9 ms·

Music Tuned to 440 Hz versus 432 Hz and the Health Effects

66 points by gscott 5y ago

holistio 5y ago
33 people, whether in an Italian city or on Mars is awfully not enough to conclude anything.
- rrobukef 5y ago
  Sure you can: 'We found this glow-in-the-dark sludge near a meteorite site. We injected this sludge in 33 healthy male human adults (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and played loud music. A week later (with mean 168.5 hours and std. dev. 1 hour) they all died. Our hypothesis is that the loud music burst their eardrums and they bled out. We confirm this with a statistically significant test, p=1. We conclude all test-subjects are dead.'
- tgv 5y ago
  33 people and that goddamn awful significance testing? And not even randomized? Pure citation bait. Edit: to highlight the problems of non-randomizing: it's not just the frequency that changed between experimental conditions. The conclusion could just as well have been "heart rate drops on second hearing" or "everyone's heart rate drops 4.8bpm in one day". I think that especially that last conclusion will make you think it can't be true, but as a hypothesis, it has the same status as the 440/432 manipulation.
- jrootabega 5y ago
  33 people on Mars would be a major accomplishment
caymanjim 5y ago
Or maybe when they heard the same music for a second day in a row, it was familiar, the anticipation or excitement of wondering what comes next was reduced, the interest level was lower, and that led to the effect. This study doesn't seem very scientific.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  They had two groups, one who heard 432 Hz and the other who heard 440 Hz first.
im3w1l 5y ago
While this is just an initial exploration and the authors admit as much. I can't resist pointing out the multitude of problems. First the most nitpicky but easiest to solve: They tried lowering the music by tiny amount. Will lowering it more be even stronger? In particular will lowering it by a semitone work even better? Then it would suggest it's about the pitch rather than the tuning. Second, they did first 440 and then 436. There will be a familiarisation effect. 2nd time in the same situation with the same music could likely less stressful. But yeah they mention they want to do randomization next. Third, music is a deeply cultural thing. It may be that it's not objectively soothing, but rather subjectively soothing for people that grew up in certain culture and learned certain subconscious assocations. Some people like music that other people hate. This could quite plausible apply to even the tuning. I basically rewrote the whole thing in an edit so yeah.
- viraptor 5y ago
  > they did first 440 and then 436 While possible, it's not what the link says: > 440 Hz on one day and 432 Hz on the other Those days could be in any order.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  > First the most nitpicky but easiest to solve: They tried lowering the music by tiny amount. Will lowering it more be even stronger? In particular will lowering it by a semitone work even better? Then it would suggest it's about the pitch rather than the tuning. Also, the way they lowered the pitch was to slow the music. So the change in tempo could also have an effect. > Second, they did first 440 and then 436. There will be a familiarisation effect. 2nd time in the same situation with the same music could likely less stressful. But yeah they mention they want to do randomization next. They had two groups, one which did 432 Hz first and one which did 440 Hz first.
controlweather 5y ago
ofou 5y ago
Finally the war is over. 432Hz is better, plus it has a cool name based in powers of two [1][2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch [2]: https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/fid_911_jbt_tune.html https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/fid_911_jbt_...
- kevinwang 5y ago
  There's no way this is true though. I'd be willing to wager 10-to-1 that this isn't reproducible in a larger study. Also, this isn't much of a "finally" since it appears to be from 2019.
- kevinwang 5y ago
  The second reference is satire, right? It's clearly insane.
  - kragen 5y ago
    The LaRouche folks are deluded, not satirists. Probably even more deluded than the mainstream society they rail against, but definitely differently deluded.
  - PotatoPancakes 5y ago
    According to the internet's resident music theory explainer Adam Neely, they're peddling this crap. https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk
  - OscarCunningham 5y ago
