Interesting article on 432hz tuning

[PajamasMusic]

My brother forwarded this to me. Found it an interesting read and thought others might as well...

https://ask.audio/articles/music-the...-tuning-debate

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[Nor'easter]

What a great article! I printed out the whole thing. I had never understood how we arrived at A=440 Hz and that there is a debate ongoing about this. Fascinating.

[sweiss]

I listened to the examples in the three different turnings. I don't think they were different because of the turnings at all. I think they were mixed differently in an attempt to prove a point.

What does this guy do for a living...compose background music for horror movies?

I'm off now...I need to go find a pyramid. My razor blades need sharpening.

[PTC Bernie]

Interesting article, but I didn't care for the sound clips. There's more than just the frequency at play there. It seems as if the Eq was different on them, I don't want to say that he was trying to bias the outcome, but I can't think of any other explanation.

432 vs 440 Hz is so close that some people can't hear the difference side by side, and I doubt that more than a handful of people would be able to tell one from the other if they heard them more than a few minutes apart.

But, having said all that, it was interesting to read all the tie-ins to other natural phenomena's frequencies.

[devellis]

I'm not impressed. This seems to be grounded in numerological pseudoscience rather than anything substantive.

Interestingly, Pythagoras was famously dogmatic about the importance of perfect ratios in nature. He was onto an interesting idea and some of his work did reveal some very interesting relationships. But as findings arose that didn't fit with his theory, he began distorting results in an attempt to make things fit. As a philosopher rather than a scientist, he made the then-common mistake of believing the theory despite disconfirmatory data. Even back in his own time, that came to be recognized as not the path to truth. Now, it's really unforgivable.

It's surprisingly easy to take a preferred number, do all sorts of mathematical manipulations, and come up with what appear to be meaningful patterns that seem to indicate some fundamental importance or cosmic significance in that preferred number. Con artists of various types have been doing this for centuries. If you look hard enough for patterns, you'll find them.

Consider that, for a three-digit number (like 432) how much you have to work with as far as manufacturing false relationships. You have the number itself, 432. You have the constituent digits, 4, 3, and 2. You have their sum, 4+3+2=9. You have the sum of the first two, 4+3, minus the second, 4+3-2=5. You have 4x3x2=24. You have (4x3)/2=6. You have the fact that 4, 3, 2 is a descending sequence, with the middle number in the sequence specifying how many numbers the sequence contains. And this is just scratching the surface. Someone with time and imagination can start building all kinds of stories around a carefully chosen selection of the relationships that can be "discovered" in the numerical sequence, 432.

As an exercise, try to come up with a theory about why a batting average of .432 would have magical properties. Not hard. 4+3+2=9, the number of innings in a ballgame. The numeral has three digits. 4x(3/2) = 6. Add that to the three digits and you get 9 again. There are 4 bases on a baseball diamond. There are three outs in an inning. There are 2 activities a team can participate in, offense (at bat) or defense (in the field). You could probably look up stats and find all sorts of people who had an average of .432 at some point and then it declined following some "meaningful" event. At some crucial point in an important game (maybe even a world series), a 4 (home plate) 3 (3rd base) 2 (second base) triple play probably made a critical difference. Give a handful of teenagers this assignment and access to a computer and I bet they'll come up with a zillion reasons why an average of .432 has "special" significance.

I don't think it's any more meaningful to argue that the same number as a reference frequency has cosmic significance.

[MikeD]

I tried using 432 a few years ago. Sounded ok but I found a few issues...

1.) unless everybody changed tuning to play with me I was flat and sounded like crap. Making everyone tune to me was a hassle (especially mandolin and 12 string players), so I always had to tune up when playing with others.

2.) playing with instruments not easily tuned (piano for example) was futile. Had to tune up.

3.) playing along with recorded music (mp3's) to learn a song was frustrating since finding cords and keys was hard when not in tune, so I had to tune up.

It seemed like I spent a lot of my time tuning up, then later tuning back down, and the benefit of the universe harmonic of 432 just never really sounded and better or worse than 440. To me it was an exercise in futility that really showed me no gains or benefits, just a lot of me saying, "Hold on a minute while I tune up my guitar." Just my personal experience. YMMV.

[Wade Hampton]

Bob wrote:

Originally Posted by devellis

I'm not impressed. This seems to be grounded in numerological pseudoscience rather than anything substantive.

Thank you, Bob, I was about to make the same point, but you just made better than I would have.

Originally Posted by devellis

Interestingly, Pythagoras was famously dogmatic about the importance of perfect ratios in nature. He was onto an interesting idea and some of his work did reveal some very interesting relationships. But as findings arose that didn't fit with his theory, he began distorting results in an attempt to make things fit. As a philosopher rather than a scientist, he made the then-common mistake of believing the theory despite disconfirmatory data. Even back in his own time, that came to be recognized as not the path to truth. Now, it's really unforgivable.

I agree.

Originally Posted by devellis

It's surprisingly easy to take a preferred number, do all sorts of mathematical manipulations, and come up with what appear to be meaningful patterns that seem to indicate some fundamental importance or cosmic significance in that preferred number. Con artists of various types have been doing this for centuries. If you look hard enough for patterns, you'll find them.

Exactly. One of the reasons the Million Man March on Washington failed to have a lasting impact on the greater culture is that Louis Farrakhan's rather endless headliner speech dealt mostly with the importance of numerology.

Which seems like a waste to me: you manage to motivate hundreds of thousands of African-American men to join in on a march on Washington, yet instead of giving them a "I have a dream" speech, you prattle on about the mystical significance of various number combinations....

Which is bushwah, as my grandmother would say. "Deliberate obscurantism" is how some of Bob's colleagues in academe might put it. In any event, it's thin stuff that doesn't stand up to logic or any kind of sustained scrutiny.

Originally Posted by devellis

I don't think it's any more meaningful to argue that the same number as a reference frequency has cosmic significance.

No, not at all.

Earlier, sweiss wrote:

Originally Posted by sweiss

I listened to the examples in the three different turnings. I don't think they were different because of the turnings at all. I think they were mixed differently in an attempt to prove a point.

What does this guy do for a living...compose background music for horror movies?I'm off now...I need to go find a pyramid. My razor blades need sharpening.

I think magnets are more fashionable these days, sweiss!

Seriously, Cap'n Crunch, it's an interesting article, but it's trying to make a point using some information that's actually not quite true.

For one thing, the practice of pitching A at 432 has hardly been consistent or universal prior to the switch to A 440. Which is not universal, either: for the past twenty or thirty years in some Asian countries they've been using A 444 or A 445.

Historically, the reference frequency for A has shifted around quite a bit, too. If I remember correctly, the A used during the Baroque era was around 430.

So there was never one unbending standard that then got rudely and unceremoniously jettisoned when the change was made to A 440. My understanding that the reason most orchestras switched to A 440 is that it was easier to hear and thus reproduce than some of the lower frequencies used in previous periods.

One last point: until the advent of inexpensive, reasonably accurate electronic tuners, even musicians with good quality instruments and strings in good condition used to vary widely as to precisely where they were pitched. I would tune the A string on my guitar to an A tuning fork, then tune the rest of the strings to that. I don't have perfect pitch but very good relative pitch, so I've always been able to keep my instruments close to concert pitch.

But it could be kind of horrific playing with other people sometimes, particularly in large and loud group settings. When I led a bluegrass band, one of our most talented multi-instrumentalists had the nervous habit of constantly tweaking his strings ever higher between songs, and we'd have to match him. So it wouldn't be at all uncommon for us to end a set with us all a good quarter step sharp.

Other groups and solo musicians could and sometimes did go flat. Prior to having that wonderful reference tool clipped onto the headstock right at your fingertips, perhaps the most diplomatic way to say it is that tuning for many was "approximate" at best.

So this getting in vibration with the universe stuff is kind of silly, frankly. It might have been the players' intent to tune to A 432 as a TARGET, but it would have been a best guess scenario for players having to contend with the vagaries and inconsistencies of gut strings, wooden friction pegs and varying room temperatures and humidity levels.

So take that article with a grain of salt, Cap'n. I know that theory is in vogue right now in what used to be called "New Age" music circles, but it's not as historically valid as those folks would like you to think, I know that much.


Wade Hampton Miller

[gfspencer]

Interesting article. Thanks.

Over the years bagpipes have gotten sharper. Originally they were tuned somewhere around concert A but are closer to Bb today. It is tough to play the pipes and be accompanied by the church organ.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by gfspencer

Interesting article. Thanks.

Over the years bagpipes have gotten sharper. Originally they were tuned somewhere around concert A but are closer to Bb today. It is tough to play the pipes and be accompanied by the church organ.

Sometimes phrasing things a little bit sharp is a stylistic choice.

Here in Alaska there's a tradition that's been going on since the Gold Rush days called "Athabascan fiddling." The Athabascans are the Native Alaskan Indian tribe who dominate Alaska's Interior, down through the Southcentral region where I live. The Athabascan village of Eklutna is about four miles from my house.

Anyway, during the the era of the Klondike and Yukon gold rushes, some Athabascan Indians of the Interior acquired fiddles from the gold prospectors and learned to play them. It's been passed down through the generations ever since: Athabascan fiddling is now a recognized folkway, and there's an Athabascan fiddling festival held in Fairbanks every year.

The thing about their playing that's a little bit difficult for non-Athabascans to appreciate is that they phrase everything just a little bit sharp, and they sing the same way.

For many years my star soprano in the church group I lead was an Athabascan woman with a beautiful voice and a flawless sense of pitch. She was great, and until she and he husband got transferred out of state she was a stalwart of the group.

