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432 HZ ANYONE??


techristian

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Ok everyone. Let's resonate with nature !!!

 

No I'm just kidding. Here's what happened. Some of you may know about my C64 music software. Today I was having a back and forth email with a guy from Luxembourg. When all was said and done , I realized that he needed a different pitch table because of PAL 50~ tuning consideration of the Commodore 64. Then he came up with the bright idea, "If you're going to make me a custom pitch table, then make it based on 432hz rather than 440hz." Well not really. I told him that he would be the FIRST in Europe. So I thought he was just pulling my chain. Then I looked at the article at the link below.

 

 

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/21/heres-why-you-should-convert-your-music-to-432hz/

 

So the question is this. How many of you would even consider changing from A440 to A432 ?? I think I might consider a JUST TUNING table though....sometime in the future.

 

 

Dan

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I was in a band that 'accidentally' arrived at A = 432 Hz. We stuck with it for over a year and one of our CDs was recorded with that reference. We eventually went back to 440 just to be 'in step' with everybody else.

 

I recently purchases a new digital piano and for a while had it setup in the living room of my house. There were times when I felt the sounds that were happening in the house clashed with the sound of the piano creating some unpleasant dissonance. I decided to try tuning the piano (changing the reference pitch) to lessen the dissonance and it ended up at 432.

 

I didn't get a chance to read the full article or watch the videos from your link but after a quick glance I'm ready to ask the rest of my band (the bass player) if he is willing to play this weekend at 432 as an experiment.

 

I expect to be able to respond in more detail after I get a chance to digest the complete article.

 

Thanks for bringing my attention back to this topic.

 

 

 

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I do feel just intonation makes a major difference in the way music feels, but it's not that uncommon. It's naturally how people play when not constrained by an even-tempered instrument - check out the pitching with string ensembles and barbershop quartets.

 

As to 432 Hz, well, I do have a guitar with Min-ETune that can do custom tunings, so it wouldn't be hard for me to create some tunings and see what happens.

 

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I came upon the idea of 432 when I stumbled across the links and YouTube video posted above, earlier in the year. I use it for solo gigs. It definitely feels and sounds more musical, and my vocal pitch just locks right in. 440 can feel harsh and uncomfortable, far too strident, by comparison. Call me crazy :)

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Changing the tension of the strings and body will change it's harmonic response. Some orchestras in Europe tune to A=444Hz because it gives the violins a brighter clearer tone. Going down to 432 can make certain instruments richer sounding, others muddier. I don't buy the hype about it being in synch with the universe or whatever, but being a little higher or lower than 440 may be beneficial for a given instrument&sound combination.

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I've been curious about this for a while, but haven't done any real experimentation. I'm sure that minor differences in pitch reference can have quite an impact on the overall arrangement, but I think it's probably situationally dependent, Some singers probably feel more comfortable at 432, others at 444. Different trachea will resonate at different frequencies, right?

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"According to Vedic philosophy, Om is the primordial sound from which the whole universe was created. It is a sacred sound in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Om is also know as Omkāra (Aumsyllable). It appears at the beginning of most Vedic chants and is said to be the essence of the Vedas."

 

 

http://www.simonheather.co.uk/pages/articles/aum.pdf

 

 

I don't know who decided this or how it was determined but the sound of Om is known to be 136 Hz which is C# when A=432 Hz. It is the key that most Indian (Hindu) music is in and George Harrison's "Within You Without You" from Sgt Pepper is also in that key.

 

 

 

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Guess my interest in waves dates back to my childhood when I built my first crystal radio and figure out how magnetic waves had similarities to audio waves. Audio waves take up a very small spectrum just like visible light does. http://www.aiti.gov.bn/regulatoryresources/RRPictureLibrary/Spectrum%20Images/2_Below%207GHz%20chart_v2.jpg

 

 

 

I found these charts 25 years ago when I had an interest in the whole frequency wave bio feedback thing and thought they were interesting. http://www.greatdreams.com/blog/harm...omparisons.jpg

http://www.mpoweruk.com/images/emspectrum.gif

http://mybroadband.co.za/photos/data/500/emfs.jpg

 

Of course if you do want to get into this line of thinking this site is completely over the top. I cant make out if it has any basis in reality or some Physicist lost his marbles doing drugs. http://www.svpvril.com/Cosmology/cosunityTOC.html#Part8

 

Thinking you can have musical notes in harmony with higher frequencies is pretty nonsensical when you actually figure the math. If anything the bodies natural biorhythms like heartbeat, breathing and other bio functions can be influenced by tempo and pitch. I think tempo is the dominant force over pitch however.

