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General Category => Everything Else => Topic started by: cthulhu on June 28, 2018, 12:23:16 PM
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Hello music and frequency lovers,
i want to share something with you that i recently found out and got very impressed by it. The story goes a little like this:
In 1939, an international conference[15] recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz, now known as concert pitch. As a technical standard this was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 and reaffirmed by them in 1975 as ISO 16.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch
and before that it was more like 432hz but it wasn't standarized.
There are many theorys out there about the subject, some of them go into a conspiracy theory and i don't want to get into that.
If you get interested you should research it for yourself.
Now here come the interesting things:
This is a video comparison of a "Cymatics experiment tonoscope 432-440Hz"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zw0uWCNsyw
I find it fascinating how the frequencys affect the displays. There are some videos out there how water reacts to it, so that's the reason for my headline of the topic.
Here you have a good comparison of music played in different tunings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ze44-Ppj-c
I then went to change music i have, i chose orange tree roads, and found it more pleasant in 432hz, but the quality suffered by the process. I used a wav file from the cd and used audacity to pitch he sound.
Here's a video how to do that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO1jSeP-e-o&index=35&t=69s&list=LLkVpM-ItP0lgC7RKfodHJuA
So, what do you think about it?
I for myself am just fascinated about frequencys and how they affect matter. The discussion about its implications is vast and my standpoint is, that frequencys do affect emotions. And that a standarisation is only good for marketing, i would say. To have always the same product quality, which i'm not into. I plea for that you tune your instrument how you like it the most, but the fact is that it is standarized.
When you discuss the subject there are so many things playing into it. Like flowers and plants grow better when played harmonic music, that everything is related in numbers, like you can relate the orbit of a planet to a frequency.
A german band which i very like, m.walking on the water, did an album called pluto. They said:
Tempo and basic tone of the song Pluto have a relationship to Pluto's orbit. The tempo (131 bpm) is the 34th octave and the basic tone (140.25 hz) is the 40th octave of the 248 years, Pluto needs to travel around the sun
I have a book called "nada brahma- the world is sound", a very fantastic book about spirituality and that music/sound IS life.
To this book there was a very long german radio broadcast, in which the author explained so many things and made some sound clips, like a choir singing "amen" in a church, blended into monks chanting "om". And he explained that it's about he vibrating "m" and the sound that it makes.
I'm really at the end of my abilities to express myself about this topic in english, but i hope i could interest some of you and you can do some research for our own about this.
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Was it Napalm Death who experimented with a super-low frequency that could make the audience, basically, shit themselves?
WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT??? Or do their audience show up and say 'wow, I hope they play that song that makes me shit myself! It's only a fifty mile train journey home!'
???
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Have heard that story about several bands...........not too sure about it,VERY DISTURBING if true... :o
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Have heard that story about several bands...........not too sure about it,VERY DISTURBING if true... :o
Perhaps it's an urban myth... I certainly hope so...
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Was it Napalm Death who experimented with a super-low frequency that could make the audience, basically, shit themselves?
WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT??? Or do their audience show up and say 'wow, I hope they play that song that makes me shit myself! It's only a fifty mile train journey home!'
???
ha, ha, i never heard of that and think this must be an urban myth. but there's an episode of south park, which is called the brown noise, and they find that tune ..
and then there are crowd control weapons, which use elf-waves to make you sick. but that's all quite off topic.
maybe it's my fault, i did put too much different but connected themes in the topic.
so to make it simple again, i was astonished to find out that before the standarisation of the A in 1939, all music was tuned with another A, and that A sounded better to me.
i have to think about that nma went to a certain studio to record the drums for bdaw, because they had analog equipment, which i found a very impressing move. i loved that.
to me it's fascinating to think about the differences of these recording technics.
when you record analog, there is a continuous flow of information, the string vibrates the air, the air vibrates a membrane in the microphone, the membrane vibrates "things" in the microphone which induce electric-magnetic signals, and they are recorded continously on magnetic tape. and then it goes backwards.
when you record digital, the signal is cut down to 1 and 0, either a peak or nothing, and that is done thousand of times per second, but there is nothing "in between". does this affect the spirit of a sound? is there a spirit of a sound?
you have to try it out yourself, watch the man play the guitar, listen and find out if you prefer a sound/tune/hertz:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ze44-Ppj-c
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Blimey - that's a big topic :o
Some of passed straight over my head I'm afraid. I found it interesting to find out about the standardization of A , not something I knew about or had even considered. It makes me wonder how much "non-standard" music is out there somewhere waiting to be created and how much has been missed out on.