    The paper itself is hardly sane: > Because of this harmonic misalignment, listening to 440 Hz music would seem to make people anxious, nervous, or aggressive, because it is not in harmony with the natural frequency of the planet earth. > These same effects would have repercussions on human health since our DNA is sensitive to frequencies, as stated by the Professor Carlo Ventura’s team. > Human DNA is sensitive to music and its relative frequencies to the point that it can even be reprogrammed through them. In fact, by subjecting stem cells to various frequencies it has been possible to modify their natural organic function.
emptybottle 5y ago
I’ve experimented with this on guitar and it does sound good. Maybe because its familiar but different at the same time. Or maybe because so many things sound better when pitched down.
- javchz 5y ago
  > Maybe because its familiar but different at the same time. I would bet on this. That's why a lot of people like the concerts versions, instead of just listening to the studio version. It's the same... but feels new again, thanks to those small variations and imperfections from a live performance. Still, I find it interesting they did the research for this, I love myth-busting, to know if urban legends are true or false with the foundations of data. I wonder if for people with Absolute pitch this tuning could mess with them.
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    With strings the same instrument will play, respond, and end up producing a significantly different response profile in respect to both the playability and the harmonic tonal profile [0], depending on the tension of a particular diameter & composition of string and its resulting frequency. You also have the variable of whether the string instruments simply are retuned before testing alternate standards, or if the full reselection of string gages optimized for the instrument dimensions & current pitch have been accomplished for each particular tuning standard before testing. Keep in mind that this is quite a task on a full 88-key piano where more than one identical string is hammered per note so there are over 200 strings to replace after 88 optimizations for any given tuning pitch standard. And you will need to have all posible string gages indivdually stocked in abundance, not merely commercially available standard replacement string sets. To a point, the higher the string tension can produce higher decibel output from equivalent instrument operation techniques, and this is what musicians really notice most even on piano when their fingers and/or bows are not in direct contact with the strings. And imagine if you will, the look on the face of a Stradivarius owner when the first set of proper steel strings arrive and are set up correctly. Then again you wouldn't want to tighten the stings too much and break the irreplaceable fiddle. Seems to me the pitch inflation over the centuries follows the technology of manufacturing higher-tension strings gradually more reliably over time, this was a slow multi-generational process but it seems shockingly fast when the advances are applied to established instruments which are considered far more static and fully standardized already. Eventually if you push the limits to the max you are going to exceed the sweet spot, maybe not for every instrument but the whole orchestra may not benefit, and if you have a good idea of how sweet it was you would know what to go back to. And this is disregarding vocalists (or soloists sometimes with a Stradivarius) who are often divas that must be catered to at the expense of everyting else. Remember perfect pitch today would be badly imperfect in any non-440 environment. And you can only imagine how someone "born with perfect pitch" in a pre-440 world felt after the standard got away from them. [0] https://www.sharmusic.com/pages/tonal-profiles/ https://www.sharmusic.com/pages/tonal-profiles/
robotresearcher 5y ago
> 432 Hz tuned music was associated with a slight decrease of mean (systolic and diastolic) blood pressure values (although not significant), "Not significant" means that "a slight decrease" is not supported by the data in the conventionally accepted way. By convention, authors should not make claims either way if the effect is not statistically significant, even if they believe the effect is real. So the sentence above is declaring that the authors aren't following the norms of scientific claims.
- MichaelBurge 5y ago
  > The study results suggest repeating the experiment with a larger sample pool and introducing randomized controlled trials covering more clinical parameters. You're writing like you disagree, but in the sentence after that the actual "claim" says to do exactly what you suggest(get more data).
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    "Was associated with a slight decrease of mean" is a claim. The p=0.05 convention requires that you report that the mean was not found to be different from the comparison distribution.
