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Comment by PeterisP | Hacker News Reader

Well, that explains why I can't tune a guitar by ear - all the examples where the difference was 1/64 or 1/32 sounded as completely identical four beeps, I had zero idea about the direction and had to guess randomly. I.e. it's not that I could not interpret the difference, it's that I could not identify any difference in the first place.

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Usually when you tune an instrument you have a simultaneous reference, you don't have to remember the reference. Especially with a guitar, you tune a string against another string at the same time. It is easy (for me) to tune away small differences because the beat frequency is audible.

On this test I could not determine the 1/64th differences, I guessed those but I got all the 1/32nd and bigger intervals easily. I have a feeling that off-by-1/64th would be easy to hear if the tones played at the same time.

That's why you tune a guitar by listening to the beat in the notes, provided you can get close enough to the right chord you can figure out the rest just by tuning it until the chord stop varying in volume.

I can tune a guitar by hearing and I wasn't very good at the quiz.

Musicality and being good the quiz might not be related that strongly. Music kind of relies on people being unable to notice difference <1/4 tone, or at least that's the closest you can get to true rational intervals with an equally-tempered piano (other instruments can cheat by changing their notes slightly to sound better).

Ditto.

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