Is tuning affecting composition? (432 Hz probably yes)

[Pietro Valente]

Hmm

it is possible to adjust the temperament of any synth to match just intonation or any other temperament scheme - it is part of the midi spec and where an instrument was made before this part was added to the spec, you could do it simply by using system exclusive messages - if that doesn't get you there then careful experimentation and notation of pitch bend positions will allow you to adjust each note to the desired frequency in your chosen temperament.

your trombonist will have no difficulty adjusting to the new temperament as only the 1st position notes are fixed in tube length - everything else is adjustable by moving the slide further out or closer in. Even the fixed positions can be lipped up or down in pitch - I play trombone and this is a common enough technique to simply play in tune in equal temperament that adapting to another temperament is not a big deal - adjusting the ears (i.e. being aware of the new tuning scheme and matching pitch to it) will be. Your singer will likewise not have too much difficulty beyond learning the new tuning scheme.

The statements you make about ancient cultures tuning systems cannot be supported by facts, only by supposition mainly from those who want these ideas to be true.

What you say about adjusting temperament on keyboard it's interesting.

About the ancient cultures there are reseaches on ancient instruments to proove they where tuned in 432 as Richard Huisken says.

About the difference between even different keys I agree with produce dept the feeling changes.

 

[krushing]

About the ancient cultures there are reseaches on ancient instruments to proove they where tuned in 432 as Richard Huisken says.

Can you point us to this research? Preferably something that doesn't dive headfirst into chakras and "earth vibrations".

 

[bandcoach]

Huisken is very much of the earth vibrations and chakras vein of journalism and research - he is a music critic, but not a musician.

Back to 432 Hz | Dutch Patriot News

poor translation from the original Dutch

Sound and music consist of vibrations, the more vibrations per second, the higher the pitch. The unit for this is the Hertz, abbreviated Hz. 432 Hz is the natural “keynote” in the universe, as opposed to 440 Hz, which is the standard in the music nowadays. In 1939 the Nazis determined 440 Hz as the keynote in the music, until then 432 Hz was the standard worldwide. Many protests of prominent musicians didn’t help unfortunately. Most musical instruments are also adjusted at 440 Hz nowadays. What are the advantages of 432 Hz? 432 Hz is nicer for hearing, is softer and brighter than 440 Hz. 432 Hz also prevents hearing damage. You probably know when you hear very loud music, for instance in discos, it can hurt to your ears. With 432 Hz, you have no pain in your ears, at a very loud volume. 432 Hz is more favourable for the chakras too, which has a good influence at the spiritual development of the music-lover. The committee ‘Back to 432 Hz’ wants a worldwide re-introduction of 432 Hz as the keynote in the music, like it was before 1939. The committee thinks it’s important that at first so many people as possible get acquainted with the difference of 8 Hz. If many people know this and also believe the qualities of 432 Hz, it could hopely move the music-industry to change the standard finally.
The Dutch journalist and music-lover Richard Huisken has taken the iniative of this committee.

Interesting false claims that it was the Nazi's that decree that 440Hz was to be the standard tuning tone in 1939 - false because we know that it was a standard in the USA in the mid 1920's.

Seems that they are looking to blame this move from other tuning standards to 440Hz on the bogeyman - no bigger bogeyman than the Nazis except maybe Stalin.

the push back to 432 seems to be yet another of the new age touchy-feely movements that are long on rhetoric and short on fact

 

[produce dept]

you have factual basis for these assertions or just your own response to these keys?

In the musical world I live in, all keys are not created equal. D is brighter than Db, without a doubt! As to why this is - there are a number of possible explanations.

Because my musical world focuses not only on piano/keyboards, but stringed instruments as well (both the guitar family and orchestral strings) perhaps the open strings employed by these instruments in certain keys (with the additional overtones produced) is the exclusive contributor to the feeling of 'brightness' or related adjectives. It could be the brightness associated with these keys because of this open string syndrome has also colored our collective memory of how we perceive keys. But I don't believe this even as I write it, because it runs counter to my experience.

Perhaps there is something about certain intervals that is uniquely different because of where they lie in the frequency spectrum, something that would be hard to explain scientifically. That is to say, perhaps the interval from D3 to A3 simply has a different sound/feeling than that from Db to Ab because of the relative distance between the notes, something that cannot be dismissed simply because the relationship between the two intervals is the same and therefore we must conclude that they must not have a different sound or feeling.

I'm sitting in front of my keyboard as we speak. I don't have my system up and running, but as I listen in my mind to these ascending 5ths, (at times adding a couple lower notes to complete the chords) and continue up further, they have a unique sound that affects me in a unique way musically.

As to your suggestion that D sounds brighter than Db because it's a bit higher - as I continue upward, Eb, E, and F do not sound brighter than D. They sound different, but not brighter, at least to my ears...

 

[hollandturbine]

In regard to the origin of 440 Hz I found a bit of information in a book by David Pantalony entitled Altered Sensations : Rudolf Koenig's Acoustical Workshop in Nineteenth-Century Paris.

