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

[Philbo King]

On 1/25/2024 at 1:02 PM, Threadslayer said:

How about a xylophone or glockenspiel?

Pitch will drop if played under water...  Or rise in a helium atmospere, in case you get a gig on the Sun. 😎

[Threadslayer]

3 hours ago, Philbo King said:

Pitch will drop if played under water...  Or rise in a helium atmospere, in case you get a gig on the Sun. 😎

OK then Good to know that there's a simple solution,

[KuruPrionz]

There are a variety of reasons for tuning differently. 

More than a few guitarists tune to Eb because they play with horn sections and that is one of two dominant pitches for horns, the other being Bb. 

Some of us tune our 12 string guitars down to D because we like the ease of left hand fingering when the tension is lighter. 

I had a friend in California who tuned his guitar down to C, not sure the reason but he was committed to that. It sounded good, that's all that matters. 

 

Keyboards are probably another topic entirely as are woodwinds and horns. Nothing will ever "make sense" because everything "makes sense". So it goes...

[Anderton]

So...I was talking at NAMM today with a prominent film composer for whom I have great deal of respect. He thinks the 432 Hz thing is real, due to being fascinated by the relationships between music and mathematics, and then doing a lot of studies on the topic. I won't try to distill a half-hour conversation and a bunch of photos into a forum post, but I may need to come back after he finishes his book and say "wow, I got it wrong." FWIW he doesn't subscribe to any of the politics on the periphery of the topic. To him, it's strictly about math, harmonics, and tunings.

[jazzpiano88]

I always figured that the piano player or the keyboard player in position when the REAL extraterrestrial entities, like similar to when the coneheads REAL planet phoned home would bear weight irregardless of any quantification of quantizication (or quantization) and hertzification of the continuous frequency spectrum that one might wish to restrict. 
 

 

[analogika]

13 hours ago, Anderton said:

So...I was talking at NAMM today with a prominent film composer for whom I have great deal of respect. He thinks the 432 Hz thing is real, due to being fascinated by the relationships between music and mathematics, and then doing a lot of studies on the topic. I won't try to distill a half-hour conversation and a bunch of photos into a forum post, but I may need to come back after he finishes his book and say "wow, I got it wrong." FWIW he doesn't subscribe to any of the politics on the periphery of the topic. To him, it's strictly about math, harmonics, and tunings.

But…that’s the part that’s completely irrelevant! Our entire musical system is based on maths, frequency relations between harmonics, and mathematical ratios between notes that dictate the various tunings. 
 

None of that is affected in the least by changing the reference frequency of one particular note, and shifting all others accordingly. 
 

There anre absolutely zero external external reference points that aren’t completely arbitrary, and thus meaningless. 

[KenElevenShadows]

It sounds like many of you feel that tuning is important. I will consider this approach going forward.

[nursers]

3 hours ago, KenElevenShadows said:

It sounds like many of you feel that tuning is important. I will consider this approach going forward.

 

About damn time!

[analogika]

4 hours ago, KenElevenShadows said:

It sounds like many of you feel that tuning is important. I will consider this approach going forward.

As long as it’s cosmically harmonic, you do You. 

[KenElevenShadows]

8 hours ago, nursers said:

 

About damn time!

 

I feel it's important to continually experiment with new approaches. You have all piqued my interest with this tuning thing.

[KenElevenShadows]

6 hours ago, analogika said:

As long as it’s cosmically harmonic, you do You. 

 

Always, always. I had always thought that the individual strings of my guitar, and the various instruments in my ensemble were all tuned to something in the cosmos.

[Anderton]

On 1/28/2024 at 1:16 PM, analogika said:

But…that’s the part that’s completely irrelevant! Our entire musical system is based on maths, frequency relations between harmonics, and mathematical ratios between notes that dictate the various tunings. 

 

Yes, but he feels certain frequencies may affect the body more than others. That's what he's delving into. The problem is being able to determine objectively whether something is causal or not. Just because someone says they feel better or worse, that doesn't mean anything. When you don't know whether specific frequencies affect something, or even what that something is, then putting together a control group and quantifying results is very difficult. 

 

The math comes into play because he's curious whether these frequencies have been encoded into objects, so for example, he's trying to see if specific frequencies relate to dimensions of resonant structures or chambers. 

 

There are already examples of sound waves being used in medicine, from ultrasound to extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, which targets high-pressure sound waves at kidney stones to break them up. Although most sound wave processes used in medicine involve low frequencies or shock waves, there are promising technologies based on high-frequency sounds. So, he's really just trying to find out if there are more nuanced applications of sound waves, and if so, whether they have identifiable frequencies.

