Musical Intelligence: Meaning, Signs and What Research Shows

Where the idea comes from

Gardner included musical intelligence among the seven in Frames of Mind (1983). He treated it as parallel to language: a system of sound patterns that can be perceived, remembered, performed and composed, with pitch and rhythm as its two central elements. Two of his arguments for calling it an intelligence were musical prodigies and savants — people whose musical ability far outruns their other abilities — and the way music can be lost, or spared, after damage to the brain.

The other intelligences, and how this one sits next to bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic and interpersonal intelligence, are in our guide to types of intelligence.

Signs and examples of musical intelligence

These illustrate the definition; they are not a diagnostic checklist:

• Hearing pitch accurately. Noticing at once when a singer is slightly flat or an instrument is out of tune.
• Keeping time. Holding a steady beat, feeling where the downbeat falls, or clapping an unusual rhythm back correctly.
• Remembering melodies. Humming a tune after one or two hearings, or recognising a piece from a few notes.
• Hearing structure. Picking out the bass line or a single instrument, or sensing where a song is going next.
• Making music. Playing by ear, improvising, harmonising or writing songs.

The strongest evidence: when music fails on its own

Gardner’s best argument is that musical ability can come apart from the rest of the mind. The clearest case is congenital amusia, often called tone deafness: a lifelong difficulty perceiving music in people whose hearing and general intelligence are normal. In a 2017 study of 20,000 participants, Isabelle Peretz and Dominique Vuvan at the University of Montreal put its prevalence at about 1.5% — well below the 4% figure that had been repeated since 1980. They found that the difficulty was not reduced by musical training, that 46% of affected people’s first-degree relatives were affected too, and that it appeared largely in isolation from other cognitive problems (apart from difficulty with spatial orientation). They concluded that it probably comes from genetic differences that affect musical ability specifically — the kind of separate system Gardner’s theory predicts.

What happened when it was tested

The most direct test of Gardner’s theory is a 2006 study by Beth Visser, Michael Ashton and Philip Vernon in the journal Intelligence. They gave 200 adults two tests for each of Gardner’s eight intelligences plus a test of general mental ability. For musical intelligence they used the Advanced Measures of Music Audiation, in which listeners hear pairs of short musical phrases and judge whether they are the same, different in pitch or different in rhythm — scored as a Tonal and a Rhythm test. The results, from the full data in Visser’s thesis:

• Not significantly related to general intelligence. Neither music test correlated significantly with the test of general mental ability, and both loaded only between .10 and .20 on the general factor — while every verbal, spatial, logical, interpersonal and naturalistic test was significantly related to it.
• But the music tests measured poorly. In this study both had unacceptably low reliability (the Tonal test’s split-half reliability was .17), far below the figures in the test’s manual. Visser wrote that it was almost impossible to draw conclusions from the study about how musical ability fits into the structure of mental abilities, and noted that earlier research had found positive links between musical ability and intelligence.
• People knew their own musicality. Participants’ ratings of their own musical ability were significantly related to both music tests. The authors suggest this is a domain where people get plenty of feedback.

So the honest reading is narrower than many summaries: the study does not show that musical intelligence is independent of the g factor, and it does not show that it is part of it. The question stays open on this evidence.

Can you train it? Practice, genes and music lessons

Practice obviously builds musical skill — nobody plays a concerto without it. Whether practice changes underlying musical ability is a different question. In a 2014 study of about 10,500 Swedish twins, Miriam Mosing and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute found that people who had practised more did score higher on tests of rhythm, melody and pitch discrimination (correlations of .18 to .36), but that the link was mainly genetic. Identical twins who had practised very different amounts scored no differently, and how much people practised was itself 40–70% heritable.

The reverse question — whether music lessons make children smarter in general — has a fairly clear answer: a 2020 meta-analysis by Giovanni Sala and Fernand Gobet found an overall effect of about zero once study quality was controlled. That research, and the famous claim about listening to Mozart, is covered in our article on the Mozart effect.

Is it really an intelligence?

Few people doubt that musical ability is real. The argument is about the label and the evidence for it. Lynn Waterhouse’s 2006 review in Educational Psychologist concluded that multiple intelligences theory lacks adequate empirical support; Gardner and Seana Moran replied that the critique misreads the theory. Another criticism, raised by Klein in 1998 and discussed in Visser’s thesis, is that the definitions can be circular: people are good at music because they have musical intelligence, and musical intelligence is being good at music. Of all Gardner’s intelligences, music has some of the best evidence for a separate brain system — amusia — and some of the weakest direct test data.

Careers that use it

Career lists usually name musician, singer, composer, conductor, music teacher, music therapist, sound engineer, audio producer and piano tuner. Treat these as illustrations of work that depends on musical skill. With no validated overall test of musical intelligence, no study shows that people in these jobs have more of it. For a structured look at work that fits you, try our career test.

How to develop musical skills

• Learn an instrument or sing. Regular practice with feedback from a teacher is the most reliable route to skill.
• Train your ear. Interval and rhythm exercises, singing back what you hear and transcribing simple melodies sharpen listening.
• Listen actively. Follow one instrument through a piece, or try to predict where a melody resolves.

Expect these to improve the specific skills you practise; the twin study above suggests they change listening ability less than people assume.

What an IQ test measures here

An IQ test, including ours, measures reasoning with patterns, numbers and words. It does not measure pitch, rhythm or musical memory. A high score says nothing direct about your musical ability, and being unmusical says nothing about your IQ.

Trust and scope notes

This page summarises published research for general information. The 2006 findings are reported from the full data in the author’s thesis; the amusia, twin and meta-analysis findings are reported from their published abstracts. Nothing on this page assesses hearing or any medical condition — concerns about hearing or a child’s development are a question for a doctor or an audiologist. The IQ Revealed test is an online reasoning test of 40 original items for adults aged 18 and over; it does not measure musical intelligence and is not a clinical assessment.

IQ Revealed is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Howard Gardner, GIA Publications (publisher of the Advanced Measures of Music Audiation) or the other researchers, universities, journals and publications named on this page.