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IF YOUR singing sends people scurrying to find earplugs, blame your
ancestors. According to a study of musically gifted and tone-deaf twins, your
ability to judge pitch is largely determined by your genes.

Tim Spector of St Thomas鈥� Hospital in London and his colleagues hoped to find
out whether early musical experiences or genes determine people鈥檚 ability to
judge whether a melody is being played in tune. 鈥淚 guessed there would be a
small genetic component, but that environment鈥攕ay having a family
environment where music was always played鈥攚ould be a greater factor,鈥� says
Spector.

To test this, his team recruited 136 pairs of identical twins and 148 pairs
of non-identical twins. Identical twins have exactly the same genes, while
fraternal twins share about half of their genes, like ordinary siblings.

The volunteers listened to 26 well-known tunes, including Silent
Night and The Star-Spangled Banner. Nine were played correctly,
but the rest included notes that were one or two semitones off-key. The twins
had to judge whether each melody was in tune or not.

The gulf between the high and low scorers was enormous. Around a quarter of
the listeners scored full marks. But 1 in 20 was deemed 鈥渢une deaf鈥�, spotting
incorrect melodies with an accuracy no better than they would be expected to
achieve by chance. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 believe that some people don鈥檛 know Yankee
Doodle Dandy鈥檚 being played so badly,鈥� says Spector.

But the most surprising finding was that identical twins were much more
likely than non-identical twins to have very similar scores, suggesting that
your genetic make-up largely determines your ability to judge pitch. Spector鈥檚
team concludes that this skill is roughly 80 per cent hereditary.

He adds that this strongly suggests that music lessons can鈥檛 turn a tone-deaf
child into a musical maestro. 鈥淥nce you realise that there鈥檚 a huge variety in
what other people are hearing and that the cause is predominantly genetic, you
can see why it鈥檚 going to be virtually impossible to change them,鈥� says
Spector.

鈥淚 think the twin study is very good, and strongly suggests a genetic
component to pitch cognition,鈥� says Peter Gregerson, a geneticist at North Shore
University Hospital in Manhasset, New York. He suspects that many genes act
together to influence our judgement of pitch: 鈥淐omplex cognitive abilities like
this are likely to have a very complex genetic basis.鈥