Willie
Member
Hi all. Just wondering what folks make of the 440 CT?
http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/20...etune-good-vibrations-from-natural-432hz.html
http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/20...etune-good-vibrations-from-natural-432hz.html
The 440Hz tuning frequency conspiracy theory
- Thread starter Willie
- Start date
M Bornong
Senior Member.
The biggest problem with this theory is that a majority of the major orchestras do not use A=440 hz as the standard concert pitch. Here is the most complete list I can find of the major orchestras and their concert pitch, http://members.aon.at/fnistl/index.html, you will find everything from 430 hz up to 444 hz used as concert pitch. Also, this is based on the western music tradition and the diatonic scale, not world wide as the opening of your article states, there are many traditions that have absolutely no standard pitch. For example, Indonesian Gamelan and much of South East Asia, use 2 scales, Slendro (5 tone scale) and Pelog (7 tone scale). There is no set interval with in the scale, the intervals are chosen by the gong maker, giving each Gamelan it's own unique sound. The same song played on 2 different Gamelans will sound quite different. http://balibeyond.com/gamelanscales.html.
There are a few mathematical advantages to using 432 as concert pitch:
I wouldn't say that necessarily makes it "consistent with the universe".
I think that a specific tuning is a matter of personal taste and what one gets used to hearing, and that the style of music would have a far greater affect on behavior.
There are a few mathematical advantages to using 432 as concert pitch:
http://lazytechguys.com/commentary/a-small-but-significant-controversy-in-music/External Quote:
I wouldn't say that necessarily makes it "consistent with the universe".
I think that a specific tuning is a matter of personal taste and what one gets used to hearing, and that the style of music would have a far greater affect on behavior.
MikeC
Closed Account
I'm pickin' up good vibrations
She's giving me excitations
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (Oom bop, bop, good vibrations)
She's giving me excitations(Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations(Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)
She's giving me excitations
I'm pickin' up good vibrations (Oom bop, bop, good vibrations)
She's giving me excitations(Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations(Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Good good good good vibrations (Oom bop, bop)
She's giving me excitations (Oom bop, bop, excitations)
Henk001
Senior Member.
Apart from the fact that the assumed universality of 432 is out of thin air, the "historical facts" are wrong. The standard pitch has been changing for centuries. Try Wikipedia on Standard Pitch or Concert pitch. Almost every frequency has been used, but funny enough not 432 Hz. 440 was introduced way before mr Goebbels had anything to say at all. Adherents of this theory often claim that 432 Hz "feels" better than 440. If you would like to verify that a double blind test with a random frequency generator would be advisible, because the of the obvious placebo effect and the fact that only few people have perfect pitch.
Psychic
Senior Member
Different tunings do 'feel' different even to people who do not have perfect pitch - baroque music is generally played at A = 415 because it adds to the baroque 'feel'; similarly, the rock band Guns 'N Roses played most of their songs with half-step lower tuning (Slash, the widely emulated lead guitarist, still does this) to add a unique, slightly haunted 'feel' to their music.
Psychic
Senior Member
If the extract in M Bornong's earlier post is correct:
This may mean that there actually is a difference (between A = 440 and A = 432) when playing jazz and blues, as the 'blue' notes - certain notes that can sometimes be played a half to three-quarter tone lower, mimicking the natural scale - might lose that effect.
Whitebeard
Senior Member
Many 'shred and widdle' rock guitarists also like the fact that drop tuning gives the strings a slightly slacker feel and enables them to bend strings a bit further and improves the sustain. Some of the more extreme metal bands take it a step or more beyond, using drop D flat, drop C or in extreme cases drop B flat. It gives you an heavier, dirtier more grinding sound and slacker strings can be thrashed harder with less chance of breakage.
By contrast some jazz and funk guitarists will up tune a semi-tone to F, gives the guitar a crisper more percussive sound when plucked.
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Henk001
Senior Member.
The point is that blue notes, consonants, dissonants, tuning your instrument, are all RELATIVE pitches, not absolute frequencies. Georgie G pointed out that the frequency number we associate with a certain tone means how many vibration periods fit in 1 second. If we decided to define that second slightly different, the frequency number for the same tone would become different, but you would hear the same tone. So if there is something special about 432 Hz there must also be something special with the definition of the second. A perfect tuning has nothing to do with numbers, but with the ear.
Henk001
Senior Member.
