Is 432 Hz the magic tuning? [It is not!]
12 min read432 Hz is one of the biggest music “conspiracy” theories in the world. Today, I’m going to explore what we know about it and why it is such a contentious topic, with many people attesting to its success, and others calling it out as another tin-foil-hat raving. We look at a topic with explanations of Illuminati involvement, to how your warm breath makes your oboe swell.
I feel like it is therefore very apt that we use the following song as the most relevant example of a song recorded at the 432 Hz tuning:
440 Hz vs 432 Hz
For the most part, modern music is tuned to 440 Hz. What this means is that the middle A (above middle C) on a piano is tuned to 440 Hz.
Music is formed out of pleasing ratios of frequency, as opposed to fixed frequencies themselves. If you play 400 Hz and 800 Hz together, you get a pleasing octave sound.
You would get the same pleasing result if it is 401.25 Hz and 802.50 Hz, as our ears like the ratio between them more than the exact frequencies themselves.
If everyone has the same pitch to tune to (in today’s world 440 Hz), then we can rock up to an open mic night with our guitar and know we are tuned to the rest of the band. Without this tuning, every time a new musician comes on, they have to adopt the “standard” of the other instruments in that moment.
An established tuning standard also means instruments which can be readily changed, like a recorder or flute, are guaranteed to be in tune with the rest of the band.
This means that over the history of music, as long as the instruments were in tune with themselves and the other instruments in the group, it didn’t really matter what the exact frequencies were.
Since then, and curiously coinciding with the widespread use of the internet, theories have come up renouncing the use of 440 Hz and calling for people to use the supposedly more natural 432 Hz.
A very brief history
We only had the “Western” 440Hz tuning from 1939, when previous attempts to unify the pitch failed. It should be noted that it never was a binary debate between 432 and 440. There were many other frequencies which were considered for middle A, most falling between 400Hz and 500Hz. That’s not to say everywhere now uses 440Hz exclusively, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra uses 442Hz.
There is something else here though that in a way is more important than anything. Regardless of your position in the debate, you must concede that the “magic frequency” whatever it may be is inherently linked to one thing in the room. Temperature.
There is a reason that many orchestras tune to their oboes. Here’s the problem: oboes are vulnerable to temperature changes which affect their pitch. They are also harder to tune than a string instrument and so they are normally the default instrument to tune to. The room temperature therefore will dictate the exact tuning that is played in any orchestra that tunes to the oboe. So if you are looking for that mystical connection between frequency and the room, there you go.
When people say that Mozart used A432, it is flat-out wrong. These old composers used pitch forks. They tuned to the pitch fork and as long as everything they used was in tune with the pitch fork, their music would sound good. If the sheet music was sent off to another composer, who no doubt had a slightly different pitch fork, then they would have heard the music in a slightly different tuning.
In fact, Mozart used A421 as proven by his pitch fork, which remains intact.
You can see below, just how many tunings there were, and how this has always been a hotly debated issue.
△Illuminati? Nazis? Rich Families?
One of the big arguments for A432 isn’t through any natural “niceness” of that frequency, though many believers combine it with other “evidence”.
There is a lot of conspiracy that 440 Hz is a frequency to promote negative feelings and cognitive dissonance by people like Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister. Other people blame the Illuminati, the Rothschilds, and any other group that we can lay blame on.
I feel like there are much better arguments using physics, maths, and music theory to disprove the case. Of course, the fact that it is secret organisations means that I can’t say “they don’t exist”, or “they aren’t doing that” because immediately the counter argument would be that “of course you wouldn’t know that”.
Schumann Resonances
Possibly the most “backed-up” argument for the 432 Hz tuning is that it is the tuning which aligns with the Schumann resonance.
This is a phenomenon predicted by the physicist Winfried Otto Schumann 1952. It describes the electromagnetic resonances in the Earth which occur between the Earth’s surface and ionosphere.
The fundamental resonances occur at 7.83 Hz, which advocates of 432 Hz round up to 8 Hz. This means that every octave goes up in a very familiar pattern (16, 32, 64, 128, 256 Hz, etc.).
In 440 Hz tunings, middle C is at 261.656 Hz, but if we were to tune our A to 432 Hz instead, middle C would be 256 Hz. This is a frequency which is “in tune” with these Schumann resonances.
So this seems nice. It’s comforting to know that your music is in tune with the Earth, and for many this will sound much less circumstantial than it is. There are a few problems here though.
Firstly, when we see people talking about this being the “base” or “natural” frequency of the Earth, they are getting it completely wrong. It is the electromagnetic resonant frequency of the atmosphere, not the Earth.
