Anders Erisian
XLIII
Please do some research into this, I promise it will pay off...
Sorry for the longwinded OT post McK, I just want to add a viewpoint about instrument tuning from personal practical experience. I was always fascinated as to how consensus on the tuning of instruments was arrived at. I knew a lot of the arguments against A= 440Hz, how this was a relatively modern standard, as well as the conspiracy/new age stuff. But to me there was enough history and hype regarding the evolution of standard tunings to warrant personal investigation, beyond just 'research'.
To cut it short, for a period I mucked around with alternate tunings 432 - 430 - 428 and a few others i forgot, including directly comparing the same pieces performed in various tunings. But by the end of it all, i had reached the conclusion that the impact of these tunings was far less noticeable than the actual harmony between the instruments in the piece, their timbre, the composition, performance, lyrical content etc., all things which we know give music it's emotional power. The difference was almost imperceptible to me as far as tonal harmony goes, i could perceive the difference in tones, and hear 'beating dissonance' in different ways when direct A/B comparing individual notes, but in a song with thousands of individual notes and complex polyphony, it all just faded into irrelevance, and was always swamped by the song. A lot of the perception was on such a minute scale that confirmation bias, trying to hear something that i knew should be there, may have been a bigger factor than any genuine acoustical effect to me.
As i said, this is just my personal experience, no axiom or law, and others feel far differently about this issue than i do. It's not my intent to shoot anyone down, i just thought it was a relevant counterpoint, and entirely an opinion. But i did say in another thread on this issue that you may have trouble finding other musicians to play with, or to convince them to retune their instruments to your favourite frequency, without becoming a pain in the ass. I understand where musicwater is coming from, on some level, but the methodology is suspect. I would encourage people to experiment with tunings themselves if i really wanted to push the point, and 'enlighten' someone, not say standard tuning is wrong, bad and out of tune. I'm happy with 440Hz - it suits my generally abrasive, harsh and flawed character perfectly. I'll lay all my cards on the table here and now, and ruin any credibility i may have - I'm no 'musicologist' - no expert - in fact I'm just a philosophy graduate who specialised in formal logic/lumberjack, but i'm no stranger to spouting spurious dross myself, which is about as close as i'll ever get. I'm also happy to be RAMI's decoy if musicwater wants to compare essays