I did my own calculation on those numbers, and to my surprise I found quite a different outcome. Using the ratios minor second (16/15) major second (9/8) minor third (6/5) major third (5/4) perfect fourth (4/3) perfect fifth (3/2) minor sixth (8/5) major sixth (5/3) minor seventh (16/9) major seventh (30/16), middle c below a1= 440 Hz becomes 264 Hz, not 261.63 and middle c below 432 Hz becomes 259,2 Hz. e1 above 440 (a perfect 5th) becomes 660 Hz and above 432 648 Hz indeed. If the tone range consists of all possible intervals the 432 range has 7 whole number frequencies and two fractional (minor 3rd, minor 6th). The 440 range has 6 whole numbers and 3 fractions (4th, major 6th and minor 7th). Neither is "perfect". The (fraction) ratio used to get 261.63 Hz is arrived by using the equal temperament ratio's being used for piano's etc., but using that same ratio with 432 the middle c is a fraction as well (256.87)! This lazytechguy wasn't sufficiently informed on tuning I'm afraid.
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Henk001
Senior Member.
Musical intervals show frequency ratio's of simple fractions. An octave (c1/c) has a ratio 2/1; a perfect 5th (g/c) 3/2; a perfect 4th (f/c) 4/3; a major 3rd (e/c) 5/4; a minor 3rd (eflat/c or f/d or c1/a) 6/5; a major 2nd (d/c) 9/8 [OR (e/d) 10/9!] a minor 2nd (e.g f/e or c1/b) 16/15 [OR (e.g. dflat/c or g/fsharp 25/24!]. Note that only prime numbers 1,2,3,5 are allowed. You can show for example that adding a 4th to a 5th results in an octave: 4/3 x 3/2 = 2/1; or that adding a minor 3rd to a major 3rd results in a perfect 5th: 6/5 x 5/4 = 3/2. In order to let adding two 2nd's result in a 3rd (c-d+d-e --> c-e) you need to use 10/9 x 9/8 = 5/4. Adding d-e and e-f gives 9/8 x 16/15 = 6/5 (a minor 3rd)
For instruments with large ranges (like piano's) there occurs a problem: 8 octaves should coincide with 12 5th's, but (3/2)^12 does not exactly equal (2/1)^8. Therefore the equal temperament tuning was invented, dividing an octave in 12 semitones, all with the same frequency ratio of the 12th root of 2, hence deliberately making all tones (exept the a) a tiny bit out of tune; e.g. the 5th is no longer perfect (1,5) but 1,4983.
For instruments with large ranges (like piano's) there occurs a problem: 8 octaves should coincide with 12 5th's, but (3/2)^12 does not exactly equal (2/1)^8. Therefore the equal temperament tuning was invented, dividing an octave in 12 semitones, all with the same frequency ratio of the 12th root of 2, hence deliberately making all tones (exept the a) a tiny bit out of tune; e.g. the 5th is no longer perfect (1,5) but 1,4983.
Henk001
Senior Member.
Erratum: 7 octaves should coïncide with 12 5 ths. Not 8. (2^7 = 128; 1.5^12 = 129.7..)
mazoola
Member
I don't think this is quite right. Certain frequencies will always be in the same relationship with each other, regardless of the measurement interval. That is, the tone we know as 880 hz will always be twice the one we know as 440 hz. As such, they will always sound harmonious, in that sounding the two frequencies together will not result in the generation of 'beat' tones. This is determined purely by the physics of waves and holds true irrespective of how such tones are measured or classified.
Henk001
Senior Member.
I think that is exactly what Georgie G was trying to say. (Correct me if I'm wrong). This thread is about a kind of numerological preference for a certain frequency (432 Hz). That number however depends on the definition of the second. If the standard definition of a second was 1.85 % longer than it really is the same tone we now give a frequency of 432 Hz would have been 440 Hz. You wouldn't hear any difference.
Henk001
Senior Member.
The tuning fork was invented by John Shore around 1715. He tuned a1 (by ear indeed) to what now can be measured as 419.9 Hz. The following link gives an extensive list of tuning forks from 1715 up to 1880. a1 ranges from 409 (1783, Paris) to 457.2 (1879, Steinway, New York). 106 different pitches are mentioned. 440 is recommended from 1834 (by a congress of Physicists in Stuttgart, not by mr Goebbels who was born 63 years later), but much higher pitches were in use for concert piano's in the late 19th century.