Much like playing your drum kit in a bathroom or a cellar, the room itself has its own resonances and echoes. Go into a bigger room and the ringing resonances are different frequencies. It may sound bad in one room, but not another. You don’t blame the drum kit, you blame the room and give it sound treatment. It is like this with the Schumann response.
The Earth itself is not the source of the resonant frequencies. The “cosmic” value of this number is nothing to do with mother nature, instead it is to do with the height and circumference of Earth’s ionosphere.
Secondly, one of the main causes of electromagnetic activity in the atmosphere is lightning. There is an estimated 8 million lightning strikes a day (~100/second) and the Shumann Resonances are actually measures to monitor the current global lightning activity.
There are many reasons why lightning is not constant, even the Day/Night Cycle affects the amount of lightning and leads to electromagnetic asymmetries in the frequency and amplitude of the Schumann Resonances, meaning that it is not a steady 8-ish Hz.
For 432 Hz to be in tune with the Schumann Resonance, it would have to adjust itself to the constant flux of the electromagnetic activity of Earth.
You can see from above that there is a relatively large difference in the base frequency, and while it is all within 1 Hz at this level, remember, when you go 5 octaves up you are essentially doubling it 5 times (x 25).
This multiplies out the difference by a lot and if we look at the highest part of the graph, there is a value of 8.7 Hz. Assuming that some days the field spikes that high, we would have to tune to 466.37 Hz to be “in sync with mother nature”.
Likewise, we can see that there is a low point of 7.2 Hz. To stay in tune with the Earth, we’d need to shift our middle a to a 386.7 Hz tuning.
If you notice the time domain of this graph, these variations happen over a matter of hours. and some spikes are sharp enough that somehow locking your tuning to this frequency would involve the equivalent of changing key signatures in a matter of minutes.
One website which talks of the benefits of 432 Hz (as well as those of 528 Hz) says:
Playing and listening to music that has been tuned to 432Hz would make your body, and the organic world which surrounds it, resonate in a natural way. This would fill you with a sense of peace and well-being, regardless of the kind of song chosen to play or listen to.
Let’s assume that you skipped the last part and still want to talk about the “resonances” with the Earth and nature. I can see why you would make this assumption that these frequencies are linked, but it does miss some fundamental physics.
Yes we have established that there is a resonance at ~8 Hz in the Earth’s atmosphere, and yes, 432 Hz would be both mathematically and harmonically consonant to that frequency…
But we are looking at electromagnetic resonances and sound resonances. Radio waves are totally different to sound waves. Sound travels through particles, such as air at around 340 metres per second, while electromagnetic waves are propagated by oscillations of magnetic fields, at the speed of light.
Sound waves are longitudinal, while electromagnetic waves are transverse. While both behave in similar ways, they don’t behave the same.
v=fλ
This nice little formula states that the velocity of a wave is equal to its frequency (f) multiplied by its wavelength (λ). You don’t need to worry that the symbol for wavelength is Greek, we could just as easily use another letter, such as “x”, but λ is the standard scientific symbol for wavelength.
Herein lies the problem. Sound travels at the speed of sound. Light travels at the speed of light. For something to resonate, its wavelength must be the same as (or a multiple of) the space it resonates in.
If we have a sound resonating with a 1m wavelength, we can calculate the frequency as we know the speed of sound (343 metres per second to be exact).
v=fλ
343=f x 1
f=343 Hz
v=fλ
300000000=f x 1
f=300000000 Hz
f=300 MHz
If electromagnetic waves travelled the same velocity as sound, we would have the same frequency, and we could say that the sound frequencies could be in sync. However light travels at 300,000,000 metres per second. We can calculate the frequency for a wavelength of 1 metre and see where this truly breaks down.
Even if that frequency was sound and not electromagnetic, it would be 15,000 times higher than what most humans can hear. The same problem happens in reverse. The Earth is so massive, that any audio in the hearing range is just too high pitched to make a difference. Electromagnetic resonances are about 8 Hz because they are so fast. Sound would not only have to be extremely loud, but it would also be at a frequency of 0.000009146 Hz instead of 8 Hz.
Is A432 Therapeutic?
While I was looking into this topic, I found that there were hardly any “scholarly” articles on the subject of 432 Hz. The articles I did find were regularly cited amongst each other.
One study, titled: “Influences of 432 Hz Music on the Perception of Anxiety during Endodontic Treatment: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial” concluded positive healing results. This study was the first listed result for the search term “432 Hz”, so I assumed that it would be good.
As it turns out, this one study was cited in almost all the others I found. When this happens, it often means one of two things: either it is the fundamental study which sets foundations for future studies in the area, or it is one of the only studies which backs up the point which researchers are trying to make.
