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The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

jakubmarian.com

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Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#231

Post by rspeer »

anigbrowl wrote: post #76

I have been following this for years, being both a sound engineer and a bit of a hippie who knows a lot of other hippies. The basic issue is that 432 is a numerologically interesting number compared to 440. So if it's more interesting it should be better for artistic purposes, goes the argument. However this falls flat as soon as you consider that the 432 is only interesting relative to the completely arbirtrary dura…

There's something special about 432 Hz that has nothing to do with how the music is perceived -- if you're tuning the traditional way, by forming fifths above and below A as ratios of 3/2 and 2/3, then a lot of the numbers you hit are nice integer numbers of hertz as well, because 432 is 2^4 * 3^3.

Meaningless in practice, but it makes it convenient to describe the tuning of, for example, a stringed instrument.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#232

Post by BenElgar »

droidist2 wrote: post #228
hammock wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can train your brain to remember pitches. Try humming your favorite song, then play it and see if you picked the right key. I did this as a game with a friend one afternoon with maybe 80% success rate across 50 songs.

Does that mean you can train yourself to have perfect pitch?

As I understand, no. There's some suggestion that small children, usually under the age of 10, can acquire perfect pitch, but no adult has ever been documented acquiring it.

Source: http://www.zainea.com/absolpitch.pdf

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#233

Post by dingo_bat »

dhimes wrote: post #116
anigbrowl wrote: post #76

I have been following this for years, being both a sound engineer and a bit of a hippie who knows a lot of other hippies. The basic issue is that 432 is a numerologically interesting number compared to 440. So if it's more interesting it should be better for artistic purposes, goes the argument. However this falls flat as soon as you consider that the 432 is only interesting relative to the completely arbirtrary dura…

The second is defined as the time it takes for two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the 133 Ce atom to make 9,192,631,770 transitions. How is that not special?

I thought the definition of one second had been updated to the time it takes light to travel c meters? Although when I think about it, it does seem very circular.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#235

Post by nullc »

criley2 wrote: post #131
mrb wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you take a track and play it a little bit faster or slower it still sounds great or awful as at the default speed in most cases." Yup. Another example: in most of the world (where the television system is PAL or SECAM) movies are played on TV or released on DVD at 25 frame per second. But to achieve this frame rate, they take the theatrical film release at 24 fps and speed the video and audio up by 25/24th (4.17%…

Another example is the kind of dastardly television trick of increasing the speed of a television program to shorten it and thus increase the amount of advertising space that can be run alongside the program. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6i1VVikRu0 This video claims that TBS is currently increasing the speed of Seinfeld episodes a whopping 9%, reducing a 25 minute episode to some 22.5 minutes.

"mpv -speed 1.1 file.webm" ... get 10% of your watching things time back, it does pitch correction, often its unnoticeable.

Technology can work in your favor too!

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#236

Post by elihu »

rspeer wrote: post #231
anigbrowl wrote: post #76

I have been following this for years, being both a sound engineer and a bit of a hippie who knows a lot of other hippies. The basic issue is that 432 is a numerologically interesting number compared to 440. So if it's more interesting it should be better for artistic purposes, goes the argument. However this falls flat as soon as you consider that the 432 is only interesting relative to the completely arbirtrary dura…

There's something special about 432 Hz that has nothing to do with how the music is perceived -- if you're tuning the traditional way, by forming fifths above and below A as ratios of 3/2 and 2/3, then a lot of the numbers you hit are nice integer numbers of hertz as well, because 432 is 2^4 * 3^3. Meaningless in practice, but it makes it convenient to describe the tuning of, for example, a stringed instrument.

Main> majscale

[(1,1),(9,8),(5,4),(4,3),(3,2),(5,3),(15,8),(2,1)]

Main> map (\(x,y) -> (432.0 * (fromIntegral x)) / (fromIntegral y)) majscale

[432.0,486.0,540.0,576.0,648.0,720.0,810.0,864.0]

That's pretty cool. The whole major scale comes out as whole numbers in just intonation. (In 12-tone equal temperament it doesn't, because 12TET uses the 12th root of 2 as a uniform division of the octave.) This looks like your explanation isn't just a neat trick, it's likely to be the reason why 432hz was proposed as a standard in the first place.

Main> let scale = [(1,1),(16,15),(10,9),(9,8),(6,5),(5,4),(4,3),(45,32),(3,2),(8,5),(5,3),(15,8),(9,5),(15,8),(2,1)]

Main> map (\(x,y) -> (432.0 * (fromIntegral x)) / (fromIntegral y)) scale

[432.0,460.8,480.0,486.0,518.4,540.0,576.0,607.5,648.0,691.2,720.0,810.0,777.6,810.0,864.0]

..and if we construct a more chromatic scale, not all of them come out quite as whole numbers, but we don't have any repeating decimals or anything like that (though we would if we included weirder intervals like 8/7). Nice.

edit: This works for a just major scale constructed starting from A. If you construct a scale from a different root note, it might not work out quite as cleanly.

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#237

Post by jmaygarden »

tpeo wrote: post #216
timehastoldme wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What??? Tighter differences between each notes' frequencies?? Please explain this thought.

Well, I'm assuming that the ease or difficulty of recognizing the difference between two notes bears some proportion to difference between their frequencies (the frequency of one minus that of the other), and not just their relative frequencies. The intervals in the 432Hz are "tighter" in the sense that, because the interval they correspond to in 440Hz is smaller for every possible interval, there are more notes in 4…

I don't follow you. Are you saying that if I detune my guitar enough, then it will grow an extra fret?

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#238

Post by schoen »

tikhonj wrote: post #192
phire wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course almost nobody knows this because nobody notices it. Though, I can now instantly tell if I'm watching a PAL or NTSC version of Star Trek TNG based on the the first few bars of the opening song. Which is weird, because I don't even have pitch perfect hearing and I'm not even that musically inclined.

I'm guessing you've watched a lot of Star Trek? I figure this is just the human mind's wonderful proclivity towards learning patterns. I was actually thinking about a similar but less subtle example: I use a transit system that involves tagging on and off with an RFID card (Clipper on Caltrain). When you tag your card, it makes one of three different noises depending on what happen—and I couldn't possibly tell you wh…

There are several different Clipper beeps:

* One beep - successfully paid fare

* Two beeps (different) - successfully paid fare, and you're about to run out of money on your card

* Two beeps (equal) - tagged off (e.g. on Caltrain or San Francisco Bay Ferry)

* Three beeps - read error or insufficient value

There might be others. Indeed, they've introduced a quieter "here is a Clipper reader" beep to help visually impaired people locate them: https://vimeo.com/183916243

Re: The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

#239

Post by tjr »

nerdponx wrote: post #224
tjr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If electric bass (or maybe even if not) try Thomastik-Infeld strings, especially the flatwound strings.

Never heard of this brand. DR has been my go-to for years and recently gave Rotosound a try after going on a Yes bender. Thanks for the tip.

All of their strings are fairly mellow sounding. If Rotosound/Yes is your style, you might not like the Thomastik sound. But they are very low-tension and flexible!
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