432 Hz is not even mentioned once .....
http://drjazz.ca/musicians/pitchhistory.html
432 Hz is not even mentioned once .....
http://drjazz.ca/musicians/pitchhistory.html
Graham2001
Active Member
The Exposing PseudoAstronomy podcast has just done an episode on this conspiracy, they have a little experiment at the end of the main segment where they play the two tones (432 & 440Mhz) and ask people to comment, I'd recommend doing commenting before listening to the follow on segment, where it's revealed just which order the tones are played in.
http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/shownotes_141.php
http://podcast.sjrdesign.net/shownotes_141.php
C
Charlesinsandiego
Guest
Thanks, Graham 2001, I love me some AstroStu!
konkerinLion
New Member
Thanks you have just prooved years of debate with a producer I know.
For the record we tune to 432hz because of fibonacci sequence and the relation to frequency responses. If you can't get that proper sound of the wailers, sly and robbie or steel pulse ensure you are actually tuned correctly. 440hz is a ISO standard that was protested hugely in France on it's proposal and hence the controversy on the topic.
[...]
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Henk001
Senior Member.
Can you explain what you mean by the relation between the fibonacci sequence and frequency responses?
Henk001
Senior Member.
I'm also interested in that French protest. Can you give me a source on that?
konkerinLion
New Member
Absoloutly sir, sorry for my delay in reply. I had to switch to using my proxy as my IP was not able to load the site.
From wikipedia (url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch)
19th and 20th century standards[edit]
The strongest opponents of the upward tendency in pitch were singers, who complained that it was putting a strain on their voices. Largely due to their protests, the French government passed a law on February 16, 1859 which set the A above middle C at 435 Hz.[2] This was the first attempt to standardize pitch on such a scale, and was known as the diapason normal. It became quite a popular pitch standard outside France as well, and has also been known at various times asFrench pitch, continental pitch or international pitch (the last of these not to be confused with the 1939 "international standard pitch" described below).
The diapason normal resulted in middle C being tuned at approximately 258.65 Hz (info). An alternative pitch standard known as philosophical or scientific pitch, fixed middle C at 256 Hz (info) (that is, 28 Hz), which resulted in the A above it being approximately 430.54 Hz (info). The appeal of this system was its mathematical idealism (the frequencies of all the Cs beingpowers of two).[4] This system never received the same official recognition as the French A = 435 Hz and was not widely used. In recent years, this tuning has been promoted unsuccessfully by the Schiller Institute under the name "Verdi tuning" since Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi had proposed a slight lowering of the French tuning system. However, the Schiller Institute's recommended tuning of A is 432 Hz rather than the mathematically derived 430.54 Hz.[5][6]
British attempts at standardisation in the 19th century gave rise to the old philharmonic pitch standard of about A = 452 Hz (different sources quote slightly different values), replaced in 1896 by the considerably "deflated" new philharmonic pitch at A = 439 Hz.[2] The high pitch was maintained by Sir Michael Costa for the Crystal Palace Handel Festivals, causing the withdrawal of the principal tenor Sims Reeves in 1877,[7] though at singers' insistence the Birmingham Festival pitch was lowered (and the organ retuned) at that time. At the Queen's Hall in London, the establishment of the diapason normal for thePromenade Concerts in 1895 (and retuning of the organ to A = 439 at 15 °C (59 °F), to be in tune with A = 435.5 in a heated hall) caused the Royal Philharmonic Society and others (including the Bach Choir, and the Felix Mottl and Artur Nikischconcerts) to adopt the continental pitch thereafter.[8]
In England the term "low pitch" was used from 1896 onward to refer to the new Philharmonic Society tuning standard of A = 439 Hz at 68 °F, while "high pitch" was used for the older tuning of A = 452.4 Hz at 60 °F. Although the larger London orchestras were quick to conform to the new, low pitch, provincial orchestras continued using the high pitch until at least the 1920s, and most brass bands were still using the high pitch in the mid-1960s.[9]
The Stuttgart Conference of 1834 recommended C264 (A440) as the standard pitch based on Scheibler's studies with his Tonometer.[10] For this reason A440 has been referred to as Stuttgart pitch or Scheibler pitch.
In 1939, an international conference[11] recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz, now known as concert pitch. As a technical standard this was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 and reaffirmed by them in 1975 as ISO 16. The difference between this and the diapason normal is due to confusion over the temperature at which the French standard should be measured. The initial standard was A = 439 Hz (info), but this was superseded by A = 440 Hz after complaints that 439 Hz was difficult to reproduce in a laboratory because 439 is a prime number.[11]
May I add at the risk of being silenced by the moderator - the amount that the pitch was changed is by 1776% - to those who have been researching a while you may find that of interest. All the best
may truth prevail!
LION
konkerinLion
New Member
Henk001
Senior Member.
