435 Htz tunning>

[bostjan]

Hendrix?! Blues guys on the Mississippi River delta were tuning down their guitars to D before Jimi was out of diapers.

The A4=440 Hz standard made it's way into pop and folk music much more recently than I think we generally think. Does anyone want to guess what year A440 was implemented into ISO 16 for music instrument manufacturers? It was probably in use in the USA since the 1930's, for certain specific things like tuning fork manufacture, but, as far as a widespread standard, it's definitely more recent than Hendrix's death.

Prior to that, people just tuned to whatever reference pitch they had available. Could have been a piano, maybe a bell, maybe a dialtone, maybe the neighbours screamed at each other at a fairly constant pitch every evening. Who knows. It's honestly really only been since the advent of the electronic tuner that this really became much of a household thing. And think about it, how did Hendrix tune his guitar? Do you think he busted out a tuning fork or a pitch pipe before he broke into Purple Haze?

 

[Neon_Knight_]

- What's interesting is some greats among greats from every genre supposedly used it. Hendrix, DIme, Prince, EVH. I use it and like it. If they actually used it then I trust them. It just feels better, imo.
- If anything, 440hz is a conspiracy to make you break strings easier and your voice fatigue faster. lol

My understanding of the "conspiracy":
Pythagorean intonation (based on perfect fifths) required A to be 432Hz for purely mathematical reasons - not because it sounded optimal.
At some point orchestras decided 440Hz (or there abouts) sounded better.
435Hz became popular in France & Italy during the 19th century, due to (subjectively) sounding slightly better 432Hz but not putting as much strain singers' voices as 440Hz. (So, if anything, 435Hz is a conspiracy to bankrupt string manufacturers and make singing easier.)
440Hz was standardised during the mid-20th century, to make life easier for everyone and to enable instruments to be exported globally without odd tuning discrepancies.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

Why not 415.3 Hz?
Or 392.0 Hz?
Or, hell, 220 Hz?

Metal musicians ought to tune up to 666 Hz. Maybe I'll tune down to 333 Hz, since I'm only a little bit evil.

In the USA, tune to 60 Hz, since that's the frequency at which electrical equipment buzzes, then you can start a doom metal band with an old pole-top transformer and a couple of fluorescent light bulbs.

Or 11.574 µHz, to be more in tune with the Earth, with some of the band playing in 31.689 nHz.

Does your brain Hertz yet?

Which is the best reference pitch? The answer is very very simple - it's whichever one is the most widely accepted. Look, it's nothing more than a ruler. Maybe you want to define a "new inch" as 2.5 cm instead of the old inch of 2.54 cm. No real harm in that, I guess. Now instead of being 5'11.5", you can say you're 6'1". No harm in that, either. You want a new neck for your guitar, let's measure it's scale length, 26.91 new inches. Well, drat, replacement necks only come in 25.5 inches... wait, are those old inches or new inches? Meh, just get a new guitar, no real harm done, right?

Do you see how that just makes things unnecessarily complicated? And what novelty does it add to the music? If you want to tune down 20 cents, go for it. Obviously collaborating is going to be annoying, since you'll have to explain the tuning, and then the other musicians all have to figure out how to tune down 20 cents, but, if, for whatever reason, it sounds better to you, it could be worth it. Now, personally, I think it's a waste of effort, but I'm not going to tell you what you can and cannot do. I can recommend trying something else instead - I happen to really like 19EDO tuning. Notes are still easy to remember - ABCDEFG, just with separate sharps and flats instead of sharing enharmonic equivalent notes. The end result is that both major and minor thirds sound noticeably better, 4ths and 5ths sound largely the same, and 2nds and 7ths sound a little less good, but it also gives you a wider tonal palette. If you're going to go through the effort of reinventing the tuning wheel, you might as well take it to a level where something interesting actually happens. But don't let me discourage you from setting out on your own journey.

You had me until 2nds sounded worse. Horrible tuning! If I can't play sus2 and sus4 chords, then what is the point? WHAT IS THE POINT!?

In all seriousness, sus2 and sus4 chords are a nice alternative to major/minor chords.

 

[bostjan]

My understanding of the "conspiracy":
Pythagorean intonation (based on perfect fifths) required A to be 432Hz for purely mathematical reasons - not because it sounded optimal.
At some point orchestras decided 440Hz (or there abouts) sounded better.
435Hz became popular in France & Italy during the 19th century, due to (subjectively) sounding slightly better 432Hz but not putting as much strain singers' voices as 440Hz. (So, if anything, 435Hz is a conspiracy to bankrupt string manufacturers and make singing easier.)
440Hz was standardised during the mid-20th century, to make life easier for everyone and to enable instruments to be exported globally without odd tuning discrepancies.

You can use pythagorean tuning with any reference standard.

You had me until 2nds sounded worse. Horrible tuning! If I can't play sus2 and sus4 chords, then what is the point? WHAT IS THE POINT!?

In all seriousness, sus2 and sus4 chords are a nice alternative to major/minor chords.

You can still use them, they just sound slightly more "out." A lot of my music relies on add9 voicings in 19-edo, for example:

 

[StevenC]

Hendrix?! Blues guys on the Mississippi River delta were tuning down their guitars to D before Jimi was out of diapers.

