I did a quick search and was surprised to find that this question hadn’t been asked previously.
There’s a movement to ‘enshrine’ the octave above Middle C (C5) to 528Hz (from the 523.251 obtained via A440 Equal Temperament tuning). The links and justifications seem to me to be filled with questionable relationships and leaps.
There are references to DNA ‘repair’ and several doctors (Dr. Leonard Horowitz, Dr. J. Puleo) are referenced as well. My google-fu is failing me on getting to the bottom of the claims of ‘repair’ so I thought I’d turn to the Straight Dope.
Well I did a keyword search on the terms used in the title, and the first hit was a website entitled “Paradigm Shift Into The Fifth Dimension” which had a blog entry labeled “528 Hz Ancient Secret Miracle Healing Code Returned to humanity ~ The Solfeggio Frequencies 13-33-333” and connected to the following categories: Angels, Ascended Masters, Ascension, Channellings, Numerology, Planetary Healing, Psychic Experiences, Sacred Geometry, Spiritual Development | Tags: Ancient Solfeggio Frequencies, Atlantis, DNA, Egyptians, expanding consciousness, Hathors, higher self, Lemuria, Light Language, Lightworker
I’m going to go out on a limb here, consult my astral aura, shake some chicken bones, call up Shirley MacLaine, and call a bullshit on this. Unless, of course, the proponents want to advance a more coherent theory and/or some kind of experimental or observational evidence substantiating this hypothesis.
What doctors? Len Horowitz was a dentist and Joseph Puleo is an herbalist. There is no “DNA repair,” there is no “ancient solfeggio” or “sacred solfeggio,” and there is no such movement, except for New Age liars, fools, and loons urging musicians to retune their instruments.
I’ve gotten into music recently and the concept of tuning and the compromises around choices made are fascinating to me.
My main interest is in the settling on that specific frequency as the ‘right’ one. I can’t seem to dig out a clear justification without getting into all that ‘woo’ you listed. There’s some reference (as I said) to papers regarding DNA and ‘healing’ (whatever that means) but I couldn’t seem to get a clear indication of what it was.
I was hoping some other member of the millions might have some data on it.
I hadn’t heard of this before, so I did some googling. All I can say is I seriously hope that the folks who wrote this stuff were joking, because most of the claims I looked at seemed like a bunch of pseudo-scientific words thrown into a blender and tossed out randomly into sentence-like structures. All I could think of were the old advertisements for the retroencabulator, only with the 528 Hz stuff I wasn’t so sure that the authors had actually intended it to be humorous.
Are they deliberately trying to reference this or are they simply unaware of the kinds of associations that kind of name would bring up?
(Honestly, I tried to think up a joke turning on that connection, but nothing I could possibly say would be funnier than the nonsense those yahoos are peddling with a straight face.)
I don’t mean to be contrarian, as I totally get what you’re saying (that this appears to be a load of hooey) but there is ‘technically’ ancient solfeggio. The modification of tuning and change to the modern incarnation of solfeggio does exist.
The question of if it has anything whatsoever to do with 528Hz seems to be (from what I can tell) a solid no.
Not only are all the arguments I’ve seen about the supposed detriments of the A=440 standard full of psuedoscientific BS, they’re also sometimes propogated by wackos full of conspiracy theories about the Illuminati and Nazi mind control and the New World Order and whatnot (sometimes quite ugly and antisemitic, as a poke around this site will confirm):
Tune your instrument however you like…FWIW in the Classical Music world the tendency in some orchestras today is towards A=442 or 443, for a presumably brighter sound.
I don’t know about ‘arguments’ about the ‘detriment’, but I do personally see that acoustic environments have resonances. When I overtone sing in the shower (that’s not a euphamism by the way ) choosing to modify the fundamental tone ‘just right’ can leave a wonderful harmonic resonating in the room. So I can see how (and perhaps why) Gamelan are all tuned differently.
With that in mind I do like the idea of ‘tuning to’ a space, a person, or perhaps even feeling/moment. So I’m interested in justifications and explanations as to why a tuning choice is made.
Yes, but most places for presenting music are built with standard tuning in mind. In other words, rather than shape the instrument to the room, we shape the room to the instrument.
As far as I can tell, the so-called “sacred solfeggio” doesn’t even really correspond with modern solfege at all. I once calculated all the tones based on C528, and they don’t correspond at all. Look:
UT – 396 Hz | A♭ - 419.07 Hz (actually closer to G395.55)
RE – 417 Hz | B♭ - 470.39 Hz (closer to A♭)
MI – 528 Hz | C - 528 Hz (as defined)
FA – 639 Hz | D♭ - 559.40 Hz (closer to E♭)
SOL – 741 Hz | E♭ - 627.90 Hz (closer to G♭746.70)
LA – 852 Hz | F - 704.80 Hz (between A♭838.40 and A887.98)
As you can see, the tuning is so off that there’s no way you could play anything in it (except something specifically written for that tuning). I mean, LA is actually more than an octave from UT (i.e. DO). I don’t even see any logic that would allow you to define any other pitches.
Going back to Renaissance times and earlier, it’s possible (and perhaps demonstrated, I don’t know) that particular tunings were indeed chosen to emphasise certain acoustic properties of particular spaces.
Namely, cathedrals. A cathedral organ isn’t something you tune on a whim, so other instruments tuned to it, and singers became familiar with it. In turn, this led to cities tending to use that pitch as a reference point for more general use. I don’t know if we have any evidence of how individual cathedrals acquired their pitch, if indeed there was any concerted attempt to pick out particular resonances.
Why settle on one particular pitch? Well, pre-1900s, every town could set its clocks so that they read midday when the sun was at its peak. Then came the railways, requiring a standardisation of time. And on the trains, came the musicians, carrying in their instruments and in their heads the pitch of the city they just left. Convergence was pretty much inevitable.
Footnote: Organs prove a useful reference-point for historical pitches, because even if they’re not functioning, surviving pipes are enough to calculate the frequencies produced.
I do get the practical reasons why convergence and standardization came about, but I have a (perhaps romantic) vision of the personal nature of sound.
It is great to be able to play together with folks from other areas, and also to be able to change keys and not have to retune your instrument, but there are tradeoffs that come with the flexibility of 12-TET and A440.
There is measurable harmonic resonance in the space and in the person listening that ‘tuning to the environment’ can capitalize on in a way that 12-TET and A440 may not allow for.
I do also understand that large instruments like the pipe organs may have been tuned for the cathedral they were in, but I’m looking for some other (perhaps more modern) investigations into tuning choices. I can see that the 528Hz thing appears to be too steeped in woo to be functionally useful or interesting though.
) choosing to modify the fundamental tone ‘just right’ can leave a wonderful harmonic resonating in the room. So I can see how (and perhaps why)