432 Hz

[ramicio]

Has anyone here ever messed around with slowing their music down or adjusting the pitch from the new standard 440 Hz to the old standard 432 Hz?  I've found it makes the music more enjoyable.  It's nothing that could ever be proven with a placebo because you can instantly tell the difference in pitch, but I buy it.

[4krow]

I have not heard of that, and my father tuned pianos to A 440. He probably had heard of it as far as pitch.
 I did encounter a strange musical experience once that reminds me of your suggestion. I bought a cassette tape for cheap. It was stretched a lot, but I didn't realize it because it was electronic music. Years later I bought on LP and was very surprised to hear it at normal speed. I actually preferred the tape!

[fullheadofnothing]

It's an interesting question, but I don't think it's doing what you think it's doing. The main reason being that since the adoption of twelve tone equal temperament, there is a fudge factor applied to each note to make it playable in all keys, so the interval between tones is not the simple integer relationship in just intonation. Also, not everyone tunes to 440, sometimes as a matter of policy, sometimes the oboist will just be having a bad day; in order to "retune" the music, you would need to find and measure an a known tone and calibrate accordingly. Basically, I think you would be playing havoc with melodic, harmonic, overtones, and other issues unless you were listening to music comprised solely of just intoned sine waves (let me know if you are, 'cause that sounds like my kind of party). Additionally, whatever system you are using to make this adjustment, digital or analog, will be adding its own sonic signature to the process. This is not to say that the distortions you are creating are unpleasant, Chopped and Screwed comes to mind, but the idea that it's correcting history seems false.

In regard to the piano question, I know that if you look into my dad's piano (a gorgeous old Chickering quarter-grand he has had for years and is finally having rebuilt so it will stay in tune), there is a note about tuning frequency, which is not 440, but I cannot recall what it is.

Note that all of this is based on my hazy-at-best knowledge of music theory and my bordering-on-dangerously-inept knowledge of mathematics.

[RayP]

More on pitches used by different orchestras at the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch

ray

[Doc B.]

For what it's worth, in the demo we recorded of Mino Christante playing the Tode he is tuned to A=432Hz.

[Grainger49]

Tim,

I am not sure I am following your experiment.  It seems if you run a TT 2% slow you will get more bass, each note will be lower and your RIAA EQ will be off.

I'm missing something, aren't I?

[4krow]

My head hurts, but I love this! I am not alone in the audio world, i.e. "why does that sound different than this?" It applies to so many things in my life, people think that I am odd. Most people can't tell the difference, I say they have just 'tuned out' the difference( a pun of sorts, to be sure but it had to be punned)

[Grainger49]

I believe this would bother those with perfect pitch.  I have a sister in law who has perfect pitch.  She is bothered with badly tuned pianos, she is also a singer.

I don't use a turntable, and 2% is very far off.  1.82% is as close as you will get with a digital plugin. 

1.82% is 0.18% from 2%.  2% slow is 8.8 Hz lower than A 440, I.E. A 431.2.  I was rounding but well within the range selected for A tuning.

Obviously the effect is the best at music originally recorded with instruments tuned at a 432 A, such as the example Doc provided. 

My point is that if an instrument is recorded at A 432 it needs not be slowed or pitch modified to attain the pitch.  It is recorded.

[Grainger49]

So what you are saying is that you digitally change the pitch by 1.822%.  And you find that pitch better sounding, right?

[fullheadofnothing]

My previous points were based around the fact that Even Tempered tuning is NOT Pythagorean tuning; some tones are sharper and some are flatter than they should be in order to make a twelve tone scale that plays in all keys. I could be off in my understanding of the music theory here, or more likely my ideas about math are wrong, but it seems that the shifted intervals would not scale properly. The idea of some kind of holistic tuning system based on natural laws of physics is very much a real thing, but it is quite different from what the western ear has become acclimated to over the past several centuries. Seek out microtonal music (Harry Partch springs readily to mind) and Arabic, African, and Eastern music that does not have western influences for an idea of what untempered scales sound like.

Now that you have defined how you intend to shift pitches (I assumed it would have to do with stretching time, but held out in case you had something fancier in mind), temporal distortions will become evident. Obviously, the tempo will be slowed, but also attacks and decays will be increased. The brain uses these subtle cues to distinguish different instruments and voices; there are demonstration recordings that sample various instruments playing the same tone with the attacks and decays removed

[Doc B.]

These days you can pitch shift without changing the tempo, ala Autotune. Using an A=432 scale instead of A=440 is similar to changing the key of the song, it's just a smaller shift. And certainly we have all experienced that changing the key of a song can have a big impact on how it affects us emotionally.

[Natural Sound]

For what it's worth, in the demo we recorded of Mino Christante playing the Tode he is tuned to A=432Hz.

Wow! The first part of that performance was absolutely beautiful. The rest wasn't too shabby either. 

It never ceases to amaze me how many extremely talented musicians there are out there that I have never heard of. In a way it makes me a bit anxious. Our time on this planet is limited. I want to experience as much beauty that life has to offer. God knows that there are enough negative distractions out there that can bring us down. I try with all my heart to focus on the good things in life. I find that that the simple things in life are by far the best. A man, a guitar and a simple elegant amplifier like the tode fit the bill perfectly. Thanks for sharing, Doc.

[Paul Joppa]

For what it's worth, the wikipedia article quotes "standards" of 415, 430, 435, 440, 442, 443, and 466Hz. I understand that many well-known soloists have their own preference, usually in the 444-446 range, which is specified in their contract. Sometimes the actual number is a secret you're supposed to attribute the subtle difference to the soloist, not to manipulation of the timbre.

The higher pitches are said to make a more penetrating tone from a stringed instrument, partly because the string tension is higher and there's more energy in the string motion. As gut strings gave way to steel-core strings, and cast-iron piano frames replaced wooden ones, the ability to hold a higher tension increased. So did the size of the concert hall - more tickets, more money. So of course the orchestra got bigger too. Now we have popular music concerts in sports stadiums with 100,000 seats. Is this progress?

Many dance-school studios have music systems that can change the tempo without changing the pitch; it's the reverse of what we are talking of here.

[4krow]

Again gentlemen, I thank you for the expansion of my understanding of a facet on this subject. It only enforces what I 'felt' but did not consciously knew.