That's why I said famous.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

You can use pythagorean tuning with any reference standard.


You can still use them, they just sound slightly more "out." A lot of my music relies on add9 voicings in 19-edo, for example:

Is add9 where you add a 2nd to a major chord? Or can you add them to minor chords as well?

 

[bostjan]

That's why I said famous.

I guess guys like Huddie Leadbetter were no where near as famous as Hendrix, but I think it's another issue with perspective. People like that seem famous to me, since I'm a guitarist, but I'm sure few modern non-guitarists have any clue who he was, whereas they'd for sure know Hendrix. But, then again, how many guitarists could those sorts of people name other than Hendrix, EVH, and maybe Slash?

Is add9 where you add a 2nd to a major chord? Or can you add them to minor chords as well?

Yeah, you can add a 9th (octave up from the 2nd, which, ironically is the same note used in sus2 chords) to either major or minor chords.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

*massive bong rip*

you have to tune to 420 Hz so the annunaki can feel your spirit vibrating in a higher plane of 4D or 5D, then they will take you in their ship to lemuria on the inside of the hollow earth and reveal the occult mysteries of our ancient alien heritage

 

[StevenC]

I guess guys like Huddie Leadbetter were no where near as famous as Hendrix, but I think it's another issue with perspective. People like that seem famous to me, since I'm a guitarist, but I'm sure few modern non-guitarists have any clue who he was, whereas they'd for sure know Hendrix. But, then again, how many guitarists could those sorts of people name other than Hendrix, EVH, and maybe Slash?



Yeah, you can add a 9th (octave up from the 2nd, which, ironically is the same note used in sus2 chords) to either major or minor chords.

I think I'm pretty knowledgeable, but I don't know who that is. Obviously Hendrix stole it from someone, and then introduced it to more people than whoever he stole it from. That's not the point. Hendrix heard somebody else tuned that way, thought it was cool and different, so he copied them to be cool and different.

 

[Spaced Out Ace]

I guess guys like Huddie Leadbetter were no where near as famous as Hendrix, but I think it's another issue with perspective. People like that seem famous to me, since I'm a guitarist, but I'm sure few modern non-guitarists have any clue who he was, whereas they'd for sure know Hendrix. But, then again, how many guitarists could those sorts of people name other than Hendrix, EVH, and maybe Slash?



Yeah, you can add a 9th (octave up from the 2nd, which, ironically is the same note used in sus2 chords) to either major or minor chords.

Interesting.

I've not messed around with add9 chords much, as I find 3rds to be rather ugly. Not that I do not play minor and major chords, because I do. However, I feel that anything other than a root/octave and a fifth starts to make major/minor chords too congested and messy.

 

[bostjan]

Maybe you think thirds sound ugly because the thirds in standard tuning are so noticeably sour.

Major third 386 cents - standard tuning 400 cents, 14 cents off
Minor third 316 cents - standard tuning 300 cents, 16 cents off
Major second 204 cents - standard tuning 200 cents, 2 cents off

In 19edo:
minor third 316 cents = 316 cents, <1 cent error
major third 386 cents = 379 cents, 7 cents error
major second 204 cents = 190 cents, 14 cents error

 

[NoodleFace]

People that think this hard about tunings are nuts

 

[ArtDecade]

Paging Adam Neely.

 

[StevenC]

Paging Adam Neely.

Because I don't know where else to post it, I saw Sungazer live last week and they were soooooooooooo good.

 

[c7spheres]

I think the thing some people don't understand about 432 is that on guitar the intervals are still the same, it's just lower calibrtion on the tuner. It's not different interval ratios.

 

[ArtDecade]

Because I don't know where else to post it, I saw Sungazer live last week and they were soooooooooooo good.

That's awesome. I would like to check them out. Might shoot up to NYC sometime soon! Were they playing overseas or did you take a trip over?

 

[Andromalia]

I've always wondered whether that's what Metallica did on For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's latter than E standard 440Hz tuning, but sharper than Eb standard.

I have tried inputting songs from ride the lightning into a DAW to make covers: the timing is all over the place so either:
-Lars recorded live drums without a metronome
-The tape speed was tampered with, affecting pitch.

 

[StevenC]

That's awesome. I would like to check them out. Might shoot up to NYC sometime soon! Were they playing overseas or did you take a trip over?

They're on a European tour, so I took a trip over to London. Also caught Meshuggah, Vai, and Jacob Collier.

 

[CanserDYI]

Because I don't know where else to post it, I saw Sungazer live last week and they were soooooooooooo good.

One of my bucket list bands to see, Neely and Shawn Crowder together are just insane and one of my favorite rhythm sections out there.

 

[WarMachine]

I use 432hz. Have for years, but only because i found this out when i first started playing, when learning and jamming to my favorite songs and always sounding out of tune lol. I just stuck with it out of habit when i started doing my own music. Im not sure how accurate this is, but i remember reading somewhere online a while ago saying that 432hz was what symphony instruments like violins/cellos/etc are tuned to. Makes sense, because when doing symphonic styled tracks my guitars and bass are spot on with the orchestral parts lol.