BBC R3 test: How Musical Are You?

[Panjandrum]

Mark - I'm ok. Here's my attempt but it requires honest answers. Lat.

u. The best year in music was 2010 - a Yes b. Probably c Maybe d No

How about option e. What???

Or, in what sense do you mean? In one sense, the answer is obviously yes: since, in 2010 we had the benefit of all previous recordings and knowledge of all music composed to this date. If, however, you mean that music composed in 2010 was the best ever, that's a different question. So I think you need to be more specific in your phraseology.

Perhaps you could also elucidate what conclusions you would draw from each of the four possible responses to your questions. To be honest it all looks not a million miles from the original survey's approach. I'm not sure that being able to bang a drum aged five is a sure fire indicator of musical talent

[3rd Viennese School]

Message 132


Dun it.
3VS

[Lateralthinking1]

Thanks for the feedback so far. It isn't science. It is really a quick attempt to encourage further constructive debate. It falls into the trap perhaps of the tests we were given in getting people to self-define. It also lacks practical application for obvious reasons. But I have tried to accommodate as many angles as I can and be fair to all.

Some of the questions, deliberately, could be read as having links to each other. The 5 year old ones and the 2010 one, for example, are arguably about depth/music being innate and currency/topicality. The latter is nebulous by design - the year of music as it was for you? - you might have spent all of it listening to Mozart and had a whale of a time - or only listened to jazz releases from the year itself and also had a wonderful experience. I have tried too to give fair weight to the technical, the emotional, the social, the active participators, the audiences, the hobbyists and the broader contexts, if such divisions could really be said to apply.

I envisaged a 4 to 1 point scale for each and most of them are fairly self-explanatory. You get good points for big broad and narrow interests, keenness as well as ability, interests in serious music and the bland, but the numbers of questions for each are hopefully weighted in favour of the more serious, more able, and more involved. With the questions on what annoys, you get 1 point if loud or unwanted music is highest, 4 if it is lowest etc. They are questions about what you can tolerate if you consider it to be musical rather than what you adore.

As I say, it was all bashed out this morning in a stream of consciousness (?) so it inevitably has some bias towards my own perceptions even though I have tried hard to be as neutral as I can. For the record, the maximum number of points someone could get is 312 and I got 233. But I'm not representing it as the be all and end all. Far from it.

[Lateralthinking1]

.........3VS - What did you get as a matter of interest? No winners and losers. What would please me most is if everyone got reasonably good scores, and perhaps on a tighter scale. Because, let's face it, this is a serious music forum and it is quite ridiculous that anyone who should choose to spend their time here should be getting very low figures. As for zeros, there must surely have been something wrong with the technical aspects of the tests. I just don't know how anyone could achieve that!!

[Suffolkcoastal]

Judging from the feedback from MBs it sounds like the Goldsmiths thing is just another marketing exercise for the BBC, with all this programme plugging. I think I'll give the test a wide berth thankyou. Your test lateralthinking looks quite interesting and I wouldn't mind having a go at this. Perhaps FF may be able to set something up so that we can all take it, the results would be interesting.

SC

[Bert Coules]

I'm not clear how doing the test as posted leads to a score. Am I missing something? Oh - is is 4 for a, 3 for b and so on?

[Lateralthinking1]

.....You don't have to have a score if you don't want one. In fact, my main argument would be ff's one. Making music "scientific" is a bit crackers. But if a test is fun, it is encouraging of interests in all, it adds a bit to confidence because it has at least some basis in reality, and it isn't fundamentally divisive, why not?

[Suffolkcoastal]

He obviously hadn't subcontrabass! I can normally tell Haydn from Mozart without much problem these days, but used to find it more difficult when I was much younger. For me the key points are the harmony, the melodic style and in music involving the orchestra, the orchestration.

[Bert Coules]

OK, here are my results:

Section 1:

a - none
b - none
c - 7
d - 9

Questions skipped because they either didn't make sense or were unanswerable - 10

Section 2:

a - none
b - none
c - none
d - 7

Questions skipped because they either didn't make sense or were unanswerable - 19

Section 3:

a - 2
b - none
c - 1
d - 1

Questions skipped because they either didn't make sense or were unanswerable - 22

I'm not quite sure what this shows, if anything...

[Lateralthinking1]

Oh dear. Disappointingly sour. Why take part at all?

[Mr Pee]

OK, here are my results:

Section 1:

a - none
b - none
c - 7
d - 9

Questions skipped because they either didn't make sense or were unanswerable - 10

Section 2:

a - none
b - none
c - none
d - 7

Questions skipped because they either didn't make sense or were unanswerable - 19

Section 3:

a - 2
b - none
c - 1
d - 1

Questions skipped because they either didn't make sense or were unanswerable - 22

I'm not quite sure what this shows, if anything...

I'd say it shows that while you may be musical, you're a bit lacking in basic comprehension skills.

[Bert Coules]

Oh dear. Disappointingly sour. Why take part at all?

Not deliberately sour by any means. But really, how am I supposed to answer a question such as

I understand musical terms - a Definitely b Probably c Possibly d Disagree

How is it possible to probably understand musical terms? And in any case, which musical terms? All of them? Some of them? If you meant

If you were shown a musical term how likely would you be to know what it means?

and if the choice of answers was

I would definitely know / It's extremely likely that I would know / There's a reasonable chance that I would know / It's very unlikely that I would know

..then I would have been able to answer in a way that made sense. And the same is true of quite a few of your questions, I'm afraid.

[french frank]

Very simply put, I think musicality is what we all/most possess to varying degrees which makes us successful in our close involvement with music, whether as players or listeners.

Answering myself:

I should have included dancers

I think the R3/Goldsmiths(') test (apart from primarily being a publicity stunt to market R3 - how many are we to have?) is trying (theoretically) to measure 'natural' responsiveness to music which some say preceded human beings' ability to communicate via any recognisable development of language (doubt they'd put it quite like that, but anthropologically that's what it seems to boil down to).

[doversoul1]

Lat
I wasn’t going to come back but as things begin to look a bit dodgy, let me just put in.

Producing a workable questionnaire is not something you or I can do while finishing off breakfast. Companies pay huge fees to have them made. Even for a quiz night, the wording of the questions has to be very careful or you’ll have a fight.

I am sorry if I sound patronising but I think we’d better leave lists and questions here. These things can easily touch people’s ‘emotion’ and can get nasty.

[doversoul1]

'natural' responsiveness[/U] to music which some say preceded human beings' ability to communicate via any recognisable development of language (doubt they'd put it quite like that, but anthropologically that's what it seems to boil down to).

ff
I think that is probably true, as almost every culture has lullabies to which babies are known to respond. What would be interesting is to find out if there is substantial individual difference in this natural musicality (if you call it that), if there are any factors that affect the development of the original musicality (I don’t think home environment is such a big thing as quite a lot of musicians come from non-musical family), if the degree of musicality affects other areas of individuals, or if different taste in music can be scientifically explained.

What I am very interested in is how classical music sounds to someone who has never heard or even never heard about it. It is often assumed that the appeal of classical music is universal. Is it?