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Comment by spuz | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone else find the first half of the test harder than the second? I got all of the questions right but the ones where the tone was 1/3 or more of a tone off I really struggled to tell if they were up or down. Weirdly I didn't have that problem on the 1/4 or less questions.

I have no musical talent at all by the way.

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Music perception varies so it might be easier for you to hear a narrower interval. I can imagine it being closer so it doesn't mess up with your perspective, whereas with a larger difference you might lose your comparison baseline from the first.

Yes! I think this is a good explanation. I find it hard to relate two different notes to each other when they are sufficiently different. If they are very different then it obvious but if they are 1-2 tones apart I only really hear them as two different notes rather than one note clearly being higher than the other.

It can get even weirder when you jump a gap more than half an octave. For instance say you jump down 6 notes, absolutely speaking it's lower... but relative to the original "note" (not pitch) it's closer to being above than bellow, which can make it feel higher at the same time.

I can perceive this higher+lower aspect simultaneously in a lot of music and i suspect this is common even.

True, but this is another dimension of tonal perception I think i.e comparative memory. Kind of like the musical equivalent of short term memory... until you get into scales and more recognizable sequences then that part of the brain seems to have way better memory abilities somehow.

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