A 432

[Steve Greer]

Have you ever tuned to A432 instead of A440? A lot of weird science associated with A432. I have been reading about it on the web. Just wondering.

[Dave LaBoone]

I've read about it, too. Don't think a lot of bluegrassers are tuning to 432, though. Irish-style players probably even less.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From an I/net web page on A432 tuning pitch - "432 Hz is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe.". Hell fire - i'm not even ''world wide'' yet !!!!,
Ivan

[Bertram Henze]

From an I/net web page on A432 tuning pitch - "432 Hz is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe.". Hell fire - i'm not even ''world wide'' yet !!!!,
Ivan

I might try retuning if I get to meet the girl on the website in question...

And they say "According to Ananda Bosman, international researcher and musician, archaic Egyptian instruments that have been unearthed are largely tuned to A=432Hz."
Apparently, they had fixed the problem of instruments staying in tune that long - how did they do it, and can't we do the same?

Another site quote: 432 times 432 = 186624 - the classic speed of light is 186400 miles/second, a difference of .001201.
- Clearly this only works in the US and UK, the rest of the world have sadly separated themselves from healing powers of music by using the kilometer.
- If arriving on one number by applying arbitrary mathematical operations on another (especially when not applying the same operations on the physical units involved) is acknowledged as proof, then we're on to something, if not to everything. How about the 42 Hz tuning?

[Cue Zephyr]

It only makes sense if it's about old instruments. Concert pitch has changed over the past centuries and some instruments (like pianos) weren't built to be tuned to 440.

[Steve Greer]

After reading about the benifets of playing in A432 I expected to levitate off the couch while picking. I may stay in this tuning and see if anything happens.

[Clement Barrera-Ng]

I do it often but only by accident when in find myself out of tune at a jam

[HappyLife]

I might try retuning if I get to meet the girl on the website in question...

Another site quote: 432 times 432 = 186624 - the classic speed of light is 186400 miles/second, a difference of .001201.
- Clearly this only works in the US and UK, the rest of the world have sadly separated themselves from healing powers of music by using the kilometer.

If A4 is 440 that would make A7 1760 and 1760 is the number of yards in a mile. Music was better before the metric system.

[LePlaymobile]

Its all BS, i read a few years ago about this, and how the A440 was a nazi plan to rule the world.. Anyways, you should try it just to have your own opinion based of something more than what you read online, most people say its just like tuning in Ab but i dont think a semitone is 8hz away..

[Bertram Henze]

If we have to retune, then I vote for A4 = 430 Hz, that way we get B5 = 911 Hz...

...or, to quote from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"Did you realize that most people's lives are governed by telephone numbers?"
(Eddie the computer)

[James Rankine]

Top marks Bertram for working that one out.

The only person I have blocked from my humble youtube channel was a "it's a nazi conspiracy" 432 believer who posted spam comments that had nothing to do with the content of my videos. I was almost minded to retune to 432 to see if he had perfect pitch and could tell the difference.
The only important thing is that you are in tune with the people you are playing with, in music as in life.

[bratsche]

I had never heard of the 432 "beliefs" before this thread; however I knew baroque purists prefer A415, with their original instruments and gut strings. That is well and good. However, when searching YouTube for 432 stuff, I was surprised by how many re-worked recordings there are on there, where they evidently just put an Audacity-type filter on the original, so it would render it as if it were recorded with A432 tuning. In many cases, the results from this sound really horrible! It would seem to me that the only valid approach to find if this were really a worthwhile exercise would be to first tune the instruments to A432, and then record them, not try to artificially redo it the other way around.

bratsche

[SincereCorgi]

This is fascinating; I had no idea that this wingnuttery existed. The actual old 'high pitch' instruments were tuned around 457 or something, even farther from glorious healing powers of 432.

[Bertram Henze]

The only important thing is that you are in tune with the people you are playing with, in music as in life.

Definitely.

[jan281969]

While playing Mandolin with The Aquarium Rescue Unit in the early 90s,Our Bass Player suggested we tune to A432 for the same reasons above mentioned,that it would aline our wonderfull sound to the universe.I'm not sure that that ever came into fruition but I didn't mind because we were all somewhat in tune with each other.Mandolin wise it might result in your mandolin sounded a bit different thru years of a slightly lower frequency moving throught it but who knows.I now tune A440 respectfully.

[Denman John]

I like tuning down to 432 when I'm alone, but a lot of the time it's tuned to 440 because it's being played with other people who are tuned to 440, which seems to be the unspoken standard.

