This was published in 1865. Look for "PITCH AND THE SIREN"
Full text of "On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music"
That's hilarious!
The pyramid was built at a time when sundials and clepsydras (water clocks) were state of the art time measuring devices. The second didn't even exist as a concept, for obvious reasons if you think about how slowly a sundial's shadow moves. Without a second, as PRR pointed out, there is no such thing as a hertz, either.
Also, the resonant frequency of a large slab of rock depends on its density, which in turn varies slightly with humidity, and the consequent amount of water contained in the porous rock.
Temperature variations will also change the resonant frequency, as the slab expands and contracts.
So here we are, several thousand years after the pyramids were built. The local climate is completely different now; an entire system of huge rivers has dried up and turned into desert. There have been huge changes in temperature and humidity accompanying these huge changes in the local landscape.
Which means whatever resonant frequencies existed in the pyramid at the time of Paul Horn's recordings was certainly different from the frequencies that existed at the time the pyramid was constructed, 5000 years earlier.
Silly me, of course, the ancient Egyptians had time-travel machines, too; they went forward in time to discover Paul Horn's recording date, then went back nearly 5000 years and built the pyramids in order to resonate at 438 Hz during Paul Horn's concert, 5000 years in the future.
-Gnobuddy
I’ve been in that chamber of the Great Pyramid, and if that flutist can get the massive stone sarcophagus there vibrate at any audible frequency with a tap of his bare hand... well let’s say I’d certainly not lend him any valuable instrument ;-)
Utter BS. Why does even such a simple matter as pitch centering collect the conspiracy crowds? Ah, I forgot: it’s 2019, everything under the sun (and beyond) gets the stupidification treatment.
Utter BS. Why does even such a simple matter as pitch centering collect the conspiracy crowds? Ah, I forgot: it’s 2019, everything under the sun (and beyond) gets the stupidification treatment.
Hmmm…
I think the poster that cited every physical resonant instrument has its own eigenvalues (hugely paraphrased: meaning both harmonic and non-harmonic resonant wavelengths) was actually on the money.
The OP tuned to A=440 (American standard), played a few riffs … then to A=432 and found his instrument sounded as if extra harmonic octaves were present. Which is just awesome greatness … and completely unrelated to the absolute frequency which was chosen. It is only related to the coincidence of his instrument having resonance eigenvalues (nodes) at, or closer to 432×n than to 440×n
No conspiracies needed.
However — in keeping with this line of reasoning — it is also the case that American makers of musical instruments “test and refine” each instrument based on our 440 Hz A-tone and equal-interval temperament, whereas European instrument makers may well use 432 Hz as their go-to manufacturing A-tone. And the Asian makers … likewise, who knows. Might be related to brands, to ateliers, to particular artisans and families of legacy instrument makers. Could be.
Just saying,
GoatGuy ✓
I think the poster that cited every physical resonant instrument has its own eigenvalues (hugely paraphrased: meaning both harmonic and non-harmonic resonant wavelengths) was actually on the money.
The OP tuned to A=440 (American standard), played a few riffs … then to A=432 and found his instrument sounded as if extra harmonic octaves were present. Which is just awesome greatness … and completely unrelated to the absolute frequency which was chosen. It is only related to the coincidence of his instrument having resonance eigenvalues (nodes) at, or closer to 432×n than to 440×n
No conspiracies needed.
However — in keeping with this line of reasoning — it is also the case that American makers of musical instruments “test and refine” each instrument based on our 440 Hz A-tone and equal-interval temperament, whereas European instrument makers may well use 432 Hz as their go-to manufacturing A-tone. And the Asian makers … likewise, who knows. Might be related to brands, to ateliers, to particular artisans and families of legacy instrument makers. Could be.
Just saying,
GoatGuy ✓
Don't blame everything on this year/decade/century/millennium (except that this stuff CONTINUES to have adherents from so many years before), "pyramid power" and two books of that name were popular in the 1970s.
Pyramid power - Wikipedia
And then there was this character that I recall from the time:
Irving Joshua Matrix - Wikipedia
I recall Martin Gardner writing after one of his Dr. Matrix columns that some publisher quite seriously asked him to write a whole book about Dr. Matrix, not realizing (nor apparently even caring) about the tone Gardner was using in his Dr. Matrix writings.
Pyramid power, yeah!