What was interesting, though, was whenever we sang any of the old gospel songs she'd learned in the village as a kid, like "I'll Fly Away," she would go into this nasal voice that was ever so slightly sharp. She wasn't aware she was doing it until I pointed it out to her, she was just singing the way she had in the village with her mother and aunts.

So just as "all politics are personal," you might say "all pitch is relative."

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[sirwhale]

The origin of 440Hz?

This what I found in my scheme of work for teaching "sound" in science lessons. It is an extension sheet for more able and interested students:

International standard pitch in which concert A (the ‘A’ note above ‘middle C’) is tuned to 440 Hz was only adopted in the western world for musicians in 1939. Before this, a number of different pitches were used.In 1859, a French law fixed concert A at 435 Hz. This was a compromise between the audience’s favourite of 450 Hz, which was too high for singers, and 422 Hz, which was the value used by composers such as Mozart and Handel.

This law meant that many new wind instruments and tuning forks had to be made. In 1896, the London Philharmonic Orchestra used scientific knowledge to establish its own preferred value of 439 Hz. They believed that when the French set their concert A at 435 Hz, it was to be played at a room temperature of 59 °F (degrees Fahrenheit). However, normal room temperature is 68 °F and the frequency of a sound wave produced by an oboe increases as temperature increases. So they did some calculations to work out what the sound wave frequency of concert A was at 68 °F. They found that it was 439 Hz.

The BBC tried to broadcast an electronic version of this note to help orchestras to tune. However, their equipment was based on a crystal that vibrated at 1 000 000 cycles per second. Using the technology of the time, they could only produce sound waves with frequencies where this number could be divided or multiplied with whole numbers. Dividing 1 000 000 by 1000, and then multiplying by 11 and dividing by 25 got as close as they could – 440 Hz. So 440 Hz was broadcast and it has stuck ever since.

[catfish]

Thank you for the article, and for the resource -- found more interesting articles on ask.audio

Never heard of 432 Hz tuning before, tuned my Little Martin LX1 to 432, sounds interesting on blues noodling at the least, less tention on the strings, easier to play.

Will keep this guitar tuned on 432 for a while, looking forward to the 'healing effect' as a bonus

[M19]

You know things are starting to get a little "squishy" when they compare the square of a tone frequency to the velocity (NOT frequency) of light in a vacuum and imply that that's somehow meaningful. Huh?

[gfspencer]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Sometimes phrasing things a little bit sharp is a stylistic choice.

Here in Alaska there's a tradition that's been going on since the Gold Rush days called "Athabascan fiddling." The Athabascans are the Native Alaskan Indian tribe who dominate Alaska's Interior, down through the Southcentral region where I live. The Athabascan village of Eklutna is about four miles from my house.

Anyway, during the the era of the Klondike and Yukon gold rushes, some Athabascan Indians of the Interior acquired fiddles from the gold prospectors and learned to play them. It's been passed down through the generations ever since: Athabascan fiddling is now a recognized folkway, and there's an Athabascan fiddling festival held in Fairbanks every year.

The thing about their playing that's a little bit difficult for non-Athabascans to appreciate is that they phrase everything just a little bit sharp, and they sing the same way.

For many years my star soprano in the church group I lead was an Athabascan woman with a beautiful voice and a flawless sense of pitch. She was great, and until she and he husband got transferred out of state she was a stalwart of the group.

What was interesting, though, was whenever we sang any of the old gospel songs she'd learned in the village as a kid, like "I'll Fly Away," she would go into this nasal voice that was ever so slightly sharp. She wasn't aware she was doing it until I pointed it out to her, she was just singing the way she had in the village with her mother and aunts.

So just as "all politics are personal," you might say "all pitch is relative."

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

I've been in choirs all my life so that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the information.

I enjoy listening to recordings of the old singers from our Blue Ridge and Appalachian mountains. Some of them can be nasal and slightly sharp. It is definitely a stylistic choice.

[Derick]

Hate to be a kill joy, but just tuned the guitar to 432Hz, and I like it very much, this is based on solo playing.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Cap'nCrunch

My brother forwarded this to me. Found it an interesting read and thought others might as well...

https://ask.audio/articles/music-the...-tuning-debate

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N920A using Tapatalk

Hi CC

Back in the day (before electronic tuners) I'd just tune any guitar I picked up to itself. So I'm sure I have played A=432, and A=445, and A=many other handy frequencies in the neighborhood.

The article you linked was a mixture of reporting on other people's views, and not a research paper. It's filled with all-too-brief exploration to be considered serious, and there's not that raging a debate about it.

Phil Keaggy for the past few decades has been tuning his guitars "about a half step low" which would be in the vicinity of A=415[/I]. And Dan Crary tunes a full step low which would put his A at around 392hz. Both do it for practical reasons not mystical ones.

While messing with the frequency of a pivotal frequency, it should be noted it's not likely to apply when you need to play with others. It's great for the living room, but I doubt in my case I'd be convincing enough to get my gigging partner or Band to switch.