and poor control of the vocal system that prevents their ability to produce a note, even when they can hear it correctly. If the individual is able to hear the sound and knows what sound he or she wants to produce but can’t seem to imitate that sound, he or she may not be tone deaf, and may be aided by vocal training. If the individual recognizes when he or she has hit a sour note, then tone deafness is likely not the problem.
Some researchers have hypothesized that some people who are not medically tone deaf sing poorly because they haven’t ever made the conscious effort to learn, since singing isn’t a necessary skill in life. Whereas most people begin singing as young children, the ‘pitch challenged’ individual may simply have never tried. Without regular practice, the singing voice fails to develop to its fullest potential.
Lack of early exposure to music also seems to limit the singer’s ability to develop the voice.
Other singers become psychologically wounded by criticisms and mockery that they may have received in the past. To avoid hurtful defeat and to prevent further humiliation, the singer becomes the first to run him or herself down and declare that he or she can’t sing. It can be very difficult for a person to confront all the painful defeats that he or she has experienced in being labeled tone deaf. Oftentimes, in these cases, the individuals are too loosely diagnosed as being tone deaf, but not before the label has already emotionally affected them. It then takes a lot of courage and motivation to work on the problem.
I know a singer, for example, who was once criticized for singing Silent Night off key in the back seat of the family car as a child, and then spent many years actively avoiding being heard while she sang because she was terrified of being told to be quiet, or of being made fun of. Even though this singer had already sung numerous solos and could sing fairly well at that young age, she was so sensitive, shy and self-conscious, that this order to be quiet, given by a tired and insensitive parent, seriously affected her self-confidence and self-esteem for several years. She lost the courage to attend auditions, perform solos and even sing around the house. Fortunately, she eventually decided to begin taking voice lessons and return to singing in public, although she still shies away from being heard singing casually.
In many cases, ‘pitch challenged’ singers have developed severe constrictions of the vocal tract that have been present for many years. Sometimes this tension has been present for so long that the individual can no longer feel the tension. These constrictions of the vocal tract make the singing voice sound even worse because tone is made unpleasant. (I explain this concept more fully in Singing With An ‘Open Throat’: Vocal Tract Shaping.)
There are often psychological reasons for these tensions, including self-consciousness or a lack of confidence regarding the voice. If people are self-conscious about singing in front of, or even along with, others, they may become nervous and begin hitting sour notes. These pitch errors simply reinforce their belief that they can’t sing well. When they have experienced enough discouragement because of their voices, they lose confidence in both their voice and their hearing. (They no longer trust their voice or hearing.) Hearing then becomes disconnected with their voices, and such singers cease to correct the way that they sing by means of their hearing. From this point on, confidence can rapidly decrease.
The number one cause for persistent pitch errors that I observe in my new students is the incorrect navigation of register shifts. Untrained singers often fail to make the necessary laryngeal adjustments, typically carrying the lower register up too high. When these adjustments aren’t made gradually, the singer reaches the top of the one register and can’t seem to flip into the next register or hit the next series of pitches in the scale. Like hitting a proverbial wall, they get stuck at the same pitch and can’t seem to get any higher. A study of vowel modification almost always eliminates these problems, enabling the singer to smoothly transition into the higher register without a noticeable register break or a pitch error.
Another common explanation for pitch errors relates to another type of psychological ‘hang up’. Many untrained singers have a ‘comfort zone’ in which they prefer to sing, usually in the middle and lower parts of their ranges. If the pitch of the song or vocal exercise starts or rises at any point above this comfortable and familiar range of notes, the singers get nervous, self-conscious and doubt their ability to hit the higher notes. They then attempt, either consciously or subconsciously, to begin singing a few notes below the correct pitch. (I have one student who used to unintentionally sing harmonies all the time. She wasn’t usually off key; she simply wasn’t singing the same notes that I was playing on the keyboard.) Although they know that their pitch is off, they can’t seem to muster up the nerve to try to sing any higher than they are psychologically comfortable with.
The Cure For Tone Deafness and ‘Pitchiness’
Unfortunately, there is no known cure for tone deafness. The truly tone-deaf individual – for whom amusia represents a cognitive deficit - is someone who will never be able to learn to distinguish between notes and thus correctly sing the melody of a song.
However, plenty can be done to improve and even eliminate pitchiness for those who are not tone deaf. The majority of persistent ‘tunelessness’ in individuals is curable with some ear training and vocal technique instruction. For those problems that are related to poor training, the voice and the ear can be taught to become more coordinated and function as a team. The biggest hurdle for most students – that being a lack of confidence in the voice – is quickly overcome once the singer gains technical skills and improved control over the vocal instrument. They then develop confidence in knowing that they can make their voices do whatever they want them to do and no longer feel as though their voices are out of their control.
More than a few new students of mine, aware of and embarrassed about their ‘pitch imperfectness’, have half jokingly told me upfront that they suspect that they might be tone deaf. Of course, some of those singers know that they really aren’t tone deaf. However, equipped with no satisfactory explanation for their frequent deviations from the desired pitch, some of these students are secretly concerned about their ability to ever hear and accurately match pitch. They worry that their dreams of becoming professional singers will be dashed by an incurable problem that affects something so crucial to singing.
It doesn’t usually take long to put their minds at ease, though. In the majority of cases, it is found that technical limitations, rather than cognitive inabilities, are at the root of their uncontrollable straying from the desired pitch.
The best option for a person who wants to know whether or not there is hope for him or her as a singer is to find a competent vocal instructor who will be able to listen to the student sing, and then determine whether or not he or she is truly tone deaf, or whether or not he or she simply needs to learn better vocal technique.
By correcting their singing technique, many self-diagnosed tone-deaf individuals can successfully learn to sing in tune. In many cases, this specialized vocal training involves releasing severe constrictions of the vocal tract that have been present for many years, but that the ‘pitch challenged’ singer is not even aware of. A skilled vocal teacher will know how to encourage more relaxation of the vocal instrument.
A voice instructor can also help a student through ear training exercises so that he or she can begin to recognize the sounds and sensations of pitch when it is both incorrect and correct. Once the singer begins to feel confident with his or her ability to hear and reproduce musical pitches, and once the singer’s technique has shown some other signs of improvement, it doesn’t usually take long for that singer to begin to feel more confident and comfortable with his or her singing voice. In fact, many previously self-diagnosed tone-deaf individuals are able to become soloists and establish professional singing careers.
A second option for the singer is to take a test to determine whether or not he or she can be medically diagnosed as tone deaf. The Harvard Health Letter refers readers who wish to test their ability to perceive music to an online test (as part of a study) developed by researchers at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England at http://www.delosis.com/listening.
This test, however, is limited in that it only provides scores that indicate whether or not an individual accurately perceives changes in pitch. It doesn’t offer an explanation for why pitch problems may be occurring. It can’t, for instance, diagnose technical problems that may be correctable through vocal training. Some individuals who receive low scores might become discouraged and feel hopeless, and become convinced that having a good voice will forever be out their reach. Still, taking the test may be beneficial as a starting place, so long as the individual who takes it understands that a low score doesn’t necessarily mean that he or she will never be able to learn to sing on tune.
