source file: mills2.txt Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997 05:10:04 -0800 Subject: Re: AD3 ? From: rtomes@kcbbs.gen.nz (Ray Tomes) Daniel Wolf wrote: >Just a quick question: I recently had some rehearsals with members of >Ensemble Modern here in Frankfurt and noticed that they tuned to A=443. Is >a similar upward drift in fashion elsewhere? and smith@cnmat.CNMAT.Berkeley.EDU (Ronald Smith) replied >Yep, has been for some time now. I didn't know about this but found it fascinating because I believed that A=440 was too low. My reasons for this are several. Anyway, 443 is still too low it should be 450. 1. In indian music the note "ni" is 450 Hz. For the Indian music scale see http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/in_music.gif 2. There often exists an electromagnetic standing wave around the earth called the Schumann resonance. It has one main frequency mode given by the speed of light divided by the earth's circumference or 300,000km/s / 40,000 km or 7.5 Hz. When the natural Just Intonation scale is calculated with this as a base you get ratio 24 27 30 32 36 40 45 48 *7.5 Hz 180 212.5 225 240 270 300 337.5 360 Which gives 225 Hz or 450 Hz exactly the same as the Indian music frequency. 3. Before the standard A=440 was set the naturally chosen value was heading for 450 (please correct me on this one). 4. The tempo of music, which may be seen as an extension of the key, is found to favour a slightly faster or slightly higher A. This also leads me to an answer of 450. I will do a seperate post about this another time as it is another whole subject. So I think that people naturally want to use notes that fit the frequencies in 2 above which will be the key of F and other keys based on that. That is because our brains are affected by e/m fields in general and the Schumann resonance in particular (this is well established). Any other option is against (our) nature. -- Ray Tomes -- rtomes@kcbbs.gen.nz -- Harmonics Theory -- http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 15:08 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA08833; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 15:08:33 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA09597 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id GAA05124; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 06:06:49 -0800 Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997 06:06:49 -0800 Message-Id: <199703080903_MC2-1249-C500@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu