Pitch shifting 440hz to 432hz...

So @johnjen mentioned something on HF yesterday that I hadn't heard about before. Basically, that shifting the pitch of A4 from 440hz to 432hz can result in music sounding interesting.

If the instruments in the music recording are tuned so that A4 is 440hz, it's easy enough to run an experiment, adjusting the playback rate to -1.81% speed. This will more or less change the pitch to 432hz, while also changing the length of the song, the tempo of the song, and generally something most people aren't interested in trying. Completely understandable; the artists intended for the tempo and speed and pitch to be how it sounds on the original recording.

However, after reading into this 440hz vs 432hz debate, I have to admit that I was fascinated. I loaded up the Soundtouch plugin for Foobar, and tried it out. Pitch adjust works, however it sounds like junk... the DSP messes the quality up. So I had to endure slowing the music down using rate adjust, as mentioned above.

What I personally found was that some songs sounded very interesting, yet others just sounded slow/not better at all. Instrumental music is probably best for trying this on... keep in mind that it's a bit of a crap shoot as the musician may have tuned to 440hz, may have tuned to 432hz, or somewhere else.

I'm not interested in debating whether this makes music sound better, whether or not the Nazi's were involved in defining the 440hz pitch, or whether there is some seemingly stupid random number coincidences between either frequency. I just wanted to bring it up as I thought it was interesting, and others may also think so.

I'm going to post some resource links if anyone else is interested in trying this experiment out...

Vice article with some info/links:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-fringe-audiophiles-who-want-to-topple-standard-tuning

Various sites:
http://www.roelhollander.eu/en/432-tuning/432-foreword/
http://www.viewzone.com/432hertz222.html
http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/20...etune-good-vibrations-from-natural-432hz.html
http://www.miltonline.com/2014/01/07/hertz-so-good/
https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/1tl3g1/calling_all_music_theory_people_can_we_please/

How to listen via Foobar with Soundtouch:
http://www.witchmastercreations.com...hz-in-foobar2000-by-adjusting-playback-speed/

 

But, but, the Nazi's WERE in on it! AND WHAT ABOUT THE PYRAMIDS!?!? CUBITS ARE A METAPHOR FOR VIBRATION FREQUENCY!! also, aliens.

Actually, this is a genuinely interesting topic for me. I was involved in concert performance from ages 10-22, and it wasn't until I took a theory class in college that I really learned the A440 standard is (somewhat) aribtrary. It blew my mind.

I have not taken the effort to reclock my music to force a 432Hz, so thank you for the suggestion. I will be spending some quality time chained to a desk with speakers this weekend, and will report back whether I find nirvana or vomit involuntarily.

 

The problem is that you're not just altering pitch. You're altering ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING in the mix too. If you record a song twice, one time in 440 and one time in 432 at a slightly slower speed to match the 440 clocked down to the playback rate that gives you 432, And shift the 440hz recording down to get 432 by clocking i down... The two won't sound the same!

The methodology here is flawed. Not only is 432 exactly as arbitrary as 440 as a standard, but slowing down music or pitch shifting it to reach A=432Hz will fundamentally change the entire mix.

To take a violin as an example. The violin is a specific length and size, has a specific resonance, and the strings at that specific size and tension give you a specific sound.

Shifting the recording down means you virtually make the violin bigger, the resonance of it deeper, the room it's in larger, the string thicker, etc.

If the mix engineer made a boost at 10k and a dip at 300, then those values will end up being lower if you ahift the recording.

To actually try this theory out, you NEED to record the music with the A=432Hz tuning. There is no way to demonstrate this otherwise, unless you're doing it with electronic music with softsynths that aren't sample based. THEN you could truly test this, because you would be creating the exact same content at a different pitch through the same mix.

I should add that what I've been reading about psychoacoustics recently completely undermines this whole theory, because what we hear as correct pitch changes with volume. Generate a 168Hz and a 318Hz sine wave. They'll sound horribly dissonant. Turn the volume up, and eventually you'll hear them as a perfect octave (150Hz and 300Hz), because our detection of pitch isn't bound to just the frequency of that sound.

 

I last read anything about orchestra tunning, err, dunno... maybe in pre-internet days, so I may be completely out of tune (pause for giggle. What? No giggle?) on this, but ISTR that that standard may not be strictly adhered to anyway. Unless my dim brain cells are completely up the creak on this, I also seem to remember that some orchestras prefer to play a little sharp, as people found that more interesting!

Indian classical music has no A=440 hangup. Indian classical music defines the intervals between the notes, not the notes themselves. You can start where you like. Actually, I suspect that, whilst still theoretically true, this has been subverted by the use of electronic drones.

Load up a bunch of studio DSP software. Play with it. Have fun. But remember, once you start using it, "bit-perfect" is out of the window and bit-juggled is the order of the day. We can have either, but we cannot have both.

 

I don't think @Mikoss was suggesting this is the right way to see if you like different standardized tunings. It's an admittedly imperfect methodology, but a spring board for an interesting thought experiment.

Also, aliens.

 

A=432 isn't a tuning necessarily and it won't achieve the intended purpose simply by pitch-shifting everything down to match 432. It stems from pythagorean tuning which utilizes perfect 5ths. In order for music to sound correct using A=432 as a reference frequency for tuning all the instruments must have been tuned using pythagorean tuning when the piece was recorded. There is music out there like this but unfortunately we cannot simply use DSP to translate music recorded using standard tuning into pythagorean tuning. Hope this makes sense.

 

As an update, and probably related to the comments about "your method won't work right" I found the music that I shifted to be, in general, much closer to the vomit end of the spectrum, as opposed to nirvana. The most interesting track I did this with? 1812 Overture. The good version from the 1979 Telarc disc. It was ... trippy.

 

@whoozwaqh did you have any recordings or YT links for some of the Pythagorean tuned stuff? I'd be interested in checking it out...

And @aufmerksam I pretty much felt the same way as your impressions. If the entire tuning structure would need to be changed, I wonder why there are so many people obsessively posting "shifted" songs on YT.

FWIW, I do hear some potential with acoustic guitar, however the differences seem fairly small. I also read that some musicians prefer the lower frequency tuning, however they have a tough time performing this way with others. Just an anecdote...

 

There's nothing wrong with 440hz tuning, it's just a number. I often tune my guitars by ear to what ever hertz one given string might be, no difference to the "correct" 440 imo.

EDIT: For truly different vibes through tunings just go D-standard/dropped or lower if you wish. A few hertz up or down does nothing really. Unless rest of the band tune to 440.

 

Hogwash.

Also Berlin Phil plays at about 445 Hz. Or is it officially 444?

Really old organs are all over the place. You'd think from all the baroque practioners that all old A's were way below 440hz, but sometimes you run into organs that are actually quite a bit higher than 440, some like a whole tone out! Quite hard to deal with when trying to incorporate such instruments into an ensemble with string players not used to tuning up so high...