    - robotresearcher 5y ago
      (Self reply) I’ve sort of changed my mind about this, from the discussion here. It’s not wrong. But I still would not write it this way myself.
- jansenderr 5y ago
  really? I think you are being extremely unfavorable to the authors here. They are simply stating the results on blood pressure went down but in a non-significant way. There is nothing wrong with that and also they are not making claims either way they are just reporting the results of the study and literally describing what happened. Please enlighten with what claims they are allegedly making? that the blood pressure decreased in a non-significant way?
viraptor 5y ago
If anyone's interested in more about this topic, Adam Neely did interesting videos about this: https://youtu.be/ghUs-84NAAU https://youtu.be/ghUs-84NAAU and https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk (beware, starts with satire) Edit: I watched the second one again, and it actually gives some reason why 432Hz may be preferred in some way in this test.
- jafitc 5y ago
  In the second video he gives a very interesting reason: Given 440 is what we’re all used to on an everyday basis, the effects of the OP experiment might be explained by the “novelty” of how 432 sounds to us.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    The other reason given was "lower = warmer" perception. It needs a confirmation on its own, but still something to keep in mind.
kevinpet 5y ago
I appreciate a study like this that's very straightforward with the limitations. 1. Some people say X. 2. We tested X. 3. Actually, it looks like X might be true. 4. So it would be worth doing a more powerful study.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  This is not. They are testing a shitton of variables so it's highly likely that by pure chance something "statistically significant" would appear. But not even that happened (there was NO significant change at all), so the recommendation of a "more powerful study" is absolutely baseless. If anything, the conclusion should be "we wasted our time so you don't have to waste yours in the future". Nothing to be ashamed of. Otherwise this is how you start another bunch of "science reproducibility crisis!".
thissuchness 5y ago
Adam Neely has a great video on 432 Hz music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTZ151yLnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTZ151yLnk
- elFarto 5y ago
  Two videos infact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUs-84NAAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUs-84NAAU
Taywee 5y ago
Some of the wording in the article is weird, and the "Context" gives very little of the relevant context. > The current reference frequency for tuning musical instruments is 440 Hz More accurately, the current most popular frequency for note A4 (the A above middle C) is 440 Hz. The article brings up the 432 Hz tuning but completely fails to mention that it isn't just an arbitrarily-selected frequency, but a frequency proposed by Verdi. He also proposed Scientific Pitch, which is tuning middle C to 256 Hz, making all C notes integer frequencies, and taking A4 to about 430.54 Hz. I'm a fan of scientific pitch, and I tend to just use it as a default when I'm doing any audio programming because it makes it very easy to calculate all the pitches using C-4 as a base with frequency of 1 Hz.
- quartesixte 5y ago
  Fascinating. Does this resolve the thirds of triads being slightly out of tune? Or any of the weird wonkeyness that equal-temperament tuning has spawned?
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    No, this is just about what pitch to start reckoning from. The relative tuning of everything else is the same.
  - Taywee 5y ago
    Nope; scientific pitch is entirely an equal-temperament tuning. The only thing it does is makes it a bit easier to remember and calculate specific pitches.
  - xhevahir 5y ago
    No. The Hermode tuning algorithm supposedly can, but that's a much more complicated thing.
- numpad0 5y ago
  Isn’t it 442 or even 445 for A4 today?
  - 5y ago
oceanghost 5y ago
So, fun history, the 440hz standard was only settled in the 1900s. A competing standard was 435hz for middle C if memory serves. I have a soprano sax which was tuned for the pitch system that didn't win out. It was called "low tone" if memory serves. It's a fun antique which you can play out of tune to your hearts desire.
- pdonis 5y ago
  > the 440hz standard was only settled in the 1900s. A competing standard was 435hz for middle C if memory serves. Those frequencies are for the A above middle C.
  - oceanghost 5y ago
    Thank you kindly. I have not played in over... 20 years. My memory might be a bit rusty.
- rawling 5y ago
