A440 or A432 tuning

A440 or A432 tuning


  • Total voters
    15
after a few whiskeys... i went down a rabbit hole listening to different tunings, from a415 to a444. meh. they do sound different, but so do drop tunings. ill stick with a440 to keep my life simple
 
how far is 432 from 440, 1/4 step? i dont have a way to check at the moment
 
-31.7 Cents.

Just a little over an 1/8 step.

Yeah, that isn't a whole lot. It certainly would feel different, but not as much as tuning to Eb. Being that guitar frets are inherently out of tune anyway, I am sure some people can hear a big difference while others can't.
 
I call BS on the basic theory. As long as you don't change the relative interval between notes the base frequency can't make a "better" sounding piece of music that applies to a wide variety of human listeners.
 
I remember watching a guy do a comparison video on YT between 440/432 & something else (Six String Samurai I think it was)..Anyway, he played the same pieces of music w/ his guitar tuned to different pitches & then in the end "revealed" that he had mislabelled the clips on purpose to demonstrate that it was nothing more than the placebo effect at work.

But when I watched the video/listened to the clips honestly I thought the stuff he'd mislabelled as 440 Hz (was 432hz) actually sounded more pleasing to my ears than the stuff he'd labelled 432hz (actually 440hz) which was more jarring (not that I mind jarring :p). So much for the placebo effect :lmao:

Having said that I'll still stick to 440 hz 'cause 432 is a PIA for too many reasons...
 
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I call BS on the basic theory. As long as you don't change the relative interval between notes the base frequency can't make a "better" sounding piece of music that applies to a wide variety of human listeners.

The intervals themselves don't change, but from a signals perspective they linear distance between notes does. If A =440hz, the A below it is 220hz lower. At A =432hz the A below it is 216hz lower. This is a near negligible difference, especially when you consider we don't hear linearly.

I think the biggest difference you would get would be the slightly "under tensioned" sound you would get from all your instruments being pitched down.
 
I'm surprised to see this posted... I have to deal with it constantly in North Carolina I was hoping the rest of the world was pretty much free of it.

Here, there is a belief amongst the Christian worship community that 432 is spiritually more holy or something like that.. as a result, I see a lot of train wrecks.. students come in to practice in 4:32 and it takes us a minute or two to figure out why everything's wonky with their tuner, or when I'm producing and recording, I've learned to start recession with is everybody on the same tuning standard?

As far as the actual timber, I think there's just too many variables to count. In classical orchestras, there were many experiments before 440 was standardized and it is true that you will get slightly different resonance in different instruments at different standards.

However just because the violin feels they're warmer down a couple of cents doesn't mean that the trombone isn't now a little muddier if you get my thinking...

Honestly, I think this is one of those Just Play Your Guitar moments where you can overthink anything... but in this case easily trainwreck a performance.
 
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I'm surprised to see this posted... I have to deal with it constantly in North Carolina I was hoping the rest of the world was pretty much free of it.

Here, there is a belief amongst the Christian worship community that 432 is spiritually more holy or something like that.. as a result, I see a lot of train wrecks.. students come in to practice in 4:32 and it takes us a minute or two to figure out why everything's wonky with their tuner, or when I'm producing and recording, I've learned to start recession with is everybody on the same tuning standard?

As far as the actual timber, I think there's just too many variables to count. In classical orchestras, there were many experiments before 440 was standardized and it is true that you will get slightly different resonance in different instruments at different standards.

However just because the violin feels they're warmer down a couple of cents doesn't mean that the trombone isn't now a little muddier if you get my thinking...

Honestly, I think this is one of those Just Play Your Guitar moments where you can overthink anything... but in this case easily trainwreck a performance.

432 is a multiple of 108, and if you know anything about the number 108 then yeah, it makes, a particular sort of, sense for people to associate similar things to 432. guitar, tho? 440 all the way
 
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