3 ms·

The fact that music tuned to 432 Hz might sound slightly off to listeners might explain the change in attention, which in turn might explain the change in heart

by fathyb 5y ago

The fact that music tuned to 432 Hz might sound slightly off to listeners might explain the change in attention, which in turn might explain the change in heart rate. It would have been helpful measure other tuning values like 430 or 445 Hz to determine if it's caused by 432 Hz specifically.

roelschroeven 5y ago
Just the act of going through the experiment a second time, now being more familiar with the whole situation, is a plausible cause of lower heart rate all on its own.
- janekm 5y ago
  To give the bare minimum of credit to the study, it was a cross-over design, so half of the participants started with the higher frequency first and vice versa.
JohnHaugeland 5y ago
I'm a classically trained pianist with near perfect pitch. I have ABXed myself with half-hour gaps on music re-tuned to 432, and music re-turned to 432, then 440, to control for that it has to sound like it's been retuned. I have Audeze planar magnetics and a relatively quiet apartment. I'm not able to tell the difference, even on music I listen to very frequently. It's all horseshit.
- aaroninsf 5y ago
  Mic drop comment. Hard agree. Worked for an instrument builder for a decade, of fixed-pitch esoteric instruments. Client community had a distinct minority who went all in on such things as 432 Hz woo-woo. Happy to make them, with the footnote that instruments made to this or other custom-request references could not play in concert with most others. No discernible difference, with one interesting qualifier: for acoustic (or emulated) instruments one is familiar with, there is an audible shift in timbre correlated with tuning to different resonances, most dramatically if you retune a given specific instrument. This is because you are shifting the fundamentals and overtones of the instrument while keeping the natural resonances of the instrument fixed. This naturally produces a different "signature" of relationships between such frequencies and in the case of the instruments I was close to, in their internal resonance, which was completely defining of their "character." (Something similar is going on with pitch-shifting algorithms which do "formant correction" to try to keep voices sounding natural within modest shift of pitch... we have deeply internalized expectations wrt the various resonant landmarks in human voices because of the bounded variation in their geometry and the physics of voice production; this is less so but absolutely still true of familiar acoustic instruments.) One of the similarly anecdotal but significant "tells" of the placebo nature of perceived difference in 432 Hz and 440 Hz is to my memory, very few players were incapable of telling instrument key, let alone pitch referent, based on hearing them alone. (Knowledge of available instrument keys and tunings was commonly deep given the cult following they received.)

by fathyb 5y ago

roelschroeven 5y ago

Just the act of going through the experiment a second time, now being more familiar with the whole situation, is a plausible cause of lower heart rate all on its own.

janekm 5y ago
To give the bare minimum of credit to the study, it was a cross-over design, so half of the participants started with the higher frequency first and vice versa.

JohnHaugeland 5y ago

I'm a classically trained pianist with near perfect pitch. I have ABXed myself with half-hour gaps on music re-tuned to 432, and music re-turned to 432, then 440, to control for that it has to sound like it's been retuned. I have Audeze planar magnetics and a relatively quiet apartment. I'm not able to tell the difference, even on music I listen to very frequently. It's all horseshit.

aaroninsf 5y ago
Mic drop comment. Hard agree. Worked for an instrument builder for a decade, of fixed-pitch esoteric instruments. Client community had a distinct minority who went all in on such things as 432 Hz woo-woo. Happy to make them, with the footnote that instruments made to this or other custom-request references could not play in concert with most others. No discernible difference, with one interesting qualifier: for acoustic (or emulated) instruments one is familiar with, there is an audible shift in timbre correlated with tuning to different resonances, most dramatically if you retune a given specific instrument. This is because you are shifting the fundamentals and overtones of the instrument while keeping the natural resonances of the instrument fixed. This naturally produces a different "signature" of relationships between such frequencies and in the case of the instruments I was close to, in their internal resonance, which was completely defining of their "character." (Something similar is going on with pitch-shifting algorithms which do "formant correction" to try to keep voices sounding natural within modest shift of pitch... we have deeply internalized expectations wrt the various resonant landmarks in human voices because of the bounded variation in their geometry and the physics of voice production; this is less so but absolutely still true of familiar acoustic instruments.) One of the similarly anecdotal but significant "tells" of the placebo nature of perceived difference in 432 Hz and 440 Hz is to my memory, very few players were incapable of telling instrument key, let alone pitch referent, based on hearing them alone. (Knowledge of available instrument keys and tunings was commonly deep given the cult following they received.)