  I had a bit of a Google for this and found this thread: https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/what-is-meant-by-low-pitch.112091/ https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/what-is-meant-by-low-pit... They seem to think "low pitch" is 440Hz and "high pitch" is the one that lost out, 457Hz (sounds like a semitone higher to me).
quartesixte 5y ago
Very off topic from the original article, but the entire history of why we even used 440hz at all as opposed to 432, 455 (Beethoven), 415 (Baroque era), and everything else everywhere else is so fascinating to me because at a certain point you are entire semitones above or below what we grow up listening to as “in tune.” I’ve seen some interesting stuff (mostly Jacob Collier) where the tuning standard is actively manipulated during a song. Definitely convinces me we have not yet even begun to touch the boundaries of what’s possible in music.
- viraptor 5y ago
  > Definitely convinces me we have not yet even begun to touch the boundaries of what’s possible in music. Yeah, but we're drifting in the opposite direction. Grid, 4/4, 440Hz and 12ET are the game if you publish anything these days in the western world and it's probably harder to do something different than it would be centuries ago. I can't wait to hear something popular in 13ET, but probably won't happen in my lifespan.
  - aoeusnth1 5y ago
    You might be interested in Sevish. Their music is entirely written in nonstandard tunings (22EDO, various rational tunings, 5EDO, etc).
    - juliangoldsmith 5y ago
      In this vein, there's a pretty good playlist on Spotify called "Microtonal Bangers". It includes, among other things, psychedelic rock (KGLW), a blend of traditional Mauritanian music with pop music (Noura Mint Seymali), prog rock (Brendan Byrnes), jazz influenced by traditional Egyptian music (Ibrahim Maalouf), and electronic music (Sevish and Sungazer).
Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago
You could tune prog rock to whatever frequency you like and it would still sound bad.
OscarCunningham 5y ago
So depressing that studies like this are the state of academia. Do we need to cut down the number of studies so that each one can be higher quality?
- t-3 5y ago
  It's more about the number of students than the quality of the science. More science being done = more bad science. There's reason to be skeptical of overall quality, but I would hesitate to rush to any judgements based solely on what makes it into your news feed.
kermi 5y ago
Kyle Gann addresses this topic on his web site https://www.kylegann.com/A432.html https://www.kylegann.com/A432.html
8bitsrule 5y ago
In other scientific news, you can tell a person's personality by what colors they prefer to wear.
- armchairhacker 5y ago
  you joke, but if someone’s wearing very dark or very vibrant clothes, you can speculate they have a certain personality trait
svilen_dobrev 5y ago
so if my old tape player turns slower than 4.76cm/s, it's better for my heart.. well i may take it out of under the sofa then, and start using again..
blunte 5y ago
From the main page it seems they listened to the 440 tuning on the first day, and then the same music tuned to 432 the next day. I very strongly suspect that people’s reactions to music can vary based on many factors, but the least of which involves familiarity vs newness. Did they have control groups that listened to the same frequency tuned music on both days? My expectation is that regardless of the tuning, people would be more relaxed listening to the same music on the second day.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  They had two groups, one who listened to 432 Hz first and one who listened to 440 Hz first.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago
Historic tuning references can be found in antique tuning forks (corrosion effects?) and organ pipes. A440 is a modern beast. A415 is used by many Baroque players. A392 may have been in use by the clavecinistes in the 18th century. Then there's a multitude of ways to split the octave. As far as ET is concerned, a change in key is simply shifting the register by a number of semitones. In non ET tunings, the interval configurations change with the keys. With some mean tone tunings, you retune some strings to accommodate different keys.
watersb 5y ago
This sort of study might be facilitated by something like Apple Watch opt-in health research. You would need thousands of participants to get anything significant. I would suppose that there isn't a significant effect of A=432Hz.
lillesvin 5y ago
Lots of people here mentioning that concert pitch wasn't always A = 440 Hz. Here's an interesting 12tone video explaining how we ended up at exactly that: https://youtu.be/BzznBt8tVnI https://youtu.be/BzznBt8tVnI (Spoiler: It involves nothing less than the Treaty of Versailles.)

