User:Umbagaga

It seriously upsets and alarms me that tone deafness should be identified with amusia at all, let alone merged into the same article! I am tone deaf by birth, having inherited the genetic condition from my late mother. It has not stopped me from learning the flute and other instruments, playing off and on in various school and community concert bands and orchestras my entire life (I will reach 70 in a few weeks), being an ardent Gilbert and Sullivan fan all my life, and developing a keen appreciation for "serious" opera. I have even been congratulated on my excellent tonal hearing by a Website test that obviously didn't understand the condition! Yes, I seem to be able to hear intervals quite accurately, at least within an octave; hearing the difference between the keys, say, of C Major and F Major is quite another matter! Yes, I can recognize an extremely familiar melody quite well when performed by an unaccompanied solo voice or instrument; but heavy harmonization can mask it from my ears completely. In childhood, I fondly fancied that when they told me I "couldn't carry a tune in a bucket," they meant I forgot melodies, went up or down in the wrong places, by the wrong intervals, and held notes for the wrong durations. How I labored to correct this! But apparently "carrying a tune" means something else, for great singers play whatever funny tricks with the ups and downs and durations they wish to play, and it's called "song styling" and "great art." I would propose this metaphor for tone deafness: Imagine that you can see all the colors in a standard eight-crayon box, but ONLY those colors. You can see them lighter or darker -- in sunshine or shade, with admixtures of black and white; but you cannot see the difference between, say, chartreuse and azure -- it's all either "green" or "blue" to you. Obviously, you cannot see all the richnesses people with normal vision can see; but you still live in a world of colors, and you can still enjoy the colors around you very much. That, I conceive, could be akin to what it is to be tone deaf. And denying us music as if we could not appreciate it at all -- denying us even the chance to learn to play a musical instrument (as I understand some educational systems do)-- is just plain bullying and cruelty! Haven't you ever noticed how many people -- e.g., quiz show contestants -- admit openly to inability to sing, but at the same time declare how much they love music and how much they'd like to learn to play a musical instrument? I'd guesstimate, from my personal experience, observation, and circle of acquaintances, that the percentage of tone-deaf people is much higher than a measly 4 percent: I'd guesstimate it at nearer to 25 percent.