Dr. Laura Sanger PHD Clinical Psychologist Talks about how and when A440 became the standard

[techristian]

Dr. Laura Sanger PHD Clinical Psychologist Talks about how and when A440 became the standard for tuning and the advantages of A444 and A432-A435. You may not agree with the spiritual part of this interview so you can jump directly to the clinical /scientific part at 17:45. I'm sure that you will find this interesting.

https://rumble.com/v469y00-the-intersection-of-humanity-and-the-nephilim.html

 

Dan

[analogika]

What a terrifying collection of complete garbage. 

 

Gah. 

 

BTW, just before the 17:45 mark, she reiterates the complete lie that Goebbels was the one who pushed for the 440 Hz standard. 

[MathOfInsects]

No lie, I could tell by the title when this first showed up that she was going to be a quack and decided not to subject myself to it. Thanks for taking one for the team on this one.

[nursers]

1 hour ago, MathOfInsects said:

No lie, I could tell by the title when this first showed up that she was going to be a quack and decided not to subject myself to it. Thanks for taking one for the team on this one.

 

This. Wow.I did have a brief listen but the host's mangling of sentences was enough to make me give up.  And don't start me on the merit of a PhD from a seminary unless the subject matter is theology..... 

[Anderton]

She lost me with the Nephilim/Federal Reserve tangents, but tuning and how we arrived at 440 Hz is a fascinating topic. This is the best article I've seen on the subject. 

 

It also touches on what I think is the most interesting aspect, the "loudness wars" equivalent in the 18th century, where orchestras keep inching up the "standard" pitch. The goal was to increase the tension on strings, so they could get brighter sounds out of their instruments. It's like how we used to speed up master tapes by 1% to get that brighter, poppier sound.

 

The main reason for a tuning standard was that there wasn't one! So that made creating instruments difficult if something like a woodwind had to go out of its "native" range. The only significant departure I see from A 440 these days is when string quartets and the like want to be historically accurate to Baroque music, and shift down to A = 415 Hz. But even then, no one knows for sure if Baroque music actually used A = 415 Hz. It's a best guess based on scant data from that time.

[MathOfInsects]

Orchestras are generally nudging up a bit from A = 440 now. I don't know how high the highest variation from 440 goes, but probably up in the 446 or 448 range. Quite a lot are routinely in the 442 or 444 range. They're all chasing "brightness." 

[Nowarezman]

Orchestras nudge up from A440?  I'll take your word for it, but instruments are built to perform at their best at a specific pitch.  I would think there could be perhaps trade-offs with tone, moving off of the standard. 

 

And what about the piano??? Do they tweak the Steinways to 444 or 448??? What a pain that would be!  And to have to tune it back down afterwards.  Uh-uh, buddy, you ain't tuning up my Steinway (if I owned one The harps?  And the oboe is basically un-tunable.  And the percussion instruments - marimba, celesta, glockenspiel, hand bells, vibes, xylophones  - they all have to be tediously tweaked?

 

How about just play brighter from A440?  Or slap an EQ on the mix.  Sounds like a sane solution.  

 

Who is making such decisions?  I guarantee the audience does NOT CARE - nor do the streaming services or consumers of streamed sound, CDs, etc.   I can think of one exception - perhaps medieval music or other period music performed on instruments from those days perhaps.  I don't care much about that form of authenticity - but I respect the attempt to recreate some semblance to hear what things actually sound like back in the way, way back.

 

Or are they just speeding up the recording after the fact, similar to what Craig mentioned?

 

nat

 

 

[analogika]

Concert pitch for orchestras here in Germany is generally 442, AFAIK. 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

Concert pitch for orchestras here in Germany is generally 442, AFAIK. 

 

I've heard that as well, but it's hard to find a definitive answer. For example, are there 442 tuning forks? Is this universal, or just some orchestras?

 

I think I'll just keep tuning to A = 440, and pretend I never heard there was anything else

 

[MathOfInsects]

My ex is a concert violinist. I can assure you, with 100% certainty, that orchestras are routinely tuning a couple of Hz sharp. Some outliers are up as high as 446-448, but 442-444 is fairly common now. They call it the "brightness wars," just like we have the "loudness wars."

 

[jazzpiano88]

I wonder if she has an island somewhere stocked with kool-aid.

