Adam Neely
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2021–2022
14:06 · 4M views · Jul 12, 2019
Adam Neely tests the claims for tuning to A=432 Hz by trying the unusual tuning systems that its proponents' numerology requires. He compares how they sound against standard tuning and temperaments.
HN points to it whenever the 432 Hz versus 440 Hz debate or tuning systems come up, and as an accessible entry point to music theory for non-musicians.
5 comments from Hacker News
Traditional western music assigns 12 notes to an octave using a tuning known as Twelve Tone Equal Temperament[1]. These twelve tones include whole tones and semitones. The vast majority of western music is composed exclusively using these twelve notes. I believe the GGP meant to refer to “microtones,” which are frequencies that don’t fall into the Twelve Tone Equal Temperament tuning system. These are commonly used in non-western music (Indian music is a typical example), and occasionally in some western music styles (blues, some jazz, some sub-genres of rock, maybe), but you’re not going to find microtones in most western music. The use of microtones would greatly expand the set of possible melodies, but those melodies would also sound very weird to someone who has grown up listening to western music. Also, these legal cases are not decided by precisely comparing the relative frequencies of notes in two different melodies. Relating all this to the article, I personally feel like music is not a good parallel for the topic of academic plagiarism since the idea is the whole point of academic papers, whereas the point of music is harder to pin down, but it’s certainly not only to expand the set of melodies and chords used in songs. Anyways, for more on music theory, I’d suggest Adam Neely’s YouTube channel [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] such as this video: this video
If anyone's interested in more about this topic, Adam Neely did interesting videos about this: this video and [LINK] (beware, starts with satire) Edit: I watched the second one again, and it actually gives some reason why 432Hz may be preferred in some way in this test.
Your post reminded me of a video[1] Adam Neely made where he explored some (to me) weird tunings, starting with one where A = 432Hz. As someone who hasn't taken any musical theory or similar, it was quite interesting to hear. [1]: this video
Your post reminded me of this video[1] by Adam Neely, where he tries various tuning systems around A = 432 Hz. As a non-musician it really made me appreciate how little I know about the technical side of music. [1]: this video
Well he does go into Pythagorean tuning later in the video[1], both a proper one and one which was made to "look nice", so bit more to it than that from what I understood. Or I might be wrong, I know nothing about music[2]. [1]: this video [2]: [LINK]