I watched the video link you posted and I preferred version 1 - no idea why and perhaps I would have preferred version 2 on another day. What are the interactions going on that makes us lean towards one thing over another?
There is a noticeable difference between analog and digital sound but you have to go back to older technology to hear it but it's there and yes I do believe there is a spirit of sound and we've stopped hearing it - digital cuts it out.
Non verifiable "evidence" here: plants most definately do respond to sound, nurseries I've known have played music in greenhouses/polytunnels and these are commercial ventures. It doesn't have to be music either, I talk to my plants and I KNOW I get better results than when I don't.
An interesting, if big and complicated, thread Cthulu :)
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Apparently, 'the brown noise' is, quote, 'A note that is ninety-two octaves below B-flat. Hearing the brown noise makes people have an uncontrolable urge to shit their pants'... perhaps a more technical mind than mine can explain if this is possible? Means sod-all to me! ;) Cthulhu?
Sorry to keep returning to this, but I'm sure I remember reading some hardcore band talking about this...
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Some weeks ago I was at a gig of a guitar player - accustic guitar and playing finger picking
Between the songs he told us, why and how he`s tuning one of his three guitars and we could follow how the sound was changing
I´ve never realized before how much changing the tune of the same guitar is important for not only the sound, but also way of the fingers of the player have to change the way to play it
And that accistic guitars don`t like some special tunings for longer than a gig - they want to be tuned in their normal way before stored away ...
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The "brown noise" reminds me of a story I`ve been told (and that`s not a hoax):
Many years ago Jan Akkerman (guitar player of "Focus") was touring solo, it was a very small venue, someone after the gig asked him for the way to the toilets - and he aswered:
"Just follow the brown line" ;D
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There is definitely something about bowel loosening frequencies going by the stench of guff in the Pit for certain songs.
Cheers
jc
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Oh, c'mon folks..seriously? Brown noise splattered all over this wonderful topic? Kind of an obsession is showing...;-) That's all your fault master ray;-)) But ok, i'm glad that there is a little discussion going on here and i'm glad that Anna also found is fascinating, that the main tuning tone of music was standarized and it is argueable, if for the better.
But to come back to the brown noise *facepalm-smiley*
i definetly think, this is an urban myth. but on the other hand, there are weapons out there, which use sound/frequencies:
A long-range acoustic device has been used by the crew of the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit to deter pirates who chased and attacked the ship.[3] More commonly this device and others of similar design have been used to disperse protesters and rioters in crowd control efforts. A similar system is called a "magnetic acoustic device".[4] 'Mobile' sonic devices have been used in the United Kingdom to deter teenagers from lingering around shops in target areas. The device works by emitting an ultra-high frequency blast (around 19–20 kHz) that teenagers or people under approximately 20 are susceptible to and find uncomfortable. Age-related hearing loss apparently prevents the ultra-high pitch sound from causing a nuisance to those in their late twenties and above, though this is wholly dependent on a young person's past exposure to high sound pressure levels.
High-amplitude sound of a specific pattern at a frequency close to the sensitivity peak of human hearing (2–3 kHz) is used as a burglar deterrent.[5]
Some police forces have used sound cannons against protesters, for example during the 2009 G20 Pittsburgh summit[6], the 2014 Ferguson unrest[7], the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protest in North Dakota[8], among others.
It has been reported that "sonic attacks" may have taken place in Cuba in 2016 and 2017, leading to health problems, including hearing loss, in US and Canadian government employees at the US and Canadian embassies in Havana.[9] Some events as reported would seem to violate the laws of physics,[10] and it has been suggested that they are in fact an example of mass psychogenic illness.[11] Cuban investigators have reportedly dismissed claims that sonic weapons have been used against American diplomats, describing them as "science fiction".[12] The US issued an alert to its employees in China after it learned of a possible "sonic attack" on a US citizen working there. The employee complained of symptoms from late 2017 through April 2018 [13], then returned to the US and was examined by a doctor who said the person had suffered a mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). The US diplomat likened it to the incident which they say happened in Cuba.[14] In early June, 2018 several employees were evacuated from their work in the U.S. Consulate offices in China and sent back to Pennsylvania for testing and diagnosis after sharing similar concerns.[15]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_weapon
but that is really not what i want to talk about here in this thread, may be i should open a special brown noise thread 8)
I now think that the word frequency makes this thread like a subject which many might feel is too technical and out of their knowledge space, but it isn't. My interest lies in the standarisation of that tone, which every other tone then comes from and relates to.
So Anna listened to a comparison of tuning and also felt that 432hz has a nicer feeling to it. Well in that case.
So what i'm thinking about is, how much would the music i listen to sound different if tuned in 432.
I've tried it out with "orange tree roads", one of the more uplifting and very beautiful songs of the repertoire, and it even sounded better, but sadly the conversion took a huge bit of overall quality.
I think this will be easier if you have single instrument music, and all the examples i listened to on youtube, which had an immediate impact and a better feeling were piano sounds.
And yes, i also think there's much more in between music, a spirit of resonance which goes somehow away by making it pure digital mathematics. i'm very pleased that the analog long players have some kind of revival through the years and i found some interesting youtube videos of how to properly set up your player, because the technic behind it reacts very subtle to mechnics.
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Hello Klaus, do you think the tuning preference is related to the pitch of your voice as you subconsciously try to sing along in your head.
Cheers
jc
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hey jc,
i don't really get what you mean? i think there is a 1,117% raise of speed, as a frequency is how often per second it "vibrates" when tuned to 432, and maybe yes.
the thing is that i'm just used to the standard pitch and if i imaging music pitched differently there would also be a raise in the singalong in my head.
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When you sing a tune in your head you engage the muscles and vocal cords silently, so I am suggesting perhaps you may prefer the tuning most comfortable to your vocal register; just my thought no facts to back it up.
Cheers
jc
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It doesn't surprise me to read about the sound "weapons" you mention cthulu - I was aware of some of them already - In the fevered conspiracy theorist corner of my brain I imagine there is an awful lot more work being carried out in this field, after all hearing is one of our major senses and anything that upsets the working of it is a highly effective disruptor. Anyone ever had bad earache?
JC's question is also one I find interesting as it raises the relationship between standardization and individuality. No two human beings are identical so why should any sensory input have a standard impact on us, Visual art doesn't so why would sound.
Cthulu I don't pretend to really understand how the process works but maybe if instead of Orange Tree Roads you tried a more accoustic based song you'd get better results, you say piano works better what about Brave New World 2? If we could hear the difference in something that we know it might be a better example.
And yes, i also think there's much more in between music, a spirit of resonance which goes somehow away by making it pure digital mathematics.
I don't know how this could be scientifically proven but I'm convinced it's true. Reducing something that is soulful/spiritual/intuitive (?) to a mathematical construct must surely lose part of what it was in the process?
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Two things. 1 - this is a really interesting discussion (and sorry for bringing up the whole 'poop' thing). 2 - I think I might know where my idea came from... writer William S Burroughs did come up with the concept as 'black noise' or a 'black noise bomb', it something that could destroy certain substances by sound alone and may even have patented the idea, that's uncertain. David Bowie then talked about in an interview in the 70's. During the 90's (when those two fine gentlemen were back in fashion) I suppose some band or other might have appropriated the concept in an attempt to be controversial (hey, this was a decade when people would pay to see The Jim Rose Circus Sideshow!) and all that stuff got mixed up in my memories... but I'm still sure I remember a band saying they were experimenting with it! Cannibal Corpse perhaps?
Anyway, loving this thread (even though I perhaps understand little of it!), please continue and elaborate!