66 points by gscott 5y ago

holistio 5y ago

33 people, whether in an Italian city or on Mars is awfully not enough to conclude anything.

rrobukef 5y ago
Sure you can: 'We found this glow-in-the-dark sludge near a meteorite site. We injected this sludge in 33 healthy male human adults (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) and played loud music. A week later (with mean 168.5 hours and std. dev. 1 hour) they all died. Our hypothesis is that the loud music burst their eardrums and they bled out. We confirm this with a statistically significant test, p=1. We conclude all test-subjects are dead.'
tgv 5y ago
33 people and that goddamn awful significance testing? And not even randomized? Pure citation bait. Edit: to highlight the problems of non-randomizing: it's not just the frequency that changed between experimental conditions. The conclusion could just as well have been "heart rate drops on second hearing" or "everyone's heart rate drops 4.8bpm in one day". I think that especially that last conclusion will make you think it can't be true, but as a hypothesis, it has the same status as the 440/432 manipulation.
jrootabega 5y ago
33 people on Mars would be a major accomplishment

caymanjim 5y ago

Or maybe when they heard the same music for a second day in a row, it was familiar, the anticipation or excitement of wondering what comes next was reduced, the interest level was lower, and that led to the effect. This study doesn't seem very scientific.

OscarCunningham 5y ago
They had two groups, one who heard 432 Hz and the other who heard 440 Hz first.

im3w1l 5y ago

While this is just an initial exploration and the authors admit as much. I can't resist pointing out the multitude of problems. First the most nitpicky but easiest to solve: They tried lowering the music by tiny amount. Will lowering it more be even stronger? In particular will lowering it by a semitone work even better? Then it would suggest it's about the pitch rather than the tuning. Second, they did first 440 and then 436. There will be a familiarisation effect. 2nd time in the same situation with the same music could likely less stressful. But yeah they mention they want to do randomization next. Third, music is a deeply cultural thing. It may be that it's not objectively soothing, but rather subjectively soothing for people that grew up in certain culture and learned certain subconscious assocations. Some people like music that other people hate. This could quite plausible apply to even the tuning. I basically rewrote the whole thing in an edit so yeah.

viraptor 5y ago
> they did first 440 and then 436 While possible, it's not what the link says: > 440 Hz on one day and 432 Hz on the other Those days could be in any order.
OscarCunningham 5y ago
> First the most nitpicky but easiest to solve: They tried lowering the music by tiny amount. Will lowering it more be even stronger? In particular will lowering it by a semitone work even better? Then it would suggest it's about the pitch rather than the tuning. Also, the way they lowered the pitch was to slow the music. So the change in tempo could also have an effect. > Second, they did first 440 and then 436. There will be a familiarisation effect. 2nd time in the same situation with the same music could likely less stressful. But yeah they mention they want to do randomization next. They had two groups, one which did 432 Hz first and one which did 440 Hz first.

controlweather 5y ago

ofou 5y ago

Finally the war is over. 432Hz is better, plus it has a cool name based in powers of two [1][2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch [2]: https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/fid_911_jbt_tune.html https://archive.schillerinstitute.com/fid_91-96/fid_911_jbt_...

kevinwang 5y ago
There's no way this is true though. I'd be willing to wager 10-to-1 that this isn't reproducible in a larger study. Also, this isn't much of a "finally" since it appears to be from 2019.
kevinwang 5y ago
The second reference is satire, right? It's clearly insane.
- kragen 5y ago
  The LaRouche folks are deluded, not satirists. Probably even more deluded than the mainstream society they rail against, but definitely differently deluded.
- PotatoPancakes 5y ago
  According to the internet's resident music theory explainer Adam Neely, they're peddling this crap. https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk
- OscarCunningham 5y ago
  The paper itself is hardly sane: > Because of this harmonic misalignment, listening to 440 Hz music would seem to make people anxious, nervous, or aggressive, because it is not in harmony with the natural frequency of the planet earth. > These same effects would have repercussions on human health since our DNA is sensitive to frequencies, as stated by the Professor Carlo Ventura’s team. > Human DNA is sensitive to music and its relative frequencies to the point that it can even be reprogrammed through them. In fact, by subjecting stem cells to various frequencies it has been possible to modify their natural organic function.

