Tuning at 432Hz instead of 440Hz

[kim]

Hi everyone, if there is a thread about this already please forgive me, if so I will then delete this thread and move to the relevant one.
I first switched to 432 years ago while playing in a punk band, there seems to be many people
who subjectively like 432 etc. My second love of music is the blues, I tune my two resonators to 432, 
its a habit now. 
Does anyone else on here use 432 for resonators? I'm totally convinced 432 sounds better, but that's my subjective opinion, I have never tuned the resonators or any guitar for that matter to 440 now for about 10 years.
So I might just tune resonators back up to 440 to see if in actual fact 440 might be better just for resonators?
Thoughts everyone on this subject 440 v 432 for resonators playing the blues?
best regards Kim

[Michael Messer]

I am sure we have discussed this before on here on a few occasions, but It is an interesting subject and while I do prefer A=432Hz for certain things, A=440Hz is so widely considered "normal" now, that it is hard to stay in A=432Hz all the time. A good friend of mine has recently tuned his piano to A=432Hz and it does sound and feel amazing.

A=432Hz is considered to be more spiritual. Interestingly, under scrutiny from researchers, apparently it doesn't affect our brain in a different way to A=440Hz. I'll stick with the spiritual theory because I think it does have an interesting affect on our mood and that it makers instruments feel sweeter.

Shine On
Michael

[kim]

Hi Michael, that's what I was thinking and feeling, 432 does sound much sweeter and melodic, not as harsh as 440. All of the great composers, Mozart, Beethoven, etc wrote in 432, and the Beatles as well apparently, Prince recorded everything in 432 as well as far as I know. The “standard” was only changed to 440 in 1939 so I'm guessing maybe all the blues songs recorded before that date were in 432 but I don't know for sure, yes it sure is an interesting subject.

[slide496]

Just tried it on my wood parlor resonator and while I lost interest in 432 which I was experimenting with awhile back on flat tops for singing purposes, along with 434 and 438, I think 432 seems to be more the sound I want on this resonator for an instrumental I am working on, so am going to keep it at 432 for a bit. It seems to be making my resonator less cheerful, vanilla sounding at D# vestapol. Thanks for the thread, then.

Harriet

[blueshome1]

The mystery around 232kHz is stuff and nonsense based on the fact that notes come out as whole numbers of kHz. As a kHz is a value based on an arbitary unit of time this is pure coincidence.

The sound, of course, is in the ear of the listener. And if you prefer it, why not, but on this basis, have you tried for example 438 or 448 etc?

Historically there have been many values chosen for A, but, certainly, in the 20th century in the USA in particular A 440 was the standard. This can be checked by the fact that recordings made then were based on 440kHz including most blues recordings (subject to occasional wobbles from the recording process)
.
I'm afraid I put the "mystery" of 432kHz along with the flat earthers and UFO believers.

[Stevie]

For years, nay decades, I proclaimed myself to be agnostic because I could no more prove the validity of religions than I could disprove it, but one day I realised that my sitting on the fence was a cop out, and I should stand by my convictions, and so my Damascine conversion from tolerant disbeliever to Philistine gentile was complete. As Freddie said "I want to break fre-ee". Once you question something and keep on asking questions, and this applies to everything you encounter in life, you will ineluctably flush out the rubbish in anything. The only defence left to such searching enquiry is to answer those questions with yet more questions, and that soon becomes transparently vacuous to anyone claiming sentience who dares to question.

432 Hz as opposed to 440 Hz? Whatever floats your boat I reckon. One thing is obvious to me is that 432 Hz HAS to manifest as a different tension which MUST result in a change in "playability", albeit too subtle to quantify? I used to work alongside a tall Walloon fellow at Airbus who cut a thrust with his shaved head and a long "Neo" like leather coat while I tried to keep up as he long-strode around the Hamburg facility. He once said to me that if you cannot measure something you cannot record it, and if you cannot record it you cannot control it. You are reduced to speculation and mêmes. I'm afraid I see evidence of that here when proclamations are made. It must also change the downward pressure on the cone which as anyone on here will concur alters the "drive" on the cone tangibly, or at least by a theoretical understanding of the forces involved.

I was not aware that 432 Hz prevailed prior to some date in the late 1930s- live and learn etc, but it does kind of imply that the inspired inventors of the resonator may have had 432 Hz in mind, if only in the break angle they chose to set up the guitars to compensate for an oh so slightly lower cone driving force. Well, there's a thought!

Whether any such difference is detectable is less moot in my mind than the inconvenience of always being a few cents flat in an ensemble.

And now I must return to my hot cross bun!

でつ e&oe ...

[Pickers Ditch]

Interesting question and points made.

Four years ago I started this thread:

michaelmesser.proboards.com/thread/10379/individual-guitars-own-specific-resonance

I've modified my view over the years and I'm now convinced that guitars have their own comfort zone and my ears are not solely to blame.