At 432 it feels a little smoother and lighter on the fingers ~ probably due to the slightly lower tension on the strings. My mandolin's tone seems to really bloom at that tuning. I'm a fan With that said, my son thinks it sounds out of tune

[swampstomper]

Nice (rational) discussion here: http://blog.feinviolins.com/2011/08/...-standard.html

Seems that JS Bach was of the Flatt & Scruggs school of tuning... his pipe organ had A=480 Hz. They only tuned up 1/2 step: A# = 446.16; really cranking it up to A = 493.88 would give you an (equal-temperment) B. So was JS channeling his inner Red Allen?

[John Flynn]

Hold the presses before you retune! Another article on the same site says:

"Both 432Hz and the 528Hz Love frequency is proven to create the healing vibrations for the mind, body and spirit. That being said, we as human beings are constantly changing and our energy channels may need different ranges of notes or frequencies.
There is a huge amount of people who have wonderful effects with music tuned to 432Hz. However, there is also a significant cross-selection of the human race who have healing experiences with both the 528Hz and Solfeggio harmonics."

So, this raises some very important questions:

> What happens if you tune to to the "Love Frequency" of 528Hz? Will you meet the girl whose picture is on the website? How many pieces will your mandolin be in? Will Gibson glue it back together?

> They say, "the Love frequency is proven to create the healing vibrations for the mind, body and spirit." Proven by what? Was there a National Science Grant involved? An MIT study? A Nobel Prize?

> Since the site uses the Gregorian Chant Solfeggio as reference, can a guy with all his parts actually sing at 528Hz? Does anyone involved with that site actually go to a church where Gregorian Chant is sung? I do, but in the last 50 years of doing so, I can't remember anyone speaking of it as a "Love Frequency."

Some other fun frequencies from the site:
396 Hz – Liberating Guilt and Fear
417 Hz – Undoing Situations and Facilitating Change
528 Hz – Transformation and Miracles (DNA Repair)
639 Hz – Connecting/Relationships
741 Hz – Expression/Solutions
852 Hz – Returning to Spiritual Order

[James Rankine]

I did think this was all airy fairy nonsense but I'm coming round to the idea of a love frequency

[jesserules]

While playing Mandolin with The Aquarium Rescue Unit in the early 90s,Our Bass Player suggested we tune to A432 for the same reasons above mentioned,that it would aline our wonderfull sound to the universe.I'm not sure that that ever came into fruition but I didn't mind because we were all somewhat in tune with each other.Mandolin wise it might result in your mandolin sounded a bit different thru years of a slightly lower frequency moving throught it but who knows.I now tune A440 respectfully.

Great band!

[Bertram Henze]

I'm coming round to the idea of a love frequency

Yes, but that would be approx. 0.00001157407 Hz

[Martin Jonas]

Yes, but that would be approx. 0.00001157407 Hz

Once a day? I shall refrain from commenting further...

I had one of the A 432 nutters on my Youtube channel once, trying to convince me that Carolan specifically sounds much better in that tuning. At least he had the courtesy of (vaguely) referring to the actual piece of music he was commenting on.

Martin

[foldedpath]

I did think this was all airy fairy nonsense but I'm coming round to the idea of a love frequency

When I used to hang out on slide guitar forums, there was a term for the ideal frequency of bottleneck slide vibrato that can't be printed here in polite company, but it referred to a certain ideal excitation for the opposite sex. It was way lower than 432 Hz though; somewhere in the "Barry White, Late Night Frequency" zone...

And yes, Aquarium Rescue Unit was great!!

[journeybear]

Funny to run across this. I had never heard of this before three weeks ago. My band played a gig on the next island up, and our lead singer had trucked his upright piano to the venue, then had it tuned after the move. The guy who did the job owns one of the music stores here (and is also, perhaps coincidentally, one of the most dedicated stoners I know), and, unbeknownst to any of us, tuned the piano to A432. He somehow neglected to mention this to any of us. When we took the stage, ready to go, tuned to A440 ... Well, I'll just say it was awful. I suggested we stop and tune to the piano, but we never did. The lead singer had the piano player keep off the chords - too dissonant - and just play leads. At the time we all thought the guy had botched the job, but after the piano was trucked back into town, to the place where we practice, the bass player determined it was tuned to A432. For a couple of weeks' worth of practices we tuned to a tuner calibrated to A432, until a different piano tuner was found and it was tuned to A440.

As I said, I had never heard of this before, and it is interesting to learn there is a school of thought supporting the first tuner's approach. I recall hearing something about him saying that he had to do this because it's an old piano and the nature of its soundboard and how it reacted to the string tension meant it needed to be tuned this way. But it would have been nice to get a heads-up on that, especially in the context of showing up for a gig and expecting everything to be "normal" - or rather, not even thinking anything would be anything otherwise. We really got blind-sided.

[swampstomper]

I thought Bertram's choice of 0.00001157407 Hz for the Love Frequency was referring to Barry White... but even Barry can not sing that low.