emptybottle 5y ago

I’ve experimented with this on guitar and it does sound good. Maybe because its familiar but different at the same time. Or maybe because so many things sound better when pitched down.

javchz 5y ago
> Maybe because its familiar but different at the same time. I would bet on this. That's why a lot of people like the concerts versions, instead of just listening to the studio version. It's the same... but feels new again, thanks to those small variations and imperfections from a live performance. Still, I find it interesting they did the research for this, I love myth-busting, to know if urban legends are true or false with the foundations of data. I wonder if for people with Absolute pitch this tuning could mess with them.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  With strings the same instrument will play, respond, and end up producing a significantly different response profile in respect to both the playability and the harmonic tonal profile [0], depending on the tension of a particular diameter & composition of string and its resulting frequency. You also have the variable of whether the string instruments simply are retuned before testing alternate standards, or if the full reselection of string gages optimized for the instrument dimensions & current pitch have been accomplished for each particular tuning standard before testing. Keep in mind that this is quite a task on a full 88-key piano where more than one identical string is hammered per note so there are over 200 strings to replace after 88 optimizations for any given tuning pitch standard. And you will need to have all posible string gages indivdually stocked in abundance, not merely commercially available standard replacement string sets. To a point, the higher the string tension can produce higher decibel output from equivalent instrument operation techniques, and this is what musicians really notice most even on piano when their fingers and/or bows are not in direct contact with the strings. And imagine if you will, the look on the face of a Stradivarius owner when the first set of proper steel strings arrive and are set up correctly. Then again you wouldn't want to tighten the stings too much and break the irreplaceable fiddle. Seems to me the pitch inflation over the centuries follows the technology of manufacturing higher-tension strings gradually more reliably over time, this was a slow multi-generational process but it seems shockingly fast when the advances are applied to established instruments which are considered far more static and fully standardized already. Eventually if you push the limits to the max you are going to exceed the sweet spot, maybe not for every instrument but the whole orchestra may not benefit, and if you have a good idea of how sweet it was you would know what to go back to. And this is disregarding vocalists (or soloists sometimes with a Stradivarius) who are often divas that must be catered to at the expense of everyting else. Remember perfect pitch today would be badly imperfect in any non-440 environment. And you can only imagine how someone "born with perfect pitch" in a pre-440 world felt after the standard got away from them. [0] https://www.sharmusic.com/pages/tonal-profiles/ https://www.sharmusic.com/pages/tonal-profiles/

robotresearcher 5y ago

> 432 Hz tuned music was associated with a slight decrease of mean (systolic and diastolic) blood pressure values (although not significant), "Not significant" means that "a slight decrease" is not supported by the data in the conventionally accepted way. By convention, authors should not make claims either way if the effect is not statistically significant, even if they believe the effect is real. So the sentence above is declaring that the authors aren't following the norms of scientific claims.

MichaelBurge 5y ago
> The study results suggest repeating the experiment with a larger sample pool and introducing randomized controlled trials covering more clinical parameters. You're writing like you disagree, but in the sentence after that the actual "claim" says to do exactly what you suggest(get more data).
- robotresearcher 5y ago
  "Was associated with a slight decrease of mean" is a claim. The p=0.05 convention requires that you report that the mean was not found to be different from the comparison distribution.
  - robotresearcher 5y ago
    (Self reply) I’ve sort of changed my mind about this, from the discussion here. It’s not wrong. But I still would not write it this way myself.
jansenderr 5y ago
really? I think you are being extremely unfavorable to the authors here. They are simply stating the results on blood pressure went down but in a non-significant way. There is nothing wrong with that and also they are not making claims either way they are just reporting the results of the study and literally describing what happened. Please enlighten with what claims they are allegedly making? that the blood pressure decreased in a non-significant way?

