Solfeggio Frequencies, The Music Industry and You

I think if anything I would want to tune down.
Also this means that when I use a slide on a guitar I can hit those magic frequencies in any tuning, if they were out of tune with the progression what would that mean?

The reason why many musicians tune differently up or down is that it can change the way it sounds and plays, it's like a way of being different.

reply to post by iggy50


How refreshing to hear from you.

Just a quick question, is just the A string that is tuned to 444 or all the strings? Really interesting topic.

Originally posted by Allis1
reply to post by Sunspots

 

So are your basically just talking about scales major, minor, blues which the names of hint at what kind of mood will be created when played accordingly?

Well, no, but I certainly don't blame you for being confused here. I have approached this from a musician's standpoint the whole time and sometimes I forget to explain everything.

Let's say you take a blues song that lives up to its genre's name, and you transpose it with Audacity so that the guitarist's A-string would be at 444 hz. To do this for MOST songs you do a +4 hz shift. Well, in my experience, that blues song may become strangely uplifting. I hope that helps.

I'm sort of echoing the post by asmall89. Solfeggio, as far as I know is a way to "sight sing" music. That's all it is. Here is a link explaining it.

en.wikipedia.org...

The OP seems to be more concerned with variations in "concert pitch" and their effects. Concert Pitch is well explained here:

en.wikipedia.org...

Nowadays the most prevalent "concert pitch" is A440 but while trying to learn a version of Amy Winehouse's "Take the Box", I was frustrated until I tuned my guitar to A435. Her band was tuned that way. I looked for a reference to that tuning.

The most vocal opponents of the upward tendency in pitch were singers, who complained that it was putting a strain on their voices. Largely due to their protests, the French government passed a law on February 16, 1859 which set the A above middle C at 435 Hz. This was the first attempt to standardize pitch on such a scale, and was known as the diapason normal. It became quite a popular pitch standard outside France as well, and has also been known at various times as French pitch, continental pitch or international pitch (the last of these not to be confused with the 1939 "international standard pitch" described below).

There might be a whole lot more going on with this, in the ATS style, but most musicians, I think would have a similar response to the topic as this one.

Originally posted by origamiandurbanism
Just a quick question, is just the A string that is tuned to 444 or all the strings? Really interesting topic.

Isn't it? All the other strings would be in tune in relation to that 444 hz A-string. But, if you can calibrate your chromatic tuner to 444 hz, you can actually use it to tune as usual for each string. The +4 hz on the A is taken into account for each and adjusted accordingly.

Recent developments in this thread suggest that this really is a highly complex issue. The above description is how to make the closest even-tempered scale to the solfeggio frequencies, and this is what Animal Collective and other bands apparently do, but the actual solfeggio frequencies are not exact half- and whole-steps apart (though they're extremely close, and that's probably why the 444hz even-temperament scale still feels so good).

Originally posted by ipsedixit
I'm sort of echoing the post by asmall89. Solfeggio, as far as I know is a way to "sight sing" music. That's all it is. Here is a link explaining it.

en.wikipedia.org...

The OP seems to be more concerned with variations in "concert pitch" and their effects. Concert Pitch is well explained here:

en.wikipedia.org...

Nowadays the most prevalent "concert pitch" is A440 but while trying to learn a version of Amy Winehouse's "Take the Box", I was frustrated until I tuned my guitar to A435. Her band was tuned that way. I looked it up.

The most vocal opponents of the upward tendency in pitch were singers, who complained that it was putting a strain on their voices. Largely due to their protests, the French government passed a law on February 16, 1859 which set the A above middle C at 435 Hz. This was the first attempt to standardize pitch on such a scale, and was known as the diapason normal. It became quite a popular pitch standard outside France as well, and has also been known at various times as French pitch, continental pitch or international pitch (the last of these not to be confused with the 1939 "international standard pitch" described below).

There might be a whole lot more going on with this, in the ATS style, but most musicians, I think would have a similar response to the topic as this one.

I don't expect everyone to read the whole thread, but I've already mentioned several times that I know solfeggio has several meanings. In fact I have seen "solfeggio tuning" used to describe anything outside of A440. That's irrelevant here though. People call the frequencies I speak of "Ancient solfeggio frequencies" and as such I have used the same term. This isn't about diction, it's about semantics.

reply to post by Sunspots


Ahh yes, I see what your saying.

Well I do believe we resonate and I do believe that music does effect us, to me that is quite obvious, go to a metal gig and you see people going insane, go to a electro night and you see people dance, I am about to do the latter

So have a nice evening

oh and If you ever find out what the pink note AKA the one that induces female orgasm please let me know

Peace out

Thanks for the info, sunspots. I have a chromatic tuner I was just confused whether to only tune the A string to that or all of them to try it out. I've also heard about tuning to 432.

reply to post by happymoon



Ok, yeah Cymatics are really neat and yes everything is vibration over time, particle, wave motion etc.