...and since then I've been using my various guitars in different tunings (all with Newtone Monels)-

MM Blues '28 in C Vastapol
Skip Dive Special in C# Vastapol
'31 Triolian in D Vastapol
'36 Dobro M32 in G Spanish
Sigma 0015MS in F# Spanish
Vintage Statesboro' 12 string in C Vastapol

...All of those tunings just may be a gnats cock off if I stick a Snark tuner (A440) on 'em.

The reason for all those differences is, for me, the tunings at which those different guitars sound their best/sweetest.

I must stress that all of this has not been done via complicated experimentation - it's just how they've ended up sounding their best/sweetest to me and allowing me to sing(?) along with them.

Mind you, it's a bit of a bu88er if someone else wants to join in on a conventionally tuned guitar though .

PS I wonder where the awaited MMFE will end up?

[pete1951]

I am a little deaf, and though my relative pitch is ok I don’t have ‘perfect pitch’ . So I haven’t noticed any noticeable difference when I tune down a bit.( playing along with old recordings and having several guitars I often find my guitar a long way off standard) If it is as simple as string tensions/pressure then you could have some custom strings that give you lower tension at pitch*, which would have a similar effect ( on the guitar, though maybe not the sound if 432hz is as special as some on the thread have said)
Pete

*Could one reason Newtone strings sound ‘better’ is the lower tension? Mimicking tuning down a little?

I’m sure more will try 432hz and let us have their results .



As 432 is (as Phil says) just a standardised number, could 432.68 be better, or even 432.784?

[slide496]

They don't seem to have a device for recording a fractional frequency but probably some of the vintage solo guitar/resonator players did at least. I've heard it often enough with vintage solo players on both flat top and resonator that they played "in the vicinity" or "a little above/below" a pitch.

An example is Black Ace's Litttle Augie on a resonator which, if I remember correctly is a little below A. If you identified the tuning you could either by saying also "different by "a few cents" or at the lower frequency on a tuning device like a snark. There is a website that will compute cents to frequencies.

Harriet

[Michael Messer]

Pete, you make an interesting point about the tension of strings because that is something I have noticed when trying the A=432Hz that the lower tension feels sweeter. Malcolm Newton, inventor of the Newtone strings, used to say something similar too. When my friend had his piano tuned to A=432Hz it was partly due to the lower tension that made the piano sweeter and the music more "something" that is hard to put into words.

I am not a technical person, so the number of cycles per second means little to me, but I can see that it would affect the sound, feel and atmosphere of a note. So while there is no point in arguing as I could not back up my comments in any way, I totally disagree with Phil's comments comparing this to such things at flat earthers and UFO believers. This is not a forum for such discussions, but I have my own views on such beliefs too.

Harriet, your comments are interesting and please add to this thread when you have more to say about this subject. Perhaps a video of you playing the same piece on the same guitar in A=432 and A=440.

PD, MMFEs are great in in all tunings, but my own tends to live in DADF#AD, but it also sounds really good played lap style in Geebeedee-Geebeedee, or should that be spelled Gibedy-Gibedy?

Shine On
Michael

[slide496]

Thanks for the interest MM, Im happy to try to make a comparative test. Restringing the res and revisiting the tune in progress. (Groan---->) Stay tuned.

I was looking for the list of contemporary artists I had found earlier using A432, such as Jimi Hendrix and James Taylor - non res players though.

Harriet

[Pickers Ditch]

Here's a question and an idea.

Did The Beatles, JH and James Taylor et al. use A432 (supposedly) because they tended to record in Abbey Road classical type music studios where the studio piano was tuned to A432 for classical orchestras?

In them olden days we used to tune to the pianer, a set of pitch pipes / harmonica or if you were rich a tuning fork.

The pianer is my best bet because it was there in the studio to be used.

Snarks were yet to be invented....

[slide496]

What I read about James Taylor specifically was that he used a variety of off A440, A432 among them, my guess would be newage influences could be included among those for the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.

This article from 2021 has more on the history of A432 if anyone is interested, throughout the article.
online.ucpress.edu/jpms/article/33/1/137/116319/Perfect-Pitch432-Hz-Music-and-the-Promise-of

Harriet

[slide496]

Just to update two test results. No comparison video on my parlor resonator for the A432 test as after changing strings I decided to keep with the A440.

Would not have thought of testing if not for this thread - so on my ladder braced parlors in Vestapol tuning, a 60's Silvertone and Stella, the results were very good with the A432 and will probably continue to be tuned at that frequency using pb strings. The whole sound space seemed to shift.

Best to all,
Harriet

[Stevie]

I keep all my acoustics in CGCGCD with a view to reducing the static load over time, and I tend to favour playing in that tuning to the extent that standard tuning seems a bit too "tight" to me now. Perhaps the low C is a little too low really, but my first grab guitar handles it more than just well enough. What I haven't bothered to investigate is whether it's the lack of a third in the primarily roots and fifths cittern-like tuning that makes the guitar seem to sing rather than the lower pitch itself. The major/minor leaning dichotomy is absent from such a tuning and presents certain hurdles to address in transcriptions. The whole pitch subject is really interesting, even in small increments, and for myself proof positive that an a-la carte enquiry is more rewarding than the bar snacks menu.

でつ e&oe ...