GERRY HUNDT
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Tuning: 432Hz vs 440Hz

10/24/2013

2 Comments

 
It's good to be in tune with your bandmates, right?  These days, we have many devices that help us tune: those that clip onto guitars, stompbox tuners, and handheld tuners with mics and inputs.  My personal favorite is the Sonic Research ST-200, a highly-accurate true strobe tuner in stompbox format.  How many of us give any thought to our tuning beyond making sure we're making the green lights flicker or the wheel stop turning?

About a year ago, a good friend of mine hipped me to the idea of tuning to A=432Hz, rather then the accepted standard of A=440Hz.  I was immediately intrigued; music for me has always been the divine intersection of mathematics and emotion.  After doing some reading on the subject, I tried it at home with my National guitar and the hype was confirmed for me.  However, I have not transitioned into 432 otherwise, as harmonicas need to be re-tuned and time has been short... and I play with a fair amount of journeyman musicians.

Without going into detail, the advantage of  432 is pure frequencies at harmonic intervals - no decimals, just whole numbers.   In other words, guitars and harmonicas sound less tinny.   I find music recorded with 432 tuning to be more relaxing and richer-sounding.  Check out these two examples below from my friend Scooter Barnes in Denver - the same musical piece, recorded first in 440 and then in 432.   Listen to the 440 track first, then the 432 track.  Give the 432 track a second for your ears/brain to adjust.  What do you think?
2 Comments
Bunk
12/27/2013 01:27:02 am

That tuning leaves only whole numbers, but thinking about it, I'm not sure why that makes it "better". I do enjoy the sound of it more. But I'm not sure why. Frequency is cycles per unit of time. I've not done research, but it seems like our divisions of time are fairly arbitrary. If we called a day 20 "hours" and had 50 "minutes" per hour with 50 "seconds" in each, that would completely change which frequencies were whole numbers and which were partial.

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Michael
4/21/2015 03:59:51 pm

No, it doesn't create whole numbers; at least not in 12 tone equal temperament. Guitars are set up for 12 TET, not Pythagorean tuning, so it doesn't work out to whole numbers. If you tune your guitar to A432, you're going to get C4 at 256.87 Hz, not 256 Hz. The only whole numbers you get when you tune A432 12 TET are A432 and its octaves.

It sounds better than 440 because the arbitrary measurements of equal temperament insure that the internal frequency relationships will be different when you tune to A432. They're slightly more dissonant, which is part of why it evokes a more intense emotional reaction. The other reason is that 432 tuning causes more acoustic resonance than 440, which is why people say they feel it more in their gut and chest than 440.

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    Gerry Hundt

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