The amazing thing nowadays is the infinite life support each and every whacko ‘theory’ is given by the internet, when the very same technology gives us the choice to cut through the confusion with the simple tool named Occam’s Razor. A little reading on wikipedia could go a long way, but many people prefer exciting but incredibly stupid and ultimately unrewarding detours through conspiracyville.
End of rant.
The amazing thing nowadays is the infinite life support each and every whacko ‘theory’ is given by the internet, when the very same technology gives us the choice to cut through the confusion with the simple tool named Occam’s Razor. A little reading on wikipedia could go a long way, but many people prefer exciting but incredibly stupid and ultimately unrewarding detours through conspiracyville.
End of rant.
Indeed, and those eigenvalues change with ambient conditions. For wind instruments, the frequencies of the resonances are proportional to the speed of sound in air, which changes considerably with temperature.
I threw together the attached spreadsheet showing how much the speed of sound changes with temperature, and the corresponding change in tuning of a wind instrument - a flute, say - tuned to 440 Hz at 20 degrees Celsius (which is the same as 68 degrees Fahrenheit.)
I picked a range of temperatures that I myself have experienced, playing guitar outdoors with friends; nothing heroic, but rather a representative range that average musicians are likely to experience at outdoor gigs.
As you can see, that "A 440" flute will turn into an "A 437" flute on a cool day at 16 C / 61 F, and into an "A 454" flute on a hot day at 38C / 100F!
I am told that good flute players can "pull" the pitch a little one way or the other with their lips and mouths. The flautist in the flute/guitar amateur duo I mentioned earlier evidently failed to do this, which is why he was always out of tune with his guitarist (whom I saw tuning his guitar exactly to A 440 using an electronic tuner.)
In practice everybody needs to play at whatever pitch the acoustic piano is producing, since there is no way to quickly retune the piano.
Personally, I put this down entirely to the placebo effect. The reason is that 432 Hz is less than 2% lower than 440 Hz.
Not only is this very small in musical terms (about one-third of one semitone), it is also very small in mechanical resonance terms: you would need a mechanical resonance with a very high Q approaching 50 for the peak of the resonance curve to be sharp enough to respond differently to 432 Hz compared to 440 Hz!
You never find a Q that high in a musical instrument, for the obvious reason: a Q of 50 would cause one musical note to ring out enormously louder than other nearby notes. The instrument would be essentially unusable.
(For those wondering what the heck Q means, the point is that you need a very sharp resonance to pick out a tiny 2% change in frequency. Realistically, this is not going to occur in a musical instrument. So it will take a much bigger frequency change than 2% in order to hear a different response from the instruments eigenmodes, or resonant frequencies.)
Agree 100%.
Don't take any of this more seriously than the people who see Jesus in a mouldy tortilla or a filthy shower-curtain, or the Virgin Mary in a slice of toast:
1) Shrine of the Miracle Tortilla (Closed), Lake Arthur, New Mexico
2) Jesus In Shower Mold: The Strangest 'Sacred Sightings' Of 2012 | HuffPost Canada
3)BBC NEWS | Americas | 'Virgin Mary' toast fetches $28,000 )
I have guitars made variously in Japan, China, Indonesia, and South Korea. While every one of them has a characteristic timbre caused by its set of eigenfrequencies, none of those resonant modes is so sharp as to cause any audible change in response to a 2% frequency change.
Keep in mind, too, that guitars come in a variety of physical sizes, and this alone is sufficient to force them to have different eigenfrequencies. A Gibson Jumbo is very considerably larger than a Taylor GS Mini parlour guitar, yet both are tuned to the same pitches, and both are excellent musical instruments despite the dramatic change in eigenfrequencies. One sounds deeper and bassier than the other because of these differences - but that characteristic difference remains the same if you tune both guitars pitches up, or down, by 2%.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
Perfect timing: a brand new "news" story about a cloud that looks like a crude thumbs-up sign, and the resulting emotional turmoil in witnesses: Thousands of Students Are Cheered By These Photos of an Optimistic Cloud Formation
No word yet on whether the cloud was created by Nazis, ancient Egyptians, or aliens from a freshly landed UFO.
-Gnobuddy
No word yet on whether the cloud was created by Nazis, ancient Egyptians, or aliens from a freshly landed UFO.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
I think one reason the orchestra tunes to the oboe is that the Q of the double reeds is so low. The pitch produced by a double reed player is in his head, which is not affected by temperature. When I was a bassoonist, every note required its own combination of mouth tension and breath pressure to play in tune with the rest of the band. By contrast cornets and trombones require only one setting of the adjustable crook to play in tune all the other tones. Clarinets & saxophones are tuned by lengthening & shorting an early joint.