The wikipedia page does not say that the French government protested against 440 Hz in particular; singers protested against the pitch inflation in general, and the French government ordered the A1 to be 435 in 1859. 440 Hz was proposed in 1834 (and eventually became ISO standard in 1975), but in 1859 all different pitches up to 453 Hz were in use.
Pete Tar
Senior Member
It would be barely noticable by ear then without a previous or constant reference point.
Instruments should be tuned to either their individual resonance cavities or the resonant frequencies of the space they're being played in. The idea there is one frequency to rule them all that is the 'correct' one is a bit silly, it depends on the situation.
I'm a fan of detuning and lower pitches for strings, I love the chaotic 'impurities' you get from the buzzes and twangs and bends - or when two instruments are resonating slightly in and out of sync with each other like with recorders. It gives more character and life IMO.
Instruments should be tuned to either their individual resonance cavities or the resonant frequencies of the space they're being played in. The idea there is one frequency to rule them all that is the 'correct' one is a bit silly, it depends on the situation.
I'm a fan of detuning and lower pitches for strings, I love the chaotic 'impurities' you get from the buzzes and twangs and bends - or when two instruments are resonating slightly in and out of sync with each other like with recorders. It gives more character and life IMO.
Henk001
Senior Member.
Actually one should speak about frequency ratio instead of frequency difference. And that ratio depends on what kind of instrument you are playing. On a piano (with an equal temperament tuning) every semitone (minor second) interval has the same ratio, the 12th root of 2 (1,0595 approximately). So if you know one frequency, say a = 440 Hz, then a semitone higher (a sharp or b flat) has a frequency 1,0595x440 = 466,2. Etc. When you use the "perfect" (sometimes called Pythagorean) tuning, e.g. on a violin, there are two possibilities: the ratio is 16/15 when the semitone interval belongs to the scale you are playing in (e.g. e-f or b-c in the scale of c major) or 25/24 when the semitone interval is a chromatic increase or decrease.
ChrisH
New Member
A guitar tuned to 440 sounds right and bright, that may be from tuning it to that pitch for decades, or that the intonation will start to go out when the tension of the strings increases and decreases tension on the neck.
Tuning down was mentioned, that wold not change the frequency, just the timbre, or tone from the slacker strings, the F just become a E. It does change the open chords, or over all key of the guitar, the player is making the physical motions of the key of C, no sharps or flats, but the ear is hearing the key of C#, where all the notes in the scale are sharps, or the black notes on the Piano. On a radio, which is mostly 440, when a Eb song comes on, it appears that the chords are exotic relative to the songs in A E and G surrounding it.
It's mostly for the vocalist to seem to have a higher range I think, (also mentioned).
Tuning down was mentioned, that wold not change the frequency, just the timbre, or tone from the slacker strings, the F just become a E. It does change the open chords, or over all key of the guitar, the player is making the physical motions of the key of C, no sharps or flats, but the ear is hearing the key of C#, where all the notes in the scale are sharps, or the black notes on the Piano. On a radio, which is mostly 440, when a Eb song comes on, it appears that the chords are exotic relative to the songs in A E and G surrounding it.
It's mostly for the vocalist to seem to have a higher range I think, (also mentioned).
M Bornong
Senior Member.
Whitebeard
Senior Member
ChrisH
New Member
I don't see a edit button, While lying around one day, I thought about this post, and I got the key change wrong, A tuned down Guitar playing the motions of C will sound like it's playing in the key of "B", not "C#" as I stated in my post two above this. Apologies.
As a add on, to make this worth while, if you listen to "Diary of a Madman", by Ozzy, All the songs on that album are tuned down, except S.A.T.O., which is in E, or A440. So if you listen to the last three songs of that album, you will get a tuned "down" song, then a tuned "up" song, and then a tuned "down" song. If anybody wants to see if they can tell the difference.
Again, apologies for (unnecessary) second post.
As a add on, to make this worth while, if you listen to "Diary of a Madman", by Ozzy, All the songs on that album are tuned down, except S.A.T.O., which is in E, or A440. So if you listen to the last three songs of that album, you will get a tuned "down" song, then a tuned "up" song, and then a tuned "down" song. If anybody wants to see if they can tell the difference.
Again, apologies for (unnecessary) second post.
Auldy
Senior Member.
As a fellow guitar player, I did semi-pick up (guitar pun) on your error, but it was such a good post already and a minor (haha) gaff that I didn't think it needed to be rectified.
The option to edit a post disappears after an hour or so, or a particular length of time.
Whitebeard
Senior Member
Humbucker, single coil, lipstick, tapped, bug or active?
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