My mum is still, at 75, a source of wonderment. She would probably be viewed as a ‘crackpot’ by lots of people, but for me she is someone who follows their own intuition wherever it leads.
Anyway, she sent me an email about a series of YouTube videos about tuning and asked did I know anything about it. As someone who has devoted most of their life, a lot of their education to music, other than remembering that I’d heard Prince once talk of tuning, I admitted I didn’t know. I had seen the videos of iron fillings forming beautiful patterns when subjected to sine waves at various frequencies but never linked up that with my own study of the subject.
As this forum is probably filled with people much more intelligent that myself in matters of science, technology, history and music, I thought I would draw on the collective knowledge of people here to glean some light on the historical facts around tuning. From one YouTube video it was claimed that prior to the 1930s and the Weimar Republic, tuning around the world was standardised as A= 432Hz. During the 1930’s it is claimed, the tuning refence was changed to A=440Hz, the one we obviously use today. Is this true?
For anyone interested in this subject, a starting point may be :
I know this forum is possibly not the best place to discuss this sort of thing, but I frequent very few ‘music technology’ sites and no composer type sites. If anybody has links to any they could recommend I would be interested in getting other peoples take on this information, especially globally. One of the last films in the playlist above is significant, because the shaman from the rainforest is actually using A=432 (unless of course the footage has been doctored and pitch-shifted).
So, at the risk of being ridiculed, marginalised and ex-communicated, does anybody have any thoughts on this?