Piano concertos is one reason orchestras should quit experimenting with extremely high pitches. The tone of the piano is badly affected by the base pitch. For example, pianos produced prior to the 1920~ agreement of A 440 don't sound proper today. They were designed and voiced for A 432. You can't change the length of piano hook to pin block and gauge of the strings. the position of the hammer on the string, to suit a new orchestra director. The major tone can be adjusted, but the overtones are all wrong. Same with pipe organs, the length of the pipes can't be adjusted with a little fooling with the parts at the mouth. If you sawed the end off the pipe, the position of the mouth would still be wrong for best overtones.
Tuning pianos, the cheap tinny sounding bargain models have a short scale which saves money in the casting and wires. They don't have decent overtones. The more expensive models have a more expensive scale, with bigger frame on the high end and more wire up there. The top octave of a premium piano is a joy to hear live, and a real stress test for hifi equipment. And of course grands have real fundamental frequency bass notes, whereas consoles have beat frequency bass notes, which have been pretty good since the engineering lead to the 1939 Steinway console, but not real bass at all.
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great discussion, here in Central Ohio most tune to 440 but there are blues and rock bands that tune to 430.
I have had a few people claim 432 is the pitch people prefer but I view it as BS.
After a minute or two of playing I can't tell you what I am tuned to. Vocals are easier at 430 is the only difference I notice.
I have had a few people claim 432 is the pitch people prefer but I view it as BS.
After a minute or two of playing I can't tell you what I am tuned to. Vocals are easier at 430 is the only difference I notice.
Exactly! The vast majority of people (including musicians) don't have perfect pitch - we train our ears to become sensitive to small relative changes in pitch, not small changes in the actual number of cycles per second.
430 vs 440 is only about a 2% drop in pitch. That's about one-third of one semitone (one half-note), or one-sixth of the interval between, say, a "C" and a "D" (a whole note).
One-sixth of a whole note is such a small change in pitch that a singer wouldn't normally notice it within his/her singing range. Maybe if a singer is struggling to scream out his / her very highest note it would be detectable?
(But forcing your voice like that is very likely to damage it over time, and result in flatted notes and bad pitch while singing. Much better to simply change the key of the song to drop its pitch a bit.)
I think the whole thing is a tempest in a tea-cup, plain and simple. A tiny and completely inconsequential thing that's been blown out of all proportion.
-Gnobuddy
Quite interesting topic,
Nazi or not I actually prefer drop tunes (everybody does), let me explain...
First, this is only my point of view, and probably by no means scientific.
So, we bought a 100ish or more years old piano (Schweighofer from 1904), got it for a bargain of about 120$, but the transport was the one that was expensive, not the piano.
One day my dad and me called the guy who was selling it on our local "craigslist" and the next day there we are, in a slightly massive abandoned aristocratic mansion that has been taken by the commies in the 50's and left for dead since, guy told us it was his great grandmothers, and that it was last tuned probably around 1947, so I sit on it's old chair in this giant building thinking, this gonna be waaaaay out of tune, but when I started playing it almost ALL keys were in an unique tune that was pretty dropped down, that was the best piano sound, in that room, that I heard in my whole life, piano itself was amazing with those old, thumpy strings, and the hall reverb was WOW! We bought it immediately, so it comes to its' probably fourth home to us, and we started doing measurements, the tune was around 412.3 Hz and it flanged a little and it was amazing, but not as close as it was in the massive hall, I thought to me self, well if I can tune the guitar, why not piano? So we tuned it ourselves, bought the key for tuning from a local guy, and it costed us half price the piano 'cause it was the special one for old pianos! We slowly raised it to 440Hz and it sounded like sh*t that CCCP made in the 70's, so we droped it down to 432ish, still not good but better, and found that its ideal point is of around 422Hz, luckily no string was broken while re-tuning it 4 times in a year.
So it's drop tunes on my guitars, especially Strat, handles it more well than Gibson and its G string, SG goes way out of tune when dropping to D tune, while small headstock LP is dead when you put it to D.
My ears enjoy dropped tunes, why? They feel more relaxing, tried raising my guitars to 457 Hz it didn't sound well, sort of uncomfortable...
Drop tune is more "laid back" and not so punch in the face!
Nazi or not I actually prefer drop tunes (everybody does), let me explain...
First, this is only my point of view, and probably by no means scientific.