I would think that if a sound was powerful enough to change your dna it would be a weapon, something like a Romulan disruptor. I think if your dna vibrated enough to change your skin would melt off or something.
('')

Originally posted by Sunspots
I don't expect everyone to read the whole thread, but I've already mentioned several times that I know solfeggio has several meanings.

Sorry. Good luck with your quest.

reply to post by ipsedixit


It's fine, didn't mean to sound harsh! I have just been met with a lot of skepticism, and as well I want to keep this discussion on track.

Anyone know if there's a plugin for Winamp that resamples a 44,100 Hz sample rate to 44,400 Hz?

edit: Of course I'd have to find a soundcard that supports that sample rate... so - nevermind.

reply to post by iggy50


none of my music seems to be in 440,but from what i understand in your post the most important thing is that the frequency stacks up numerologicly to a 3,6,9 . so can i then adjust a 3140 to a 3150 so to speak?
super post O.P. thanks

yes the important thing is to be tuned in according to the way spatial geometry is perceived by our senses, it is all linked to the prime numbers and the Fibonacci sequence, nature seems to organize chaos into several harmonic patterns, a.k.a fractals, imagine it as a fractal made of sound progressing and expanding, contracting in our minds, but keeping its structures harmonic and self iterating towards ever more complex sound escapes.

If one studies Hindu music and Hindi composition , some of these concepts become evident, the interweaving of vibratory patterns with underlying harmonics create as a whole a vibratory experience unlike no other.

Modern musicians know very little, and the ones making it "big time" inside the power structures of the musical industry have other agendas in mind, agendas where the study of the mystery in the underlying structures that conform our part of perceptible universe is out of the question.

reply to post by origamiandurbanism


Once the A string is tuned to 444hz creating the 528hz middle C, all other strings are tuned to that string, to 444hz. interestingly, when using my harmonicas that are tuned to 440hz, it is hard to hear them not harmonizing with the 444hz tuning. Pretty cool. Be sure to try 432 also. It is powerful too.

reply to post by yets777


Those frequencies are pretty lofty, so I'm not sure. What is important however speaking as a guitarist is that whatever tuning you use, the rest of the open strings tuned to your base tuning frequency reflect a frequency that adds up numerologically to either 3, 6, or 9. The 444 tuning does just that. The 432 supposedly does something similar but I haven't found absolute proof of that.

reply to post by Sunspots


Thank you my friend. I suggest trying the plethora of binaural beats found on youtube and web stores that utilize the 528 frequency and its associated tones. Put on some headphones and feel the energy. NewAgeMan has done some wonderful threads on this stuff.

I realize what you folks are talking about now. It was just the use of the term solfeggio that was throwing me. It has a very narrow meaning in the vocabulary of music, or it used to have.

I remember reading an article in Guitar Player magazine years ago where they talked about the use of guitars with altered fretboards. There was a company that was producing a guitar that would accept a number of different fretboards, also produced by them. Each string on the board would be fretted on a scale that progressed according to properties of the audible spectrum that were different from the tempered scale. Overtone series and other methods.

Pythagoras was also interested in the mystical properties of music and the effects of different harmonies. It's interesting stuff. Most musicians just look at music as a sort of language, a discursive language with intellectual or emotional content to be communicated.

There is a whole yoga of sound in Hinduism. This thread seems to be about merging musical performance with that yoga of sound and even going beyond that to a musical physics or a musical approach to any human discipline. Intriguing.

I think using the term solfeggio in regard to all this is misleading, though. It's like using the golfing term "putting" to talk about ballistics. My two cents worth.

Originally posted by Sunspots

I admit that your first paragraph is very astute. How could they have tuned the same way? Maybe they couldn't have.

As for your second paragraph, well, I just disagree. To each his own. It's been wonderful for me, but I'm sure if you believe it won't help you, then it won't.

edit on 26-2-2011 by Sunspots because: (no reason given)

I didn't know if you meant how musicians decided how to tune A the same way or all pitches. I forgot that they also used tuning forks back then so they would have used those to tune to the same pitch (it's also how we could tell what frequency they were tuning too). A lot of tuning is done by how intervals are supposed to sound. For instance in the String Class I'm taking we tune our violins to A's to the pitch given by the teacher or piano. We then tune the next pitch E which is a fifth by ear, what helps me is thinking of the tune twinkle twinkle little star to get the correct pitch. When an Orchestra tunes they tune to the Oboe's A or in Band they tune to the B flat.

Equal Temperment tuning is used in piano's because they have to "split the pitch" so to say to be able to play in all 12 keys. An orchestra does not use equal tempermant and can play in all 12 keys. There is no doubt sound can do wonderful things and is extremely powerful, I just am a skeptic on this and don't think the music industry came up with a sinister plan to tune everything to 440 because it's less pleasing. However the music industry being a corrupt corporation I do agree with, somewhat at least lol