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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
by 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 agoFascinating. 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 agoNo, this is just about what pitch to start reckoning from. The relative tuning of everything else is the same.
- Taywee 5y agoNope; 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 agoNo. The Hermode tuning algorithm supposedly can, but that's a much more complicated thing.
- numpad0 5y agoIsn’t it 442 or even 445 for A4 today?
- yellowapple 5y agoIt depends, but A4=440Hz seems to be the standard assumed by just about every electronic instrument I've encountered (and while some fancier ones make that configurable, most don't). Realistically, the "correct" reference pitch for a given performance is going to depend on environmental conditions, since temperature and humidity will affect the "normal" pitch for an instrument (and will do so in different ways depending on the type of instrument). Most pragmatic approach would be to base it on the hardest-to-retune instrument in a given ensemble (i.e. take a tuner to it while it's playing some octave of A, do the requisite multiplication/division to get to A4, and there you have your reference pitch). Speaking from experience in marching music, the resulting reference pitch tended to vary between 438Hz and 442Hz, with very rare exceptions.
- OscarCunningham 5y ago> Some of the wording in the article is weird, and the "Context" gives very little of the relevant context. You're only looking at the abstract. (Weirdly the abstract has separate sections. I haven't seen that before.)
- Taywee 5y agoYou're right. I'm not used to these sorts of sites and I thought that might be the case, but I couldn't find the link to find the PDF to access it, because it was part of the header bar (and becomes a floating header). I just tuned that out as irrelevant because I'm so used to ignoring floating headers when I'm not trying to navigate a site, and was looking everywhere in the center column, somewhere underneath the title for the link, didn't find it, and assumed that this was the entire article. That said, wow, this wants $36 just to read this single article, or I need to be part of an institution that gives me free access. That's steep. I'd like to read the entire article, but not given that price. Really hurts the accessibility of good information to have it that exclusionary.
- OscarCunningham 5y agoI pirated it from Sci-Hub. > good information Heh.