So, we bought a 100ish or more years old piano (Schweighofer from 1904), got it for a bargain of about 120$, but the transport was the one that was expensive, not the piano.
One day my dad and me called the guy who was selling it on our local "craigslist" and the next day there we are, in a slightly massive abandoned aristocratic mansion that has been taken by the commies in the 50's and left for dead since, guy told us it was his great grandmothers, and that it was last tuned probably around 1947, so I sit on it's old chair in this giant building thinking, this gonna be waaaaay out of tune, but when I started playing it almost ALL keys were in an unique tune that was pretty dropped down, that was the best piano sound, in that room, that I heard in my whole life, piano itself was amazing with those old, thumpy strings, and the hall reverb was WOW! We bought it immediately, so it comes to its' probably fourth home to us, and we started doing measurements, the tune was around 412.3 Hz and it flanged a little and it was amazing, but not as close as it was in the massive hall, I thought to me self, well if I can tune the guitar, why not piano? So we tuned it ourselves, bought the key for tuning from a local guy, and it costed us half price the piano 'cause it was the special one for old pianos! We slowly raised it to 440Hz and it sounded like sh*t that CCCP made in the 70's, so we droped it down to 432ish, still not good but better, and found that its ideal point is of around 422Hz, luckily no string was broken while re-tuning it 4 times in a year.
So it's drop tunes on my guitars, especially Strat, handles it more well than Gibson and its G string, SG goes way out of tune when dropping to D tune, while small headstock LP is dead when you put it to D.
My ears enjoy dropped tunes, why? They feel more relaxing, tried raising my guitars to 457 Hz it didn't sound well, sort of uncomfortable...
Drop tune is more "laid back" and not so punch in the face!
We bought our piano from the next door neighbor whose wife's company was retrenching. They were downsizing to an apartment in a nearby burb and needed to swing a downpayment. It's a Steinway "B". The market for pianos has been flooded since the crash of 2008.
When I was a kid we had a Steinway upright -- it could never keep tune.
To my shock, in the last few years I've seen a number of pianos advertised in the Freebies section of Craigslist and local newspapers. The ad. usually goes something like "Come and get it for free, all you have to do is take it away."
The saddest ad. I saw was from a man who wrote that nobody had responded to his earlier "Free piano!" advertisement, and he would wait one more week, then take an axe to the piano, because he had to get it out of the apartment before he moved.
It's sad that these wonderful instruments are now seen as encumbrances to be gotten rid of.
-Gnobuddy
To my shock, in the last few years I've seen a number of pianos advertised in the Freebies section of Craigslist and local newspapers. The ad. usually goes something like "Come and get it for free, all you have to do is take it away."
The saddest ad. I saw was from a man who wrote that nobody had responded to his earlier "Free piano!" advertisement, and he would wait one more week, then take an axe to the piano, because he had to get it out of the apartment before he moved.
It's sad that these wonderful instruments are now seen as encumbrances to be gotten rid of.
-Gnobuddy
It is sure nice if you want a piano though. My wife got me a free player piano made about 1913. I have to do some work on the player part but it makes for a really nice piano.
I also just picked up a Hammond M3 for nothing. Needed oil.
I couldn't even dream of having a piano as a child, so I'd love to have one now. Not for serious study as a pianist, but to play for fun, to use for learning music theory, to help with composing and arranging my own songs, et cetera.
But I live in a small apartment, with other people living all around me. A piano isn't an option. Even an acoustic guitar is too loud much of the time.
I think this is exactly why a lot of people are getting rid of their pianos. They're too big, and too loud, for the tiny shrunken lives we live in today's cramped and crowded cities.
-Gnobuddy
The overtones of a piano 1920's or earlier were designed for somewhere around 420 hz. The passion to push the pitch up came from violin polluted orchestras, not pianists. The ratio of bridge to string length, the place the hammer hits, the position of the string on the frame, all has to be redesigned for a 20 hz raise. And now orchestras want to go to 444? Nutso.
Yeah it is a **** shame great old pianos are going to the dump while rich people line up to buy trash pianos designed to stick up in 5 years. People buy pianos based on the quality of the clothes the salesman has, whereas the best ones are found in some old house where grandma died, right before the new carpet men come. Found my Steinway 40 that way. And the electrics, just try to buy a new disk drive for one 10 years later!! No maintenance plan.
I tune my piano, fortunately post 1930 the pin tops are standard. No big deal.
I live in a less fashionable neighborhood specifically to get a house 30 m from the nearest wall so I can practice at 3 AM any day of the week.
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