The problem is, the study compares people who listen to music with people who don’t. The title of the study, followed by a cursory glance at the results would be easily mistaken for proof that 432Hz soothes dental anxiety, but really the only thing it proves is that listening to music is more relaxing than not listening to music. There is no way to determine whether the music itself was soothing or whether it was the tuning.
Way to confound your results guys …
432 Hz healing DNA?
So there are quite a few sites which discuss how DNA can actually be stimulated to heal itself with 432 Hz. As a graduated biologist, this caused me great excitement. Wow, the spirituality websites have found preventions for radiation damage, aging, cancer. What is more extraordinary, was how they discovered this with almost no academic research published!
But seriously, there is next to no research on this because the notion is ridiculous. Basic biology understanding should tell you this. I found one research paper which somewhat talked about it. The paper was written well but it was an alternative medicine paper. Not to worry though, they should still have a basic understanding of biology.
According to Maman, the tuning fork handle communicates the vibrations to the meridian, in other words to the DNA’s cells, while the resonance of the forks (the opposite side) communicates the same message to the opposite part of the meridian – the magnetic field – with the aim to delete the cause of the negative scheme, which, with the time passing by, could duplicate itself on the body of the person.
For many teachers, this original method has become the inspiration about how to use the sound therapy in their own researches. The application of the sound therapy to the acupuncture theory has been a really perfect combination.
My favourite part of the paper is where the writer takes a proverbial shit on Einstein and modern physics:
Through his own created equation, E=M* (C^2), Albert Einstein demonstrated that materia and energy are the two aspects of the same universal substance, which is the cause of the whole life and which we are made of.
“Vibrational therapy” means that all the organisms depend on a really light vital force, which creates synergies through a particular structural combination. Each material structure, then, can be considered like a complex system of vibrations: crystals, flowers, plants, animals, the whole creation has its own vibrational field, as well as the human being and his organic parts.
At no point do any of these papers or websites alluding to the beneficial effects explain how it works. It seems to demonstrate the fact that there is no real evidence on how it works. As complicated a reaction it is, the replication of DNA only has a few components with which to act on at that level. For example, I would love to know if the 432 Hz speeds up the enzymatic action of the helicase unzipping the strands. Perhaps, since it is supposedly able to “heal” DNA, it improves the accuracy of DNA Polymerases in their error checking stage.
We will probably never know, because it seems like whenever the arguments for the benefits of A432 are met with science that is deeper than surface level, there are no answers.
It seems like the bulk of evidence in favour of A432 is well crafted jargon that is enough to convince most people who don’t want to read further into it.
The bottom line
As research for this article, I did a lot of listening to songs in each tuning and comparing them. Many sounded better tuned to 432 Hz, many others sounded better at 440 Hz. I think there is a case for tuning flat in many cases, especially if you feel the sound is a little too bright. Other times, the brightness actually suits the song.
As a composer, you may well find out that another key signature may in fact be more soothing or appropriate, and that would be a lot simpler than ensuring everything is physically or digitally tuned correct.
This of course can depend further on the room and instrument. I imagine a super bright and “twangy” guitar may always sound better at 432 Hz, if played immediately after a control of 440 Hz.
There has historically been many times where bands or orchestras have tuned down a bit to ease the singer’s, 432 Hz would be a perfect candidate for this, as would any other frequency slightly flat of the original.
If you are an electronic musician, don’t even bother about tuning to 432 Hz, many DJs don’t use key lock and as soon as your track is pitched up or down in a set, the frequency will change. Even with key lock, I guarantee you that the typical consumptions of people enjoying nightlife would rapidly cancel out any claimed health benefit of this tuning.
There are also claims about 432 based upon numerology, as if the number 432 itself is significant. The problem with these claims is that the number we just to describe a particular frequency is based upon the length of the second, i.e., the precise way in which we measure time.
The length of a second is entirely arbitrary. It is an accident of history that the second is what it is. When it came time to set a more empirical basis for the length of the second as our best clocks had already come to measure it, the best we could do is pick an atom that oscillates at a rigidly consistent rate, and determine how many oscillations happen in a second as we have come to use it. That number happens to be 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Cesium atom between two of its energy states, which I think we can all agree is a rather arbitrary and meaningless number in itself. There was nothing more elegant available, and certainly nothing that could be based upon the astro-chronology of earth itself, for the length of the year and of the day slightly changes over time.
What this means, is that the length of the second as we have come to know it could just as well be longer or shorter than it is, and if so, 432 of 440 A would be a completely different note. Or to put it another way, if our second were, say, just a wee bit longer, 440A as we know it could actually BE 432A as measured by our hypothetically slower second.