The EXTREME "Controversy" of 440 and 432.

There will never be an “ultimate test” according to which all rational beings can agree about this because it is so radically subjective. No seemingly “objective” test will dismiss the subjective phenomenon. That being said, it is not the business of musicologists to be “objective”, just as that is not the function of music. “Subjective” does not mean “relative”. I know for a fact that 432 Hertz is better because of my own radically anecdotal dealings with it. No one will convince me otherwise, and that is a dogma on the part of the skeptic and not me, because the aim is not to be “realistic” but to make music that SOUNDS BETTER.

Music at 440 all ways imbues me with a sense of anxiety. If it ever was particularly good, it imbued me with a sense of nostalgia for it, as though remembering the first time that I heard it. It would get to the point that even upon first listening to a song I would grow deeply nostalgic for it, craving it as though I had a crush. One might say that I was all ready predicting how I’d feel when the song was no longer novel to me. But novelty was not the nature of what I longed for. It was HARMONY.

Once I accidentally clicked a video thinking that it was one of a series of Tool songs retuned to 432. It had all ways been my first favourite by them; I had even tried playing it on a makeshift banjo I once made for fun from scratch. So it should have been soothing to me, especially at the altered frequency, but even irrespective of that frequency considering the possibility that there was no difference. I could not do it. It felt OFF, and it was ANGULAR. I checked the video. It was not one of the retuned versions. It was plain. Did I know for a fact that it was tuned to 440? I might as well have. People seldom state that A = 440 on the original track; it is a given, and any one who knows what 440 means would know better than to publish it at 440 and to admit to it. Besides: I recognized the track. I knew it by that sense of anxiety that, long before I had found meditation, was simply a Fact of Life when I first fell in love with that song. Now it was no longer necessary, since I had found 432.

When I first listened to an album that was tuned to 432, it changed my life. That harmony was restored; at long last, meditation and music were one and the same process. It came as no surprise to learn that monks chanted at this frequency. I could even account for my own tendency to sing out of pitch, both in vocal class and on band recordings, because it sounded more “Natural” and less “Artificial” at a time that that distinction meant a lot to me. I would all ways flatten my notes to get closer to this sense of nostalgia.

Every thing I conveyed in the last three paragraphs was radically anecdotal. But I could have made it sound “scientific” by substituting “listeners” for “me”. It would have been pretentious of me, but no moreso than what you are doing by trying to decide this matter AS A GROUP when in fact you only have your own experience (or lack thereof).

It is a matter of one’s own Spiritual Growth. Considering that so many Individuals can attest to it and come to the same conclusion, maybe this is one of a number of things that Corporations need to revise for the good of the people. It wouldn’t HURT. I know what I hear, whether you hear it or not. And the math all checks out; three is musical, much moreso than five is, (Hence we hear more waltzes than “Take Five’s”) and music happens at every second, so the number of waves per second is crucial and has all ways been so.

Some people believe that this matter will only be resolved upon testing a number of non-musicians to see what they hear and think and feel. But that is ludicrous. Just the process of being tested, for one thing, produces anxiety, which is what that test would aim to measure. Besides: most people don’t have the ear of an audiophile. They can be slammed with hyper-compressed, redundant pop music for hours and all they’ll say is “can’t complain”. This is not a matter to be resolved by either specialists nor laypeople, and least of all by the two of them working in concert with one an other (no pun intended.) Lastly consider that audiophiles are not so gullible as to believe whatever they READ, considering that they are more AUDITORY than they are VISUAL, so reading plays a lesser role in their Reality than listening. Perhaps the gullibility is on the part of the skeptics, who dismiss things based on their LACK of experience. Who is more gullible than the man who believes (or disbelieves) without experience? And who is more ignorant than the man who, in the absence of experience, invalidates the experience of others? That is not skepticism; it is dogma.

Dm.A.A.

THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN.