So, I've been a casual, novice, self-taught guitarist for a couple years now and am just now deciding to take music a little more seriously.
Part of that involved starting ear training apps. However, I've run into a problem. I am having a lot of trouble matching pitches. I have taken a lot of tone deafness tests and am definitely not tone deaf. I can pretty reliably hear a 1/64 step difference in notes played sequentially.
However, when I try to match a pitch with my voice, or even just try to tell if two notes are different or not, it all falls apart once the notes overlap.
When I try to hum along with a note in Earmaster, I feel like it's completely up to chance whether or not I match it or not. I'll commonly be off by as large as a major third or so despite feeling like I was right on the note.
I also can't seem to tell if I'm flat or sharp as long as the notes are overlapping.
So is this a problem anyone has ever heard of? I keep practicing it but it's very frustrating. My girlfriend who has no musical training at all has no problem singing on-key and is baffled that I can't seem to tell when I'm off despite my good ear for sequential pitches and years of guitar playing.
Tl;dr: I can easily tell pitches apart if they're played sequentially but I can barely ever tell when they're played harmonically. I can't seem to match pitch with my voice or instrument -- and I can't even tell that I'm not matching. I need an app to tell me that my pitch was off or I would never have known. Is this a problem anyone has run into before? Is the solution just more practice? It seems every music learning resource I look at assumes you can just naturally tell when two notes are the same.
Submitted February 26, 2023 at 07:02AM by Brother0fSithis https://www.reddit.com/r/Learnmusic/comments/11cbdht/is_it_possible_to_be_harmonically_tone_deaf/?utm_source=ifttt
Javier Rodriguez
Sunday, February 26, 2023