viraptor 5y ago

If anyone's interested in more about this topic, Adam Neely did interesting videos about this: https://youtu.be/ghUs-84NAAU https://youtu.be/ghUs-84NAAU and https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk https://youtu.be/EKTZ151yLnk (beware, starts with satire) Edit: I watched the second one again, and it actually gives some reason why 432Hz may be preferred in some way in this test.

jafitc 5y ago
In the second video he gives a very interesting reason: Given 440 is what we’re all used to on an everyday basis, the effects of the OP experiment might be explained by the “novelty” of how 432 sounds to us.
- viraptor 5y ago
  The other reason given was "lower = warmer" perception. It needs a confirmation on its own, but still something to keep in mind.

kevinpet 5y ago

I appreciate a study like this that's very straightforward with the limitations. 1. Some people say X. 2. We tested X. 3. Actually, it looks like X might be true. 4. So it would be worth doing a more powerful study.

AshamedCaptain 5y ago
This is not. They are testing a shitton of variables so it's highly likely that by pure chance something "statistically significant" would appear. But not even that happened (there was NO significant change at all), so the recommendation of a "more powerful study" is absolutely baseless. If anything, the conclusion should be "we wasted our time so you don't have to waste yours in the future". Nothing to be ashamed of. Otherwise this is how you start another bunch of "science reproducibility crisis!".

thissuchness 5y ago

Adam Neely has a great video on 432 Hz music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTZ151yLnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKTZ151yLnk

elFarto 5y ago
Two videos infact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUs-84NAAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghUs-84NAAU

Taywee 5y ago

Some of the wording in the article is weird, and the "Context" gives very little of the relevant context. > The current reference frequency for tuning musical instruments is 440 Hz More accurately, the current most popular frequency for note A4 (the A above middle C) is 440 Hz. The article brings up the 432 Hz tuning but completely fails to mention that it isn't just an arbitrarily-selected frequency, but a frequency proposed by Verdi. He also proposed Scientific Pitch, which is tuning middle C to 256 Hz, making all C notes integer frequencies, and taking A4 to about 430.54 Hz. I'm a fan of scientific pitch, and I tend to just use it as a default when I'm doing any audio programming because it makes it very easy to calculate all the pitches using C-4 as a base with frequency of 1 Hz.

quartesixte 5y ago
Fascinating. Does this resolve the thirds of triads being slightly out of tune? Or any of the weird wonkeyness that equal-temperament tuning has spawned?
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  No, this is just about what pitch to start reckoning from. The relative tuning of everything else is the same.
- Taywee 5y ago
  Nope; scientific pitch is entirely an equal-temperament tuning. The only thing it does is makes it a bit easier to remember and calculate specific pitches.
- xhevahir 5y ago
  No. The Hermode tuning algorithm supposedly can, but that's a much more complicated thing.
numpad0 5y ago
Isn’t it 442 or even 445 for A4 today?
- 5y ago

oceanghost 5y ago

So, fun history, the 440hz standard was only settled in the 1900s. A competing standard was 435hz for middle C if memory serves. I have a soprano sax which was tuned for the pitch system that didn't win out. It was called "low tone" if memory serves. It's a fun antique which you can play out of tune to your hearts desire.

pdonis 5y ago
> the 440hz standard was only settled in the 1900s. A competing standard was 435hz for middle C if memory serves. Those frequencies are for the A above middle C.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  Thank you kindly. I have not played in over... 20 years. My memory might be a bit rusty.
rawling 5y ago
I had a bit of a Google for this and found this thread: https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/what-is-meant-by-low-pitch.112091/ https://www.saxontheweb.net/threads/what-is-meant-by-low-pit... They seem to think "low pitch" is 440Hz and "high pitch" is the one that lost out, 457Hz (sounds like a semitone higher to me).

