News

05 August 2006

Moved entire site to: http://thiswayoflife.org
Moved blog to: http://thiswayoflife.org/blog.

23 July 2006

Added A Story About Inappropriate Behavior

IMPORTANT NOTE!!!
OUTDATED WEBSITE!!!

This website is no longer being updated! To visit this page on my current website, please use the following link:
http://thiswayoflife.org/volumevspitch.html
Please update any links you have to this site.

Volume and Pitch Difficulty Test

I have trouble determining if a given note is higher or lower in pitch then another if the volume is also different. To me, pitch and volume are seen as the same thing to my conscious mind, although I can appreciate music and tell when something is wrong with a musical piece. To explain this to my musical friends, I put together some sounds that describe what can't hear consciously. If you want to test yourself, follow along with my directions, below.

All tones that I link to are in MP3 format. Your computer will need to be set up to play MP3 files for this to work. Unfortunately, I won't be able to provide support on how to get MP3 files to play properly, although most computer people should be able to help.

Also note that I suspect most ACs hear these tones fine. In fact, some autistics excellent musical abilities. However, I know I don't hear these tones the same way NTs do. (Update: most of the ACs I've talked to have no problem with these tones)

Calibration Tones

Click to Listen

I hear these tones in the same way I suspect an NT does. This file (you can play it by clicking on the above link) consist of six different tones. The tones are the low volume versions of the low, medium, and high pitch tones that I use, followed by the high volume versions of the same tones. If you can't comfortably hear all six tones, the below links won't work. I can easily tell, within the first three tones and the second three tones, which one is the highest and lowest pitch - if I was what is usually considered "tone deaf", I wouldn't be able to do this.

Test Tones

These are the test tones. Click each one ONCE and try to guess which tone has the highest pitch (the first, second, or third tone). None of my friends have any difficulty telling which is the highest pitch, although I find it very difficult. The first and forth sets of tones are the most difficult for me - the first time I heard either set, I couldn't tell which notes were highest in pitch - they all sounded like the same pitch to me, although the other two didn't have a high degree of certainty for me.

To see the answers, click on the appropriate "answer" link. You will need to have JavaScript enabled to see the answer.