Musical IQ test offers chance to reveal talent
Mozart began to show off his skill at the age of four.
ALAMY
Saturday July 09 2022, 12.01am BST, The Times
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is supposed to have started composing music at the age of four and Ludwig van Beethoven was brilliant by his teens. But what if you grew up without a clavier or a demanding parent and your tremendous musical talent remained dormant, like an unplucked harp, until one day, by way of a psychological test devised by leading scientists, it was revealed?
This is the tacit promise that has drawn two and a half million people to listen, bewildered, to beats and snatches of songs as part of an online game created by a laboratory at Harvard University that promises to “test your musical IQ”. Participants in an experiment devised by the Music Lab at Harvard give up their age, country of residence, language and ethnicity, and are also asked about their upbringing and whether it included music lessons.
The test itself is made up of three sections. One involves listening to two versions of a repetitive beeping sound, set over snatches of music, and determining which one was closest to the beat. Another requires participants to listen to two versions of a singer crooning to snatches of music to decide which was most out of tune. The third involves three pieces of melody, each played in a different key, and the question of which one included an off-note.
No one seems to find it easy. Classical musicians have posted videos online of themselves taking it and being stumped by the questions. “I feel like they were all the same,” the violinist Ray Chen protested after listening to one of the questions involving three melodies.
The test advises participants to guess, relying on their intuition when all else fails. “It’s intended to be pretty hard so it can separate people out in terms of ability,” said Sam Mehr, director of the Music Lab.
Though people with musical training have a distinct advantage, it is designed to be accessible to all. “There are certainly people who score very highly on the test who have never had a music lesson in their lives,” Mehr said. “There are also people who have had music lessons who score poorly.”
He said the test was scored “like a traditional psychometric test”, with 95 per cent of participants scoring between 70 and 130. Chen scored 133, better than 98 per cent of participants. Mehr, the last time he took it, got 125. This correspondent scored 108, better than 70 per cent of participants but not quite good enough to quit the day job.
The data is helping research into links between language and music. Speakers of tonal languages such as Mandarin or Yoruba appear to have an advantage in the melodic tests but a disadvantage for the tests based on beats.
It may also support research into the origins of music, and a theory that men, like songbirds, developed music to attract mates.
“If that were the case you might expect, in millions of participants, that men would be better than women,” Mehr said. “They’re not. They are exactly the same.”
Test your musical IQ at www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/miq