[MathOfInsects]

6 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Yes, but he feels certain frequencies may affect the body more than others. That's what he's delving into. The problem is being able to determine objectively whether something is causal or not. Just because someone says they feel better or worse, that doesn't mean anything. When you don't know whether specific frequencies affect something, or even what that something is, then putting together a control group and quantifying results is very difficult. 

 

The math comes into play because he's curious whether these frequencies have been encoded into objects, so for example, he's trying to see if specific frequencies relate to dimensions of resonant structures or chambers. 

 

There are already examples of sound waves being used in medicine, from ultrasound to extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy, which targets high-pressure sound waves at kidney stones to break them up. Although most sound wave processes used in medicine involve low frequencies or shock waves, there are promising technologies based on high-frequency sounds. So, he's really just trying to find out if there are more nuanced applications of sound waves, and if so, whether they have identifiable frequencies.

But that would be completely unrelated to the Hz we choose as a single reference pitch, in a single tuning tradition, in a single sub-population and tiny slice of historic time. Those (bogus) "healing frequencies" still exist regardless of whether all the strings in a chamber ensemble call one of their infinitely possible frequencies "A" or not, or even if there is an "A" in anyone's tradition. Do the people claiming this understand that our melodic tradition is a very tiny subset--an outlier at that--among the musical practices across the world and across time? And that within that tradition, the "A=440Hz" component has essentially had (and will have) the lifespan of a fruitfly?

Even forgetting for the moment that all bodies and all the environments around those bodies are different, any "healing frequency" would exist with or without that arbitrary name for that arbitrary note in our arbitrary tuning tradition. 

Where I think there might be more solid bio-physiological ground is in frequency differentials. But even then, that would have absolutely nothing to do with what name we gave a completely arbitrary entry along the continuum of values, a small subset of which we decided idiosyncratically to give names to in our local tradition.

[Nowarezman]

I like dissonance.  So I tune to 432.666.  Hahahahaha I'm possessed!!!!  

 

nat

 

[Anderton]

9 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

But that would be completely unrelated to the Hz we choose as a single reference pitch, in a single tuning tradition, in a single sub-population and tiny slice of historic time.

 

Just to be clear, this is why I mentioned only frequencies. His discussions with me, and my post, had nothing to do with scales. 

 

[MathOfInsects]

1 minute ago, Anderton said:

 

Just to be clear, this is why I mentioned only frequencies. His discussions with me, and my post, had nothing to do with scales. 

 

Well, I didn't mention scales, but I guess I don't follow, then. The discussion of 440Hz, 432Hz, and the like, are only relevant in the context of multiple players matching pitch with one another as they play. The frequency 432Hz exists whether or not people tune to it, as does every other frequency. What is he claiming, exactly?

[KuruPrionz]

I got about 30 seconds in. 

As they say "As full of shit as the Christmas goose."

[Anderton]

 

13 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Well, I didn't mention scales, but I guess I don't follow, then. The discussion of 440Hz, 432Hz, and the like, are only relevant in the context of multiple players matching pitch with one another as they play. The frequency 432Hz exists whether or not people tune to it, as does every other frequency. What is he claiming, exactly?

 

Okay, I thought the reference to A implied a scale. But as to what's being claimed, he doesn't have any conclusions. He just finds it interesting that the period that relates to 432 (as well as the "period" of pi and pi r squared) shows up in various resonance-based objects and structures.

 

It's kind of like how archaeologists who've investigated the orientation of particular structures find that they relate to the position of the sun, moon, solstice, etc. Like Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, near where I used to live - it was a while before people realized structures were aligned according to planetary positions, which clearly had some kind of significance to the builders. What he's finding is resonances that relate to 432 Hz. Whether that's because it's a significant number, whether it's coincidence, or whether it was arbitrary like 60 Hz being used for power instead of say 61 or 64 Hz, he doesn't know. He's intrigued enough that he'd like to find out.

[MathOfInsects]

Oh. And also oy.

[Anderton]

Just remember, the Romans knew how to make concrete that lasted thousands of years longer than anything we knew how to do, using techniques that had been lost over the centuries. It took investigators from MIT and Harvard until January of this year to figure it out. So, I don't dismiss anything until the results are in, as happened with Chaco Canyon.

 

It's the "ancient alien" and "earth harmonics" people who screw it up for the rest of us. There's a lot we don't know, and there is serious scientific research into the non-fringe/non-weirdo aspects. Curiosity is a beautiful thing

 

 

[MathOfInsects]

Well sure, but you keep mentioning things that actually exist--moon, sun, ancient villages, mega-concrete. 

One made-up measurement being used as a factor in another made-up number does not get a pass because there have been things on earth that it's taken us a while to figure out. Once you go down the path of thinking that just because some things aren't known, nothing can be knowable, it's chaos all the time. 

We made up the units of measurement on both ends of that ridiculous idea. Seconds are not from nature. We made them up. Degrees are not from nature. We made those up, too. He just found a way that two made-up items correspond, but he could choose any spot along the continuum for each end and find equally compelling correspondences.

It's not that he believes in something that was otherwise ruined by the fringe weirdos. It's that he's a fringe weirdo who believes in this nonsense thing. If it brings him joy, more power to him. But safe to say that book he's writing will not be competing for any Nobel prizes...  

[jazzpiano88]

29 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

Seconds are not from nature. We made them up. Degrees are not from nature. We made those up, too.

 

In a way.  "The second is currently defined using cesium atoms, which absorb and emit microwave radiation with a specific frequency. Atomic clocks count 9,192,631,770 of those microwave oscillations, and we call the elapsed time interval a second".  My guitarist friend and classmate from NIST worked on this and physically transported the actual standard to wherever they have it today.   

 

I would say degrees are whatever numerical interval you want to fit within the circle.  360, 6.28.   Hard to ague with sines and cosines.

When you start to understand physical instabilities and their root loci along with the complex analysis and residue theory its pretty amazing what happened theoretically so long ago.

[MathOfInsects]

5 minutes ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

In a way.  "The second is currently defined using cesium atoms, which absorb and emit microwave radiation with a specific frequency. Atomic clocks count 9,192,631,770 of those microwave oscillations, and we call the elapsed time interval a second".  One of my classmates from NIST worked on this and transported the actual physical standard to wherever they have it today.   

 

I would say degrees are whatever numerical interval you want to fit within the circle.  360, 6.28.   Hard to ague with sines and cosines.

When you start to understand physical instabilities and their root loci along with the complex analysis and residue theory its pretty amazing what happened so long ago.

 

This is a joke, right?

The second is a made-up unit. That description is explaining that it can be measured using whatever number of those particular atomic oscillations adds up to the made-up amount of time. In that case, 9 billion-odd and 770 of them. If we'd made up a different value for the second, it would have a different number of those oscillations. 

[jazzpiano88]

21 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

 

This is a joke, right?

The second is a made-up unit. That description is explaining that it can be measured using whatever number of those particular atomic oscillations adds up to the made-up amount of time. In that case, 9 billion-odd and 770 of them. If we'd made up a different value for the second, it would have a different number of those oscillations. 

 

The second was originally derived to approximate the duration of a day and year (a natural interval i.e. "not made up" with some later understood variations).

Over time, in order to standardize this interval and to make it "universally" understood and reproduced they arrived at what I called the cesium definition.

 

Hard to believe you don't know this.

[MathOfInsects]

OK. And also oy.

[Anderton]

 

15 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

Well sure, but you keep mentioning things that actually exist--moon, sun, ancient villages, mega-concrete. 

 

Waveforms actually exist. A waveform is a physical, defined entity with crests, troughs, and a period. It's irrelevant how many of them occur in a second, hour, or nanoblurflex. A waveform can be a constant, regardless of how you decide to quantify it. When a waveform interacts with an object to create resonance, that's a physical phenomenon. This phenomenon is just as real as the sun and moon, or we wouldn't tune concert halls (and John Storyk would be out of a job).

 

I think you're getting hung up on relating waveforms, which aren't made up, to things that are made up to quantify the waveform, like pitch and time nomenclature. If a specific waveform resonates with seemingly unrelated spaces and objects, that's of interest.

 

15 hours ago, MathOfInsects said:

It's that he's a fringe weirdo who believes in this nonsense thing. If it brings him joy, more power to him. But safe to say that book he's writing will not be competing for any Nobel prizes...

 

There's a reason why I Italicized "may" in the first post regarding my encounter at NAMM. I guess you missed that. He doesn't "believe" in anything. He doesn't even have a hypothesis he wants to prove, for now he just wants to find out if there's anything to the belief that certain frequencies have an effect on the body.

 

Data points influence conclusions. It reminds of the time I was asked to be on a panel and be the "voice of reality" to show that the 96 kHz hoopla was not justified in the real world. I ran multiple experiments to collect data that would prove my hypothesis that no one could reliably tell the difference between audio recorded at 44.1 or 96 kHz. I However, in the process of trying to prove the hypothesis, I found there were certain, specific circumstances under which even those with tin ears could tell the difference between material recorded at 44.1 and 96 kHz. So, I ended up being a different voice of reality on the panel, and had incontrovertible physical audio examples that proved my hypothesis was wrong.

 

You go where the data leads you. For whatever reason, you already believe the data proves he's a fringe weirdo. I'm willing to wait and see whether the data he is currently collecting leads to reproducible conclusions. 

[MathOfInsects]

2 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

 

Waveforms actually exist. A waveform is a physical, defined entity with crests, troughs, and a period. It's irrelevant how many of them occur in a second, hour, or nanoblurflex. A waveform can be a constant, regardless of how you decide to quantify it. When a waveform interacts with an object to create resonance, that's a physical phenomenon. This phenomenon is just as real as the sun and moon, or we wouldn't tune concert halls (and John Storyk would be out of a job).