quartesixte 5y ago

Very off topic from the original article, but the entire history of why we even used 440hz at all as opposed to 432, 455 (Beethoven), 415 (Baroque era), and everything else everywhere else is so fascinating to me because at a certain point you are entire semitones above or below what we grow up listening to as “in tune.” I’ve seen some interesting stuff (mostly Jacob Collier) where the tuning standard is actively manipulated during a song. Definitely convinces me we have not yet even begun to touch the boundaries of what’s possible in music.

viraptor 5y ago
> Definitely convinces me we have not yet even begun to touch the boundaries of what’s possible in music. Yeah, but we're drifting in the opposite direction. Grid, 4/4, 440Hz and 12ET are the game if you publish anything these days in the western world and it's probably harder to do something different than it would be centuries ago. I can't wait to hear something popular in 13ET, but probably won't happen in my lifespan.
- aoeusnth1 5y ago
  You might be interested in Sevish. Their music is entirely written in nonstandard tunings (22EDO, various rational tunings, 5EDO, etc).
  - juliangoldsmith 5y ago
    In this vein, there's a pretty good playlist on Spotify called "Microtonal Bangers". It includes, among other things, psychedelic rock (KGLW), a blend of traditional Mauritanian music with pop music (Noura Mint Seymali), prog rock (Brendan Byrnes), jazz influenced by traditional Egyptian music (Ibrahim Maalouf), and electronic music (Sevish and Sungazer).

Simon_O_Rourke 5y ago

You could tune prog rock to whatever frequency you like and it would still sound bad.

OscarCunningham 5y ago

So depressing that studies like this are the state of academia. Do we need to cut down the number of studies so that each one can be higher quality?

t-3 5y ago
It's more about the number of students than the quality of the science. More science being done = more bad science. There's reason to be skeptical of overall quality, but I would hesitate to rush to any judgements based solely on what makes it into your news feed.

kermi 5y ago

Kyle Gann addresses this topic on his web site https://www.kylegann.com/A432.html https://www.kylegann.com/A432.html

8bitsrule 5y ago

In other scientific news, you can tell a person's personality by what colors they prefer to wear.

armchairhacker 5y ago
you joke, but if someone’s wearing very dark or very vibrant clothes, you can speculate they have a certain personality trait

svilen_dobrev 5y ago

so if my old tape player turns slower than 4.76cm/s, it's better for my heart.. well i may take it out of under the sofa then, and start using again..

blunte 5y ago

From the main page it seems they listened to the 440 tuning on the first day, and then the same music tuned to 432 the next day. I very strongly suspect that people’s reactions to music can vary based on many factors, but the least of which involves familiarity vs newness. Did they have control groups that listened to the same frequency tuned music on both days? My expectation is that regardless of the tuning, people would be more relaxed listening to the same music on the second day.

OscarCunningham 5y ago
They had two groups, one who listened to 432 Hz first and one who listened to 440 Hz first.

deleted 5y ago

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BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 5y ago

Historic tuning references can be found in antique tuning forks (corrosion effects?) and organ pipes. A440 is a modern beast. A415 is used by many Baroque players. A392 may have been in use by the clavecinistes in the 18th century. Then there's a multitude of ways to split the octave. As far as ET is concerned, a change in key is simply shifting the register by a number of semitones. In non ET tunings, the interval configurations change with the keys. With some mean tone tunings, you retune some strings to accommodate different keys.

watersb 5y ago

This sort of study might be facilitated by something like Apple Watch opt-in health research. You would need thousands of participants to get anything significant. I would suppose that there isn't a significant effect of A=432Hz.

lillesvin 5y ago

Lots of people here mentioning that concert pitch wasn't always A = 440 Hz. Here's an interesting 12tone video explaining how we ended up at exactly that: https://youtu.be/BzznBt8tVnI https://youtu.be/BzznBt8tVnI (Spoiler: It involves nothing less than the Treaty of Versailles.)