440Hz/432Hz mystery - can you help me solve this?

Anything that has mass has a wavelength, of course. Basic physics :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I think what’s lesser known is that human masses contain somatic emotional holding that can get stirred loose by vibration. People don’t think of muscle knots in their body encapsulating an old emotion, but they can.

3 Likes

Guys… thanks for chiming in! I had no intention to go into a deeper (semi-philosophical) journey here or deride certain concepts in music therapy…

It was just curiosity: why one (fairly modern) tune was NOT in 440 Hz tuning but in 432 Hz tuning, and why another version of the same tune which claimed to be in 432 Hz actually was in 440 Hz tuning. All I really had hoped for was for someone else here to pick up their bass, play along, and either confirm or de-bunk my observations and, in the process, maybe teach me something fundamental about tunings I had overlooked! That was really all I was looking for :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Now, my apologies for appearing to make fun of or belittle concepts dealing with chakras and the potential healing effects of music.

I think there is no doubt that music affects ALL of us (otherwise we wouldn’t probably listen to or make music in the first place), while the why and how are much deeper questions and the topic of ongoing research. It is tricky from an experimental point of view not least because the effect of music is NOT uniform and highly dependent on the individual, thus making it an absolute nightmare for an experimentalist to design experiments that have reasonable controls and provide meaningful data. Obviously, there isn’t even the chance for straight-up “placebo groups” as it is glaringly obvious whether you are exposed to music or not.

So, yes, music has all kinds of effects on us, is triggering all kinds of emotions, reactions, memories, and can be soothing, (healing?), riveting, stimulating, calming, frightening, depressing and so on…

My beef really is with people trying to find (or rather summon) connections where there aren’t any, like coming up with ways to derive the number 432 from nature or have it emerge from some measurements of celestial bodies and such, and that the ancients already knew about 432. What escapes these people is that pretty much all units we use to perform measurements (of length, or time, or otherwise) are arbitrary and that the number 432 is a coincidence coming from the choice of these units. Yes, perhaps the actual vibration of air that we describe as 432 Hz has some special effect (I can’t rule that out), but NOT because 432 emerges from some calculation involving the thickness of Saturn’s rings and the number of digits of a human hand… Pythagoras didn’t have a definition of a “second” in the modern sense and so couldn’t talk about frequencies they way we do. He probably couldn’t care less of the absolute frequency that a string produced… what these guys cared about deeply was the relation of different notes (“frequencies”) that certain ratios of string lengths produced - the “simpler” the ratios, the “purer” the interval…

Anyhoo… totally convinced that music has profound effects on us - after all, there is ample empirical evidence for that! So, let’s just enjoy this and forget the conspiracy stuff, shall we!? :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

6 Likes

They sure can, indeed. It’s fascinating how everyone response differently to music (read frequencies of sound) to me.

Fascinating thread. I’m a simple man so I just stick to 440hz and EADG tuning. I kinda think if everyone stuck to that it would spread music more. Kinda like if everyone spoke a common language. Although I admit that this may not be pushing the creative boundaries as much.

What irritates me a bit is that higher notes on my bass are always slightly out of tune. Not really noticeable unless I use a tuner, but it irritates me. I have yet to have a bass with perfect intonation and am not sure if that is even possible.

1 Like

Have you tried intonating your bass? It’s pretty easy :slight_smile:

Yeah, but from what I understand, you can never have perfect intonation. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so it irritates me. From Studybass:

You will discover that it is impossible to get every single fret perfectly in tune. This is normal. Fretted instruments have a natural flaw where they can’t be perfectly intonated. You can just get really close.

3 Likes

Yeah, the big question would be if it will be noticeable in the mix I guess. In this case the perfect would definitely be the enemy of the good - it’s unlikely there would ever be a noticeable difference for listeners with a properly intonated bass, yet one could spend an infinite amount of time tilting at this windmill :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Agreed. And I’d imagine on any recordings this is easily accounted for in a DAW if it is noticeable. I just like everything in its place so it bugs me, but I’ll get over it. Might have to do with the fact I was trained on piano and then started on fretless bass where this isn’t an issue. I don’t think I’ll go back to fretless though now that I’ve gotten used to the fretted.

