Can you "cure" someone that's tone deaf?

Not in most cases. my mother is 98% deaf and a hearing aid only allows her to hear about 10% of a conversation. she is also tone deaf and cannot hear even the throbbing sounds of a rap song. no, she does like rap music. its used only as an example. she is 92 years old.

If they are genuinely tone-deaf they cannot tell the difference between two notes of different pitch. If they can tell the difference enough to be able to identify a tune, they’re not actually tone-deaf, they only think they are.

Genuine tone-deafness as I’ve described above, cannot be cured. But if they’re not actually tone-deaf, then yes they can be taught to sing.

“Of course the question remains, whether or not there is a cure for “pitch deafness” – or tone deafness? Well although you may not be able to produce a sound that is right on key, you should be able to develop your mental ear sufficiently to tell whether one note is higher or lower compared with another note. This is the first step to curing your “tone deafness”. You must be able to hear the differences between pitches before you can correctly sing them.”

Source

If you want to train someone to hold a pitch, you can send them to one of David Darling’s Music for People trainings. According to Darling, Music for People is:

“A natural, humorous and humane way of discovering everyone’s destiny in music. Our seminars help people who think they’re “tone deaf” to become vital members of the musical community. Music is a birthright, always available and never too late to begin.”

There is a list of events and trainings on that website.

Doh far me so tea ray lah doh….err I guess for me no.

I thnk not.I am still suffering with this illness.;)

l tried too many years trying, but l gave up, l am tone deaf and there is no cure.

@downtide My mother was deaf in one ear and had 50 % hearing in the other ear. She maintained she could not carry a tune because of that. Was she right or not?

I don’t think so.

@snowberry I would think for your mother it would depend on whether her deafness made it harder to hear the difference between notes at a different pitch, and also whether it made it harder to identify the pitch of notes that she (tried to) sing herself. I guess some forms of deafness might affect that? I don’t really know.

Depends on what you mean by tone deaf. If you just mean a really bad singer, then yeah, most of the time. However, if you mean an amusiac, who cannot tell the difference between two pitches, say, an octave apart, that can’t be cured.

Tone deaf is an aural equivalent of color blind.