Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

jakubmarian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 332 posts

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

#191

Post by harrumph »

I have no idea why this laughable article/idea persists, but the actual answer about 440 Hz is completely commercial and mundane.

Decisions made by the J.C. Deagan mallet instrument company at 1770 W. Berteau in Chicago are the sole reasons why A=440. I once worked in this building, still called the Deagan building.

The company made chimes and xylophones and instruments. They had customers all over the US. Each symphony in each city used a slightly different reference tuning. Philadelphia used 442, New York 438, etc.

This fact forced Deagan to retool their machinery every time a different order came in. This cut into profits. The owner, J.C. Deagan urged his customers to standardize on one reference tuning. One reference tuning meant one set of machine tools for his machines and no time or money spent retooling.

Deagan got results only when he contacted James Petrillo, the President of the AFM - the national musicians' union. Petrillo made it a work rule that A=440, overriding the conductors local preferences.

This was in 1910. Therefore there are no nazis involved.

http://richsamuels.com/nbcmm/deagan/index.html

Hey internet: don't be so goddamn gullible all the time, okay?

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

#192

Post by tikhonj »

phire wrote: post #176
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%…

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 which one corresponds to what. But if I'm actually using it and I make a mistake, I notice immediately because I'm so acclimated to the pattern it normally makes!

If I hadn't realized this, the UI for the system would have looked absolutely terrible. The different beeps are the auditory equivalent of "mystery meat navigation" but even worse because they don't carry any semantic meaning at all. But because I always use the system in the same way and the noises were consistent, it actually works really well even if I never consciously learned what noise corresponds to what.

(The fact that there are wrong ways to use the system is bad design, but it's a function of how the whole train system is set up, not the fault of Clipper's designers.)

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

#193

Post by hammock »

phire wrote: post #176
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%…

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.

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.

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

#194

Post by thebspatrol »

costcopizza wrote: post #83
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…

Eh-- pick your battles. If family members get a positive placebo effect from listening to "5 Hours High Quality BEST 432hz Meditation Healing Chakra" on YouTube...Who cares?

Because it requires a core assumption of anti-intellectualism.

It doesn't bother you when friends and family are sold on something that is baseless and are completely opposed to actually researching it and at the very least becoming more skeptical about it?

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

#195

Post by jefurii »

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…

> There is no science that can explain this sort of thing that I know of, and I fully expect that others would have different interpretations.

The article had a pretty good explanation: that strings sound different at different tensions. Musical instruments tuned lower would sound darker, mellower, and "looser" than those tuned higher. The instruments would probably feel a little different to the musicians, who would probably play differently, especially if they'd just heard somebody expound on the mystical properties of a certain tuning. I'm not at all surprised that it would sound different.

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

#196

Post by combatentropy »

ohthehugemanate wrote: post #170
haberman wrote: post #43

> orchestras specializing in older music may sometimes tune in the tuning close to the one for which the piece was originally written, which may range from 415 Hz to 470 Hz). I can say as someone who performs a lot of Baroque music (c. 1600 - 1750) that there is a relatively common standard of A=415 for music of this period. A=415 is often referred to as "Baroque pitch." This mainly applies to ensembles that speciali…

Opera singer here - you must be playing in North America. In Germany tunings range from 436 to 444, depending on what you're playing. Most theaters tune to 442. One thing that gets opera singers (like me) up in a knot about this, is that the human voice is not a tune-able instrument. There are registration issues in fixed frequency ranges, which we can't change. At A440, a register shift happens a quarter tone lower…

You are an opera singer and a computer programmer? That's pretty cool.

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

#197

Post by cbr »

castratikron wrote: post #165
cbr wrote: post #92

An equilateral triangle whose area and perimeter are equal has the area of exactly the square root of 432. Let's say we have an equilateral triangle with a perimeter of 3x units. Then each side is x units, and the area is sqrt(3) * x^2 / 4 square units. So we set: 3x = sqrt(3) * x^2 / 4 3 = sqrt(3) * x / 4 3*4/sqrt(3) = x 12/sqrt(3) = x Then the area is: sqrt(3) * (12/sqrt(3))^2 / 4 sqrt(3) * 144 / 12 sqrt(3) * 12 sq…

I saw that in the article, too, but it didn't make sense to me. One has units of area and the other has units of length. How can they possibly be equal? That's like saying a 700 foot wall is the same size as a 700 square foot apartment.

That's what made it jump out to me too! But the key thing is that one number is in linear units and the other is in square units. So for any linear unit you choose (mm, in, km, furlongs, ...) an equilateral triangle with perimeter sqrt(432) units will have area sqrt(432) square units.

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

#198

Post by caf »

mrb wrote: post #108
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…

"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%…

The first time I remember hearing about this was in regard to the semi-famous "Wizard Of Oz / Dark Side Of The Moon" combination, which supposedly only works at the theatrical frame rate.

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

#199

Post by Taek »

thebspatrol wrote: post #194
costcopizza wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh-- pick your battles. If family members get a positive placebo effect from listening to "5 Hours High Quality BEST 432hz Meditation Healing Chakra" on YouTube...Who cares?

Because it requires a core assumption of anti-intellectualism. It doesn't bother you when friends and family are sold on something that is baseless and are completely opposed to actually researching it and at the very least becoming more skeptical about it?

Nah. We evolved to be superstitious. It's evolutionarily advantageous. Why? Because it's much less costly to develop a random incorrect superstition than it is to miss an important correlation.

How harmful is it to meditate to 432Hz compared to... well maybe without that superstition they wouldn't even meditate at all. It's probably advantageous, even though it's bullshit.

As long as they aren't engaging in harmful behaviors (e.g. anti-vax), best to let it go.

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

#200

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

pixelcloud wrote: post #147
LandoCalrissian wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You leave my space wizards out of this!

And you actually pointed out why those two things are different. We understand Star Wars is space wizards. New-agers do not understand that their beliefs are mostly bogus.

Luckily for us software development is a completely rational discipline, and is immune to fads, fashions, rhetoric, snake oil, and beliefs with no empirical foundation.
Post reply on HN