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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

#261

Post by jmiserez »

nullc wrote: post #235
criley2 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

VLC can do this too:

Speed up: ] key Speed down: [ key Normal speed: = key

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

#262

Post by timehastoldme »

jmaygarden wrote: post #237
tpeo wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If I understand correctly, he's guessing that pitch discrimination is finer at lower frequencies, so tuning at 432Hz would allow our ears to be more 'exact'. Of course, this advantage would be negligible, and pitch discrimination decreases past a certain point. The songwriter intended their piece to be heard by human ears at A=440Hz, knowing the various propensities of human hearing at various levels.

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

#263

Post by timv »

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?

Imagine if it had been defined as the time it takes to make 9,192,631,771 transitions.

All our music would sound wrong.

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

#264

Post by Buge »

triplesec wrote: post #226
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%…

This explains the years of confusion I've suffered noticing sharp pianos in films. I could never work out what was wrong with American film pianos! Thank you, seriously.

The European (PAL) ones are sharp. The American (NTSC) ones are accurate (or very very slightly flat).

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

#265

Post by thecrow1213 »

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…

Love this post. If you're ever in Austin you have a fellow mystic to jam with. Keep on with the good vibes man.

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

#266

Post by T-hawk »

jamiek88 wrote: post #100
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if your "electronics" are vacuum tubes and relays. In the digital domain it's not an issue at all.

Electronic =/= digital. It is electronic gating to bring down a 1khz signal. Division and multiplication to a prime number is pretty hard...

But there's nothing special about the 1k signal either, because a second is arbitrary. The original signal might have been 878 Hz instead (or equivalently 1000 cycles / 1.139 seconds which is no more or less privileged than 1000 cycles / 1.000 seconds) and then the gating to 439 is easy.

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

#267

Post by monktastic1 »

brokenmachine wrote: post #250
monktastic1 wrote: post #142

I spent three months in meditation retreat some years ago. I'd never heard of this phenomenon. At some point, I started hearing various tones that weren't coming from outside. They eventually became quite loud. I noticed three tones in particular, and wrote some code to pin down their frequencies. I discovered that they were C, E, and G, where the A would have been 432 Hz (or very close to it; certainly much closer t…

> I noticed three tones in particular, and wrote some code to pin down their frequencies. What kind of code does one write to get the exact frequency of a sound in your head?

Haha yeah I could have explained better. I wrote code to play a solid tone where I could adjust the frequency via keyboard input. I played around until it matched what I heard internally. I have some musical training and know I can do that pretty well.

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

#268

Post by 50CNT »

jmiserez wrote: post #261
nullc wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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!

VLC can do this too: Speed up: ] key Speed down: [ key Normal speed: = key

I use that to watch slow lectures at anywhere to 1.8x to 2.3x the speed. Turns a 40 minute lecture into a 20 minute lecture.

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

#269

Post by mathw »

soundwave106 wrote: post #155
dmix wrote: post #46

Decided to try searching this and found this lovely site: > A=432 Hz, known as Verdi’s ‘A’ is an alternative tuning that is mathematically consistent with the universe. Music based on 432Hz transmits beneficial healing energy, because it is a pure tone of math fundamental to nature https://attunedvibrations.com/432hz/ Oh new age pseudo science. My mom loves this stuff and I never fully understood why. My sister gets…

Tunings (whether by key shift or by reference frequency or whatever other means) can evoke a different sort of feeling and mood in music IMHO. Music is such a personal thing in so many ways, so even though the "beneficial healing energy" / "pure tone of math fundamental to nature" thing is kind of BS, I'll allow a little out there mystical pseudobabble. :) It's just a pity in a way that the mystical BS focuses only o…

In that place between physical frequencies and brains there is some appreciation that different tuning standards feel different.

I play a lot at A=440, but I also play a lot at A=415 - mostly on the viola da gamba. A=415 is roughly one semitone lower, and it changes the way the instruments resonate. My viol happens to sound good at either pitch, but as an ensemble we find that when we're playing at A=440 the whole sound doesn't blend in quite the same satisfying way. This is due to the construction of the instruments themselves, but also just how those slightly lower pitches sound.

Oh and recorders built to A=415 just sound great. I think that slightly bigger body gives them the chance to produce a richer resonance, but then again you also don't find cheap plastic recorders (or cheap wooden ones) built at A=415 because only "serious" players go looking for those instruments.

One nitpick on the article though - historical tunings don't range from A=415, my recorder teacher has two flutes at what is sometimes called "French baroque pitch" - that's A=392!

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

#270

Post by ricksplat »

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…

Coming from a more "bottom up" perspective it's likely that the derivation of these numbers are related to the implementation rather than anything to do with the musical theory. Digital technology makes working with arbitrary numbers quite straightforward but often times certain number patterns simply "emerge" as a result of characteristics of components, integration with other legacy technologies or even just ease of calculation. Then these numbers just become legacy themselves and you're stuck with them!
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