Do Re Mi, Who's Off Key? The Effects of Age, Gender, and Musical Training on Relative Pitch

Overview

Objectives/Goals My project originally tested the effects of age on relative pitch. I believed that the youngest age group, ages 5-20, would be the most on pitch. However, my project escalated into a test on the effects of gender and musical training on relative pitch. Methods/Materials 50 volunteers were given a reference note using a keyboard. With a chromatic tuner, I measured their score, or relative pitch. There were 10 volunteers in each of the 5 age groups, 5 males and 5 females. Each volunteer filled out a questionnaire detailing their age and any musical training. Results My original results were inconclusive. The age data had no clear pattern. I next tested gender, but those results had no pattern either. Finally, I tested musical training, and those with training had much better relative pitch. Conclusions/Discussion My conclusion is that while music training improves relative pitch, age and gender have no effect. This lets me know that a singer should train and practice to improve their relative pitch.

Competition history

• CSEF 2008 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0630

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• CSEF Behavioural and Social Sciences projects
• Every CSEF 2008 project