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Pitch test: higher or lower, then name the note

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1. Higher or lower

Ten rounds of two tones. Say whether the second is higher or lower. The gap starts at a semitone and shrinks every round, down to 4 cents.

Start the pitch test

2. Name the note (perfect pitch check)

6 single notes between middle C and the B above it, with no reference note. Pick the name of each one. Guessing gets about one in twelve.

Start the note check

Tones play through your speakers or headphones; there is no microphone and nothing is recorded. Headphones in a quiet room give the fairest result. This is a listening game, not a diagnosis.

Last updated: October 15, 2026

What the steps mean

How the score works

With two choices a guess is right half the time, so a single lucky answer proves little. The score is therefore the smallest step in your unbroken run of right answers from the first round: one miss ends the run, even if a later, harder round goes your way. Reaching 4 cents by guessing alone would take ten correct coin flips in a row, about one chance in a thousand.

Tone deafness

Being unable to tell notes apart, even large steps, is a recognised condition called congenital amusia: a lifelong difficulty with musical pitch that is not caused by hearing loss, brain damage or intellectual impairment. Estimates put it at about 1.5 to 4 percent of people. This page cannot diagnose it: a listening game in an ordinary room, through ordinary headphones, can only tell you whether small steps were hard today.

Perfect pitch

Absolute pitch is the ability to name a note with no reference at all. It is rare, often estimated at fewer than one person in 10,000 in the US and Europe, though that figure is old. It is far more common among musicians who started training very young, and more common again among speakers of tone languages such as Mandarin. Part two plays notes between middle C and the B above it; guessing names about one in twelve. To check your singing or an instrument against the right note, use the pitch detector.

How do I know if I am tone deaf?

A single test cannot say, and this page does not try to. If even large steps sound the same to you every time, in a quiet room with headphones, that pattern is what researchers call congenital amusia, a lifelong difficulty with musical pitch. It is uncommon, estimated at about 1.5 to 4 percent of people.

What is perfect pitch?

Perfect, or absolute, pitch is naming a note with nothing to compare it against: hearing a tone and knowing it is an F sharp. It is rare. Relative pitch, hearing the distance between two notes, is far more common and is what part one of this test measures.

Can you learn perfect pitch?

Relative pitch, hearing the distance between notes, improves with practice. Absolute pitch is found mostly in people who began music training very young, which is a large part of why it is so rare.

What is a good score?

Reaching 25 cents or finer through ordinary headphones is a good result. In a lab, people with normal hearing can tell apart pure tones roughly 5 to 10 cents apart, so reaching the last step, 4 cents, is very fine pitch hearing. Headphones, a quiet room and being rested all help.

Why do the tones change every round?

Each round starts from a different note between about middle C and the C above it, so you have to compare the two tones each time rather than remember one pitch from round to round.

Sources: HyperPhysics, cents and pitch discrimination; Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (2018) and Peretz and Vuvan on congenital amusia; Acoustical Society of America (Deutsch) and Scientific American on absolute pitch.