According to this book Scheibler started with a tuning fork that represented the average "a" of three concert pianos in Vienna which were approximately 440 Hz.

So based upon this information the only logicalistic conclusion seems to be that after sending Brad Pitt to Tibet to research charkra bowls and the harmonious effects they have on such a brutal slave based society that the Nazis built a time machine went back to the 1800's and tuned those pianos to 440 Hz.

 

[Pietro Valente]

Of course the history of tuning is complex, we said in the discussion before.

What is clear to me is that there are quite some convincing material supporting 432 hertz tuning but almost nothing supporting 440 one...

 

[hollandturbine]

Of course the history of tuning is complex, we said in the discussion before.

My point is that researching history requires effort and skepticism as opposed to lazy faith based thinking, because it should be quite evident that a lot of people have built up mythology around 432 Hz just like a lot of people built up mythology around 2012 and the Mayan calender.

What is clear to me is that there are quite some convincing material supporting 432 hertz tuning but almost nothing supporting 440 one...

That's like saying that there is quite some convincing material supporting the color red but almost nothing supporting the color blue, like I have no idea what you are basing your assumption on or how easily convinced you are, like for all I know some new age nut might have derived the figure using numerology or some shit, I mean why isn't 432 Hz just as arbitrary as 440 Hz or 435 Hz?

 

[Pietro Valente]

That's like saying that there is quite some convincing material supporting the color red but almost nothing supporting the color blue, like I have no idea what you are basing your assumption on or how easily convinced you are, like for all I know some new age nut might have derived the figure using numerology or some shit, I mean why isn't 432 Hz just as arbitrary as 440 Hz or 435 Hz?

Here we are not talking about music taste or preferencies, here we are talking about sound.
Do you have an idea about how much sound is involved in the human being?
We can actually say that we are sound! The matter we are made is sound at a very high frequency.
Of course vibration produced by music has a very high impact on our body, mind and spirit.
I'm also not convincd by the scientific proof about 432 hertz tuning but I think this is a very important subject and with the decision to record my next album in 432 Hz I hope to make more people aware of the problem and some people investing seriously in this research.

This is a water immage of the two frequencies compared...you judge yourself...

 

[bandcoach]

what is the source for that image? What type of vessel is being used to hold the water? What is the resonant frequency of the vessel? How is the sound transmitted to the water? What is used to show the peaks and troughs - a dye or a light that is blocked by interference and shown by reinforcement patterns? Is that a sine wave response or some more complex sound? i.e. what is the basis for comparison of the two images? I can certainly not accept this image as proof of anything if the sound was not a sine wave let alone the other problems with variables that are neither stated nor shown to be controlled - too many other variables come into play when dealing with overtone series.

Our bodies as vibrating matter is based on the oscillating electron model where an electron occupies different states depending on where it is in the valency shells of compounds.

A more fundamental evidence of our bodies as sounds is the firing of neurons in the brain - high freq energy around 1kHz to 3kHz depending on the individual -and our heart beat, which is somewhere between 0.5Hz and 4Hz depending on rest state and the individuals and their recent exercise/activity levels: step into an anechoic chamber to hear these two phenomena. I first read about this in John Cage's writings, but it was known to acoustics engineers long before, from the time of the first anechoic chambers....

 

[krushing]

Unsurprisingly all these new age sites use that same image as "proof" and of course no one ever questions its validity (nor asks these questions...).

 

[hollandturbine]

Although molecules do have their own modes of vibration there is not really any meaningful relationship between the vibration of an individual molecule and the vibration of the guitar string in the way that new age nuts like to believe there is, plucking a guitar string tuned to 432 Hz would simply transfer energy over to a molecule that then knocks into other molecule which then knocks into another molecule and so on.

 

[bandcoach]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that the oscillating electron model of matter has the electron moving at phenomenal speeds and therefore very high frequencies so it is unlikely to register in the audible range

 

[hollandturbine]

Bandcoach is correct, it is however quite possible to produce an audible equivalent of a false color image so that we can hear what particular molecules would sound like when scaled to a speed and amplitude that could produce sound.......but what I think is most relevant to the topic of discussion is understanding how we can actually hear that sound due to the way it propagates through the air molecules between the speakers and our ears. Basically the air molecules are kind of doing the Mexican wave by pushing and then rebounding off each other after being hit by the energy produced by the speaker. Molecular vibration and the elastic movement of molecules within space which we also refer to as a vibration are not one and the same thing (unless you happen to be wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt to complement your aura).

 

[rhythmgj]

Just catching-up to this fascinating discussion. BC, is your professor's dissertation available on-line or in a library somewhere? I'd really like to read it.

GJ

 

[bandcoach]

never finished it

 

[Deezel]

After reading a good chunk of it article with an unbiased perspective, can we just agree that the whole A432 tuning theory may just be subjective and affects people in different ways? I'm saying this because while all the facts about the significance of A432 may be true, there is still no scientific data proving its benefits.