 

[analogika]

I just read up on it, and German and Austrian philharmonic orchestras actually tune to 443 Hz. They used to follow the oboe, but started tuning to the Konzertmeister a decade or so ago, who verifies his tuning against an electronic tuner. When this change was made, the pitch was corrected downward from 444. Karajan used to run his orchestras at 445. 

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, analogika said:

who verifies his tuning against an electronic tuner.

 

I see a fertile new field for the people who said Pro Tools killed music. Now they can say electronic tuners killed music. 🤣

[timwat]

Wait...didn't Jeff Berlin tell us the metronome killed music?

 

Or was it bass tab?

 

I always get those two mixed up.

[Nowarezman]

So I guess the teeny-bit added sharpness is enough to create some perceptible level of additional brightness, but not enough to create intonation issues for instruments that either can't be tuned or not without a lotta lotta fuss and trouble.  

 

But surely there's a limit to this - at some point of pitching things up, it would all go sour as it were. 

 

I'll defer to the conductors (or whoever calls the shots on this) - they of course all have better ears than mine.  I still would like to ask "who are you kidding?" as to whether these tiny tweaks create any demonstrable improvement in actual performance and listening. 

 

nat

 

[MathOfInsects]

28 minutes ago, Nowarezman said:

So I guess the teeny-bit added sharpness is enough to create some perceptible level of additional brightness, but not enough to create intonation issues for instruments that either can't be tuned or not without a lotta lotta fuss and trouble.  

 

But surely there's a limit to this - at some point of pitching things up, it would all go sour as it were. 

 

I'll defer to the conductors (or whoever calls the shots on this) - they of course all have better ears than mine.  I still would like to ask "who are you kidding?" as to whether these tiny tweaks create any demonstrable improvement in actual performance and listening. 

 

nat

 

I'm not sure what you're asking about the instruments. They are not built for a specific and exact tuning frequency. In most, particularly among string instruments, they were made long before we'd adopted A=440 anyway. Brass and winds are simple to tune slightly up or down. Piano only needs to be in tune with itself. There's nothing A=440 about a piano, it's just the number we arbitrarily agreed to agreed on for awhile. I think the only issues would be with the metallaphones, and I'm not sure those 2-4 Hz would register with that kind of already-bright sound. 

[Joe Muscara]

Where does being brighter matter? In the Loudness Wars, the idea was to be louder and seem better sounding on the radio. But if I go see Citystate Orchestra play Beethoven's Ninth tonight, and then see Nationstate Symphony play Tchaikovsky's Fifth in a month, am I really going to say one sounds better because it was at a higher pitch, even though the performances were a month apart and two completely different programs?

[MathOfInsects]

I think the idea is that we're all so attuned to 440 that the nudge to the north has the effect of subconsciously signaling brightness. Not to mention the tighter strings making legitimately brighter and livelier sounds. 

[George Toledo]

The origin of “432hz” is with Lyndon LaRouche’s “The Schiller Institute”.

 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller_Institute

 

Under “Cultural Activity”, look for “Verdi Tuning”.

 

 

 

[George Toledo]

Some people think this meme was used on Facebook around 2015 and on, to find people who were susceptible to various other forms of disinformation.

[Anderton]

All this talk about tuning Hertz my brain.

[Threadslayer]

6 hours ago, Anderton said:

All this talk about tuning Hertz my brain.

It requires a certain temperament...

[KuruPrionz]

To quote the late, great John Prine ~ Nothin but a big bunch of nothin, driving me insane. Cuz there ain't no sound that's louder than, the one inside my brain. ~

Maggots quibbling over which end of the dead rabbit to eat first. 

[Nowarezman]

20 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

I'm not sure what you're asking about the instruments. They are not built for a specific and exact tuning frequency. In most, particularly among string instruments, they were made long before we'd adopted A=440 anyway. Brass and winds are simple to tune slightly up or down. Piano only needs to be in tune with itself. There's nothing A=440 about a piano, it's just the number we arbitrarily agreed to agreed on for awhile. I think the only issues would be with the metallaphones, and I'm not sure those 2-4 Hz would register with that kind of already-bright sound. 

I was thinking mainly about instruments that have no tuning mechanism - like the oboe.  Or instruments that are a lot of trouble to re-pitch - say the harp and piano.  And my (old fashioned) piano tuner has a tuning fork that he uses as ground zero - gotta be some basic pitch to tune to!   