1 Like

I realize we are moving more and more off the original topic - but, what the hey…

Maybe you could built a bass like this guitar here, @jt:

Or, get a bass like Henrik Linder has (may need to FF a bit in the video to get to his playing):

Or, indeed, play fretless with a really keen ear :smile:

3 Likes

Wow, those are pretty crazy! Funny enough, while that might fix the perfectionist in tune for me, it breaks it for aesthetics. :laughing: I think I’ll stick to my slightly out of tune, but looking uniform bass.

I actually thought that fanned fret instruments like the below were for intonation, but apparently it has nothing to do with it. On that topic, I found a cool page here that goes into that in a lot of detail: Fanned Frets Explained: Everything You Need to Know - Guitar Gear Finder

And yes, sorry for derailing the topic a bit. :slight_smile:

1 Like

“fanned frets” and “true temperament frets” are not the same thing at all, indeed. you could imagine true temperament fanned frets … :grin: … or you could consider to go fretless as @joergkutter suggested :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Yeah, my first bass was fretless… about 25 years ago. Fender American Deluxe Fretless to be exact. Loved that bass, but I feel that phase of music is long gone for me. The only recording I’ve had on radio was in those days though. Then I didn’t play bass for about 20 years. Happy with frets now, but who knows what the future entails. :slight_smile: Pros and Cons to both as with most things!

2 Likes

it was more a joke, saying that without frets the temperament is as true as your ear can be :sweat_smile:

also less problems with 432/440 Hz ! it seems that fretless basses bring an answer to every question. obviously we’re getting closer to the deepest questions in the universe, like the meaning of life and all that shit.

1 Like

Are you saying we should burn all electric basses and go back to uprights? :rofl:

But yeah, even with fretless finger placement will not be exactly to the mm where it should be each time you play a note. To be honest, I probably don’t really want perfection as that might make the music sound sterile. Lets keep things a bit rough. Yeah, I know I’m contradicting myself! :slight_smile:

The meaning of life is to be happy right? :slight_smile:

2 Likes

yeah but would we be happier in 432 Hz ? :joy:

2 Likes

So back to topic then :slight_smile:

On the whole 432Hz vs 440Hz thing… I play 440Hz because that’s the agreed frequency for myself and my guitarist I play with.

However, if I’ve heard a song enough times in 432Hz and it has imprinted into my brain, then playing/hearing it in 440Hz sounds wrong. It’s like saying a popular American phrase in a British accent. Same words, but something is just different.

However, I’ve never tuned to 432Hz to cover a song in 440Hz. Although, I don’t really do covers, so maybe that is why…

Paul Davids did a great video on this topic where he compares both versions side by side with different songs. They are certainly quite different. More than I thought they would be with only 8Hz difference to tell the truth. But I’ll stick to 440Hz, if not least because I’m lazy and it is what most songs are done in. :slight_smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt3EAPDn-Ug

5 Likes

That’s an interesting analogy, @JT . . . :thinking:

Good to see you back again, too!

Cheers
Joe

2 Likes

Yes, it was definitely meant “tongue in cheek”, as you’d need a truly keen ear to get all those nuances right :smile:

Well… if it weren’t for those pesky open strings :wink:

Yes, but the question is: would you be able to pick this out hearing them by themselves only, and not in direct comparison? Some of us might, some not…

It is a bit like finding new (hifi) speakers - it is much easier to hear the difference when you can switch back and forth between them. If you only heard one type of speakers, and then another two hours later, it would be much, much harder to tell which one is “better” (i.e., more pleasing to you).

But, yeah, nice video… sort of confirming some of my earlier points!

1 Like