 

I think you're getting hung up on relating waveforms, which aren't made up, to things that are made up to quantify the waveform, like pitch and time nomenclature. If a specific waveform resonates with seemingly unrelated spaces and objects, that's of interest.

 

 

There's a reason why I Italicized "may" in the first post regarding my encounter at NAMM. I guess you missed that. He doesn't "believe" in anything. He doesn't even have a hypothesis he wants to prove, for now he just wants to find out if there's anything to the belief that certain frequencies have an effect on the body.

 

Data points influence conclusions. It reminds of the time I was asked to be on a panel and be the "voice of reality" to show that the 96 kHz hoopla was not justified in the real world. I ran multiple experiments to collect data that would prove my hypothesis that no one could reliably tell the difference between audio recorded at 44.1 or 96 kHz. I However, in the process of trying to prove the hypothesis, I found there were certain, specific circumstances under which even those with tin ears could tell the difference between material recorded at 44.1 and 96 kHz. So, I ended up being a different voice of reality on the panel, and had incontrovertible physical audio examples to prove it.

 

You go where the data leads you. For whatever reason, you already believe the data proves he's a fringe weirdo. I'm willing to wait and see whether the data he is currently collecting leads to reproducible conclusions. 

I agree with everything you've said here, and wanting to be intrigued or converted is the reason I asked you about it. The problem is, the explanation was numeric, not physical. Of course waves exist. But the numeric relationship between degrees in a circle and cycles per second is a complete lark. Those are not reflections of the physical world. They are just names we gave something. Even the idea of a circle as the meaningful one of the infinite arrangements of those angles, is made up. If anything, nature suggests the "non-circle" would be the important shape. 

I'm being terse here but do not think you're uninformed about any of this. I have just become fatigued by this type of argument in general, and wanted substance as a solace. Instead it seems like he's using his stature as a "composer" to play word-games with number-names, and it's silly to me. 

[Anderton]

8 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

But the numeric relationship between degrees in a circle and cycles per second is a complete lark. Those are not reflections of the physical world. They are just names we gave something.

 

 

But that's exactly what I said - "I think you're getting hung up on relating waveforms, which aren't made up, to things that are made up to quantify the waveform, like pitch and time nomenclature. If a specific waveform resonates with seemingly unrelated spaces and objects, that's of interest." For better or worse (most likely the latter), 432 Hz is the shorthand label that's been an umbrella for this type of thing, not the specific area of "interactive resonances of specific waveforms with the human body, in a manner similar to breaking up kidney stones, but more subtly and over a longer period of time." 

 

He's not using his "stature as a composer" to do anything. He only mentioned what he's doing to me because he knows I'm fascinated by all aspects of sonic phenomena. However, he is using the money he's made from being a composer to fund his research. Believe me, you would recognize the movies on which he's worked. A lot of them have involved travel to places where there are legends and beliefs that he found intriguing. That's what piqued his curiosity, and made him want to find out if there was anything to them. He doesn't know, but he's found enough coincidences that he's become a lot more curious as to whether they really are coincidences.

[MathOfInsects]

4 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

 

But that's exactly what I said - "I think you're getting hung up on relating waveforms, which aren't made up, to things that are made up to quantify the waveform, like pitch and time nomenclature. If a specific waveform resonates with seemingly unrelated spaces and objects, that's of interest." For better or worse (most likely the latter), 432 Hz is the shorthand label that's been an umbrella for this type of thing, not the specific area of "interactive resonances of specific waveforms with the human body, in a manner similar to breaking up kidney stones, but more subtly and over a longer period of time." 

 

He's not using his "stature as a composer" to do anything. He only mentioned what he's doing to me because he knows I'm fascinated by all aspects of sonic phenomena. However, he is using the money he's made from being a composer to fund his research. Believe me, you would recognize the movies on which he's worked. A lot of them have involved travel to places where there are legends and beliefs that he found intriguing. That's what piqued his curiosity, and made him want to find out if there was anything to them. He doesn't know, but he's found enough coincidences that he's become a lot more curious as to whether they really are coincidences.

But I'm not "hung up" on it. I was just responding to the explanation that tied pi and the like to the number 432. If there's another explanation that doesn't rely on connecting those two things, I'm open to hearing them!

No one on the planet would deny that there are resonant frequencies. If that's his big discovery...OK. But we're back to oy again.  

[Anderton]

13 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

No one on the planet would deny that there are resonant frequencies. If that's his big discovery...OK. But we're back to oy again.  

 

One last time...he hasn't "discovered" anything other than coincidences that interest him enough to warrant further investigation. I really don't think that's something worthy of ridicule, but YMMV.