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RE: A-440 vs 432 Hz??
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kitarist
Posts: 1715
Joined: Dec. 4 2012
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 RE: A-440 vs 432 Hz?? (in reply to Bulerias2005)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Bulerias2005
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
WHo cares? so long as you play IN TUNE.
Actually, you'd be surprised just how much it matters to people beyond simply aesthetic reasons. My brother has perfect pitch and 440 Hz tuning makes him cringe and is profoundly disturbing because he grew up hearing music that was tuned to 432 Hz.
Right, but absolute pitch ("perfect pitch" was the specific name of a program to supposedly develop it and you can guess how well that worked) is more akin to having a fixed memory (recall) for pitch, at whatever frequencies one got exposed to early in life; and at some point got locked into them.
However, it does not mean recognizing a specific frequency; there is nothing magical about 440 or 432 or any other. What's more, orchestras in a long performance can start at reference 440 and by the end the string instruments could creep up by several cents just because the strings and instruments got significantly warmer.
There have been individuals with absolute pitch throughout history. However, for all but the last 100 years or so, the reference pitch has been varying wildly both geographically within the same time period, and at the same place across time.
As a quick summary, A varied from 374 to 567 Hz (!!) over the 14th to 17th century. Then the range got narrower but still significant, 377-423, in the 18th century.
Then, "During the nineteenth century the range was from about 424 to 494, a progressive rise being evident up to about 1887, reflecting no doubt, as always, a striving for increased brilliancy." And pitch generally got brought down occasionally because singers would complain that they cannot hit the notes anymore.
In the late 19th century and early 20th century the reference pitch range narrowed again, to about 435-443 Hz. Finally the 1939 conference adopted 440 internationally as shown above.
There are some papers from the 1880s that I am quoting from which contain long tables documenting tuning forks' actual pitches by year and location (which is where the numbers in the summary above are from) and a detailed discussion of factors that went into creating such a variability.
I can only conclude that whoever had absolute pitch back then was simply attuned to the prevailing frequencies (of time and/or geographic locality) that got imprinted into their brain - rather than to any special frequency.
In other words, absolute/perfect pitch is neither absolute nor perfect with respect to frequency - it is more like fixed pitch - stable recall of a random reference pitch that came about by happenstance (at least before 1940s).
One last point. Some years ago I was interested in relative vs. absolute pitch and read some journal papers. The sense from the then-latest research was that
(1) Likely everyone is born with absolute pitch;
(2) Early on, relative pitch abilities begin to develop as they are much more important, and the absolute pitch ability is usually lost by the age of 4;
(3) Absolute pitch can possibly be taught - more like preserved - if one is willing to subject their child to specific exercises in the window of 2-to-4 years of age; outside that window, very likely not possible to learn it, "perfect pitch" program notwithstanding.
_____________________________
Konstantin
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Date Sep. 27 2020 7:16:05
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Ricardo
Posts: 14806
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: A-440 vs 432 Hz?? (in reply to kitarist)
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I still associate certain notes with “colors” and I recently saw a show that explained this occasionally occurs to people because the physical locations the brain is using for both pitch and color recognition. I know that in the adds for David Berges perfect pitch course he was associating similar colors to pitches and it was funny to me because they were the WRONG colors  . I realized later that he must have assumed all humans have the same thing going on but it’s not really the case.
I would point out that in MY case, the “colors” are more associated with the guitar strings tone than absolute pitches. In other words if the guitar is in tune my brain can guess pretty accurately what note and what string it’s played on by the “color” I am seeing in my mind. But if the guitar is detuned, like a vast majority of my rock and metal guitar heroes were doing since Hendrix days, then my entire color “palette” gets shifted down a half step. So I know this thing is a “relative” association however, if I hear a vocal tone or a piano tone, it also jumps to a “color” that would be the equivalent of an A440 tuned guitar. When I sing, I am almost always associating the pitch I sing with a fretted guitar note. When ever I test myself after singing along to a song or whatever, I am usually with in one fret accurate. But it’s funny how once I KNOW the correct pitch, if I was one fret off say, then the entire song has to shift colors in my brain.
I would not be surprised if some similar association is used by supposed “perfect pitch” kids and such. They can also probably fail the correct tricky test somehow. But this 432 hz thing is silly IMO. Perhaps the brother of Volovets never had this “issue” until he made the abstract intellectual connection to the concept of 432 vs 440, and ever since he can’t “unhear” the relationship and it is reinforced by some association like my personal color association to guitar strings tone. But in the end I am dubious about it anyway. One thing for sure, the variety of tunings off of A440 is so vast regarding my favorite recordings, I know that if I had some “problem” with slightly off tunings I would have committed suicide by now. For anyone that cares, my CD Madera Sonora should be A440, but my CD with Jesus is flat because I didn’t have a tuner back stage before the show...maybe it’s 432?
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CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Sep. 27 2020 17:31:49
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