 

Before standards were set there were all kinds of concert pitches. Many are still used today mixing Baroque musical instruments to modern day is one example. http://pbosf.blogspot.com/2010/01/st...que-pitch.html

 

I suspect many of these tunings came about naturally based on the concert halls natural reverb resonance. A room can sound dull and lifeless at one pitch and quite alive at another depending on whether the air volume in that room works with those pitches or fights them.

 

Once electricity and recordings were possible you still had plenty of recordings made at non standard pitches. I used to think it was because the musicians who recorded just didn't know how to tune their instruments. Later I rethought that, especially for audio gear that created either 60 or 50hz hum depending on where you lived. 60hz is flatter then a normal B note of 61.74hz and 50hz is flatter then a G# at 51.92hz.

 

When you have drive boxes or even clean notes with hum in the background, you tend to migrate tuning flat to minimize note beating that can occur when you have some kind of hum mixed in. Being off by a few cents can be annoying and when the waves are in harmonic sync they can be invisible for the most part.

 

The other thing is allot of gear that used AC motors would actually run at different speeds because they are locked to the AC cycles per second to spin. They got around those speed variation on tape and playback gear like turntables by changing gear pulley ratios but like anything mechanical, when it wear you get drag and lower speeds. I can pull out any number of old albums set them to play on a strobe turntable and find the songs pitches off by a semitone of more.

 

It makes you realize that the studio gear used to make recordings can be off quite a bit from actual commercial playback gear. Your good quality stuff might match standards, but commercial gear was all over the place. I don't hear this much any more. It seems along with the digital age came the electronic tuner to fix most of the instrument tuning problems. And digital recording doesn't suffer the mechanical issues that change pitch. If someone wants a different pitch they usually have to manipulate it in.

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Thinking you can have musical notes in harmony with higher frequencies is pretty nonsensical when you actually figure the math. If anything the bodies natural biorhythms like heartbeat, breathing and other bio functions can be influenced by tempo and pitch. I think tempo is the dominant force over pitch however.

 

It is relevant because it's about wavelengths and harmonics.

 

A good book about it is Itzak Bentov's "Stalking the Wild Pendulum."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I notice that the article makes a lot of claims but has no cites to any studies that back up any of it. The article reads like pure unadulterated woo, and I accord it no greater credibility than some guy in a diner.

 

Maybe there's a point, but if so, I'd want to see a credible argument. Haven't seen one yet. There are a lot things to spend time trying, and this one ranks well below enough others that I won't bother, without seeing some more credible arguments.

 

Old recordings can be out of tune for various reasons, but rarely would it be to gear that wan't well-regulated, unless you're talking pre 40's or super low budget. The most common reasons:

 

* The producer changed the speed during mastering, to hit a time target or he preferred the sound that way. (If there's a piano that's in perfect tune but not concert pitch, this is usually the reason.)

* Guitar band: tune to each other.

* No doubt sometimes, everyone tuned to an out-of-tune piano.

 

The more overdubbing became popular in the studio, the less popular became the "guitar band everyone tune to each other" style. It's pretty much gone by 1970 or so. Also, around that time, it became less necessary for a hit to be under 3 minutes (as was crucial in the 60's). So, when tracking to commercial tracks, I find recordings after the early 70's are generally in concert pitch, and the earlier you go before that, the more they vary. With a song loaded into a DAW you can also tell when a click track was used; they're rare in the 60's but almost ubiquitous by 1975, and for the same main reason: simplifying overdubs.

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