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You don't have to excuse yourself master ray, i was just kidding, maybe i feared i bit that the discussion would turn into one from another planet like from uranus( muahahaha ;D) but the poo-topic is also an interesting one, thank you for the explanations.
No two human beings are identical so why should any sensory input have a standard impact on us, Visual art doesn't so why would sound.
i don't think thats quite true, at least how i understand what i think you mean. for example: the taste of bitter should be the same by everybody, or the taste of very hot food. you body sensors will recognize immediately what its about, but everybody deals with it individually. i do think that there are some universal rules out there and i do think that like "the golden ratio" in visual arts is something universal when watching a picture.
The golden ratio is also called the golden mean or golden section (Latin: sectio aurea).[3][4][5] Other names include extreme and mean ratio,[6] medial section, divine proportion, divine section (Latin: sectio divina), golden proportion, golden cut,[7] and golden number.[8][9][10]
Mathematicians since Euclid have studied the properties of the golden ratio, including its appearance in the dimensions of a regular pentagon and in a golden rectangle, which may be cut into a square and a smaller rectangle with the same aspect ratio. The golden ratio has also been used to analyze the proportions of natural objects as well as man-made systems such as financial markets, in some cases based on dubious fits to data.[11] The golden ratio appears in some patterns in nature, including the spiral arrangement of leaves and other plant parts.
Some twentieth-century artists and architects, including Le Corbusier and Dalí, have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing.
so this is also only a belief, but it is out there.
the thing with the tuning, like the "A" which then is expressed in numbers showing the frequency of it, like 440 or 432 in vibrations per second(which is a 60th of a minute and so on..) is that the artist were always trying to find out how nature works and they discovered some things which seem to be rules and they put it in numbers, or correlations etc..
there is always some kind of math behind it and that subject i find fascinating. like old architecture tried to use that numbers in the way a building was planned.
but back to topic, the tuning. anna you mentioned brave new world 2, which was a good proposal but then i thought about caslen. i converted it and if someone is interested in the conversion you could pm me with your email and i could send you a dropbox file of it.
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Enjoying this thread. Not very knowledgeable about any of it but I do like questions that make me think :)
Ok I take your points re: the golden ratio and mathematical basis for things but if that is all that's involved how can 2 people have very different responses to the same picture? If it's just math then that negates any form of self determination doesn't it ??? Now I think this strays into philosophical territory but how do we know that what I see as blue is the same as what you see as blue, that what I taste as chili is what you taste?
Back to the sound question ..... will drop you a PM :)
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I found something that fits the best in this thread.
It's a good explanation about the differences of analog vs. vinyl technology. Sadly its in this youtube style, where people really try to speak as fast as they can and this gets on my nerves.
And when i think about it seems to me that this is part of the effects of that digital technology, to compress everything and make everything faster. it has to be fast to get close to analog. but here i'm just philosophing... 8)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzRvSWPZQYk
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Kudos! Seriously dope as in HEAVY topic, this thread. Am compelled to ask, though, Cthulhu, you strike me as someone who is musically inclined. Do you play an instrument(s) and if so, which do you play? Are you formally trained or self-taught?
For me, I am addicted to sound in general... not just music, per se... if that makes any kind of sense to anyone else floating here. I not only want it, but I crave it, need it, feed off it, thrive and die in the same go sometimes, too. It consumes my every waking moment, sound... moreso than anything visual, or written for sure. All sound is MUSIC to me. All of it. There's no line in between. One blurs right into the next, and so forth. From everyday mundane background noises, to people speaking in different tongues, even accents, and speech impediments are equally just as thrilling, vibrant, illuminating, to me - through to and including what is more commonly referred to as music... I soak and savour ALL of it.
There is a very big difference between analog versus digital, but I'm split down the middle. I love both for very different reasons. I think it all depends on what you want to accomplish, achieve, are in the mood for at that given moment. What I want to know is why the fcuk am I moreso drawn to minor keys, chords, and dissonance... generaly speaking. Never had that explained to me before. Why do certain notes resonate better in me, with me, through me... than others, I often wonder.