 

But I take your point about instruments not being built for a specific and exact tuning frequency.  Or, on the other hand, what would the instrument makers say about this?  I confess that I just assumed that instrument builders would "build around" some fundamental, central pitch, trying to tweak the purest, fullest resonances from some particular pitch center.  Maybe not - I should read up on this.  Maybe they build to a range of tuning possibilities.  I suspect each type of instrument has its own behavior and building issues to sort out when it comes to achieving a fully resonant, well-balanced tone. 

 

In my experience with acoustic guitars, it's clear to me that I can't tune up or down and not change the resonance profile - the guitars just play and sound a bit differently when tuned differently - they are not the same "just a bit higher or lower".  If I tune up or down significantly, there's like some small amount of comb filtering or a new resonant note pokes out.  It's those guitars that resonate "just so" with a particular tuning that are the real, rare beauties.

 

nat

 

[Threadslayer]

21 minutes ago, Nowarezman said:

Or instruments that are a lot of trouble to re-pitch - say the harp and piano. 

How about a xylophone or glockenspiel?

[KuruPrionz]

3 hours ago, Nowarezman said:

I was thinking mainly about instruments that have no tuning mechanism - like the oboe.  Or instruments that are a lot of trouble to re-pitch - say the harp and piano.  And my (old fashioned) piano tuner has a tuning fork that he uses as ground zero - gotta be some basic pitch to tune to!   

 

But I take your point about instruments not being built for a specific and exact tuning frequency.  Or, on the other hand, what would the instrument makers say about this?  I confess that I just assumed that instrument builders would "build around" some fundamental, central pitch, trying to tweak the purest, fullest resonances from some particular pitch center.  Maybe not - I should read up on this.  Maybe they build to a range of tuning possibilities.  I suspect each type of instrument has its own behavior and building issues to sort out when it comes to achieving a fully resonant, well-balanced tone. 

 

In my experience with acoustic guitars, it's clear to me that I can't tune up or down and not change the resonance profile - the guitars just play and sound a bit differently when tuned differently - they are not the same "just a bit higher or lower".  If I tune up or down significantly, there's like some small amount of comb filtering or a new resonant note pokes out.  It's those guitars that resonate "just so" with a particular tuning that are the real, rare beauties.

 

nat

 

While your observations on acoustic guitars are true, changing strings can also change the tone and tuning down with heavy strings sounds very different than tuning down with light strings and vice versa. In general, if one is a relaxed player then lighter strings are easier to work with. Some players prefer to muscle their way through and use heavy strings tuned to pitch. There are lots of guitarists who use different tunings than standard, that needs noted as well. 

[Tripp323]

Yep. A = 440 Hz is a helpful standard, I guess. For an odd tangent on this subject, there are YouTube videos on the benefits of 432 Hz tones and tunings…. suggests they influence your brain, resonate with the universal frequency, or help with focus and to reduce stress.

That cosmic frequency stuff  - I am dubious. What is time?  I listened to 440 vs. 432 Hz tuned guitar playing, but didn’t get a different vibe.    Even if tuned down or up a bit - it was the melody, rhythm, and timbre - that seems to convey feelings, more than slight tuning variances.

[Joe Muscara]

5 hours ago, Threadslayer said:

How about a xylophone or glockenspiel?

Or a freakin' Hammond organ!

 

I guess if you were so determined to change the tuning of one you could create a circuit that changes the AC frequency from 60 Hz to whatever it would need to get you that tuning.

[analogika]

On 1/25/2024 at 3:02 AM, George Toledo said:

The origin of “432hz” is with Lyndon LaRouche’s “The Schiller Institute”.

 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiller_Institute

 

Under “Cultural Activity”, look for “Verdi Tuning”.

 

Now THAT is a connection I hadn't heard of before. Wow. 

[techristian]

Like I said, if you didn't want to hear the weird spiritual stuff "you can jump directly to the clinical /scientific part at 17:45"

 

What is a "natural frequency" ? I suppose the skins on my drums should be tuned to the shells or a harmonic of the resonant shell frequency? Or likewise a guitar to harmonics of the body of the guitar?

I do know that Major chords are "happy" and minors "sad"

Working with synthesizers I have experimented with many tunings.

And that is the sum of my knowledge on the subject.

 

Dan