Musical Aptitude

Musical aptitude (i.e. having a fine ear for music) is the ability to intuitively learn or appreciate music, and especially to distinguish off-key and off-pitch music.

Music is ancient and one of the most special characteristics of humans. Some observations suggest that the ability to appreciate and to understand music does not require any musical training. Since we can see octave-based scales or preference of consonance over dissonance in every single type of music in every human culture, this could be considered to be evidence of innateness of music. The rules of music have arisen independently in every human culture, and some of them also apply to the music perception of non-human species. This tells us that the rules have their basis in brain rather than in culture. Embryology researches have showed that basic auditory abilities, such as pitch discrimination and more complex capabilities like melody recognition, are already present in the early stages of development.

In music, tonal memory is the ability to recall or produce a previously sounded tone with voice or an instrument. Tonal memory assists with staying in tune and may be developed through ear training. Extensive tonal memory may be recognized as an indication of potential compositional ability.

Most of the music aptitude or talent described today is tonal memory, time discrimination and pitch discrimination.