Hmmm, deep thoughts, weightful questions. Man, I ask way too many questions... sorry. :-[
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Deep thoughts are welcome! I find this topic is connected to everything, so let your thoughts fly.
To answer your question: many years ago i had a band and we improvised all the time. we were 6, most of them real musicians, i started as a singer but then bought a bass and just played with it. so i guess i'm a self-taught bass player. it kind of started even more early, when we sat around in our living rooms and began to record music, improvised on instruments or anything else that made a sound. this somehow became a real band with amps in a room and very loud!!
in my opening post i mentioned: "nada brahma - the world IS sound" by joachim ernst-berendt, an old german radio feature, which i would recommend for you.
i think it adresses everything you asked and mentioned and is a mind-blowing, marvellous feature with so much information that will take your thoughts to a new level.
sadly i couldn't find an english version, but maybe you can find something similar to it?
for the german speakers i finally found this:
Nada Brahma - Die Welt ist Klang 1/4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpjpvjLRd0E&t=1955s
So just an example out of it:
at around minute 17 he explains that when singing "ohm" the whole body resonates and shakes and that from this "ohm" out of tibet, the christian "amen" as just a stronger vocalized version of "ohm" became..
and he the then he fades tibetanians monks chanting "ohm" into a christian choir singing "amen"...wow!
So the feature is about sound as the essence of life.
in the feature you will hear about language, musik, harmonys and the connection to the mathematics of harmony and the planets, mantras and so much more, and with so many musik and sound examples.
in this, the first part, is musik by:
ali akbarkan, a choir tibetaninan monks, hendel, johann sebastian bach, peter michael hamel, pink floyd, a balenesian gammelan orchestra, ben webster, john coltrane, santana, don charie, a brasilian makumba ritual, duke ellington
and this is only the first part.
at around minute 47 you can hear pulsars, the rhythm in the universe...
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Deep thoughts are welcome! I find this topic is connected to everything, so let your thoughts fly.
To answer your question: many years ago i had a band and we improvised all the time. we were 6, most of them real musicians, i started as a singer but then bought a bass and just played with it. so i guess i'm a self-taught bass player. it kind of started even more early, when we sat around in our living rooms and began to record music, improvised on instruments or anything else that made a sound. this somehow became a real band with amps in a room and very loud!!
Thanks for sharing that, answering my question(s), Cthulhu. :)
in my opening post i mentioned: "nada brahma - the world IS sound" by joachim ernst-berendt, an old german radio feature, which i would recommend for you. i think it adresses everything you asked and mentioned and is a mind-blowing, marvellous feature with so much information that will take your thoughts to a new level. sadly i couldn't find an english version, but maybe you can find something similar to it?
Always wanted to learn German, well, as many languages as I could handle, actually. But when one can't apply what they've learnt, as in put it into everyday practice, use, it ends up getting lost. :( Lost most of the French I studied in school, because, it's just too difficult to retain, when it's not being put to use on a more regular basis.
for the german speakers i finally found this: Nada Brahma - Die Welt ist Klang 1/4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpjpvjLRd0E&t=1955s
Still going to view it, lol even though I won't really know what's being related.
So just an example out of it:
at around minute 17 he explains that when singing "ohm" the whole body resonates and shakes and that from this "ohm" out of tibet, the christian "amen" as just a stronger vocalized version of "ohm" became..
and he the then he fades tibetanians monks chanting "ohm" into a christian choir singing "amen"...wow!
So the feature is about sound as the essence of life.
in the feature you will hear about language, musik, harmonys and the connection to the mathematics of harmony and the planets, mantras and so much more, and with so many musik and sound examples.
in this, the first part, is musik by:
ali akbarkan, a choir tibetaninan monks, hendel, johann sebastian bach, peter michael hamel, pink floyd, a balenesian gammelan orchestra, ben webster, john coltrane, santana, don charie, a brasilian makumba ritual, duke ellington
at around minute 47 you can hear pulsars, the rhythm in the universe.
I'll have to check that out, thanks again Cthulhu. :)