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An Introduction

It comes as no surprise to anyone that we live in an age where we exist amongst a thriving industry that is accessible at all ends, but this comes with a certain tradeoff that is crucial to recognise and dominate. As supply of music resources exponentially expands, the market is left open to a never-ending flow of saturation from artists in all sorts of backgrounds and this presents an ever-growing competition in the field. Decades of a booming industry have given way to a plethora of iconic and incredibly talented artists that have already gone down as the best of the best, potentially leaving a somewhat cynical attitude to aspiring upcoming artists like myself. The best people such as I can do in a situation like this is learn from those that came before me and see how others who succeeded adapted to the industry. I've been making music from the comfort of my home for a good few years now but have yet so see myself make it onto the scene, so with what I shall learn on the journey of this blog, I intend to gear it towards my desired success. It can be easy to fall into a pit of hopelessness living amongst already-established stars, but in this time I turn to small artists Ive follow along their journey to minor success, such as one of my personal favourites, Ricky Montgomery; star of the no-longer-existing app Vine turned thriving local artist in the LA scene continuing to make and sell music to this day. When I'm able to watch someone not so much more well-off than me manage to make it off their feet, it instills the determination inside of me to work hard at my dreams.

Along with this, I find it interesting how we may grow and excel in particular areas of talent but manage to simultaneously leave behind some key base details about our area of interest which can be due to simply learning from varied unorthodox approaches - most commonly more self-taught practises. Since some tidbits of knowledge aren’t exactly crucial, you can arguably get by in your field without having to read the instructions front and back; however it appears as though it may in fact hinder expert ability to a certain degree as you can only master a technique when you know its basics inside and out. I believe there’s some merit in letting yourself be humble enough to go back to the basics and this is exactly what I intend to do in terms of the production of my music and the use of synths. I intend to act as though my mind is a blank slate from this point forth and build my knowledge in the hopes that I will answer questions I never pushed myself hard enough to investigate and refresh myself upon things with which I was already familiar. The spark of this decision of mine was when I decided to watch a YouTube video on how exactly a synth functions when the woman narrating got to the point of explaining what LFOs (Low Frequency Oscillators) are, along with their purpose. I was somewhat taken aback as, though I’ve made plenty use of LFOs throughout producing my own music, I didn’t know the science behind it or even what the very acronym stood for. This made me go in on myself a little and start to ponder that maybe I could benefit from assuming I know nothing at all. 

I invite you to join me on this documented journey to learn about how musicians got where they are today and how I could achieve the very same, from the sound up.

Links:

https://youtu.be/OFeb1LK1vhM

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https://youtu.be/c3udLCvoCC0

[slaniganblog]

Moulding the Moog

My next plan of action towards learning about the bare bones of electronic music was to research on the history of the Moog synthesiser’s development and what made it so particularly revolutionary. As a way of easing myself into its history, I decided to turn to a documentary on the musical titan that I discovered on YouTube; I enjoy watching people verbally and visually express their passion for these types of things as they reminisce before a camera and it instills a similar sense of passion within me to take on this knowledge. My evening viewing was simply titled “Moog” and was directed by Hans Fjellestad.

Getting to the actual technical side of things, I’ve found that Robert Moog had began developing modules for the synth all the way back from 1964. As various models and builds were tested there was a clear favouritism towards including 3 oscillators within a synth and a filter envelope not long to follow. This was the ADSR (Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release) envelope that we still use today as one of the most prevalent of all filter envelopes and it was first developed at this time by a man named Vladimir Ussachevsky.

Oscillators and filter envelopes are already something I’m strongly familiar with, though I’m next referred by Robert to the inner workings of the synth as he dubs the “analogue board” and claims it contains over 800 parts which has instantly blown my confidence in this subject out of the water; but I press on, as this is exactly why I’m here.  Robert didn’t delve into great detail when describing the analogue board in this documentary so I took to finding another source of information; this resulted in stumbling upon a couple of fascinating, albeit even more mind-boggling, diagrams that he himself had drawn out to explain the synth’s inner workings.

After taking a minute to analyse what I see before me I find it akin to the kind of circuitry I would learn all the way back in high school Science, only far more complex. This, from a logical perspective is quite obvious, but it can be easy for me to forget that a digital sound is simply a level of voltage being converted into audio and it does in fact make the entire concept far easier to grasp. Learning a new concept requires applying existing knowledge we have on associated concepts to build upon a familiar understanding; when I clearly understand what an input is, I can better understand the ways in which it becomes manipulated by modulators and I can better understand the outcome of mixing a sample in a DAW. This is already validating my hypothesis that drawing back to the very basics will give me greater control over my production techniques at the end of the line.

Links:

https://youtu.be/XRg8R-00mjs

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A Lesson From the DX7

After looking further into the development of the Moog, I began to look further on in the history of synthesisers and eventually stumbled upon what is arguably the next great staple: none other than the Yamaha DX7. Synthesisers have undeniably been a revolutionary instrument for the music industry and the cornerstone of what would go on to create a plethora of genres in electronic music; however, their claim to fame wasn’t so instantaneous on account of them being only recently developed and thus largely unobtainable by the general public. Come the 1980s, Yamaha emerged with a brand new type of synth made with a more cost-effective method which enabled a mass of musicians to make their start in electronic music. This was the first fully-functional digital synthesiser that was open to the public and affordable to artists.

Though many people may be unaware of the synth by name, it’s guaranteed that the vast majority of people, especially in the time of which the DX7 was booming, will have heard one of its signature sounds. Manufactured in 1983, The Yamaha DX7 made a breakthrough as the first complete digital synthesiser, setting a divide from its analogue predecessors. Due to being what’s known as a PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) synth, the DX7 relied primarily on its factory samples instead of using oscillators and complex effects. The tradeoff of this making the synth vastly more affordable to the public is that it required far more complex programming to generate your own unique sounds with the synth which is the reasoning behind its factory samples becoming iconic sounds in 80s pop that many will recognise even if they are unaware of its origin.

I find this information to be somewhat of a relief to me, as a musician, as I spend a lot of time fixating on how everything I craft must be my original work and if I resort to borrowing from other resources I must be some sort of a failure. Learning about the fame of the DX7 makes me realise what a toxic mindset this can be and that piggybacking off of other people’s creations doesn’t have to be a negative thing and can even help both myself and other creators grow. Looking to Queen, a band that I have much love and respect for, it is known that the DX7 was featured in plenty of their works throughout the 80s and even defined some of their most iconic sounds, such as the intro in “One Vision”; not to mention the iconic “Take On Me” from A-Ha borrowed a DX7 sample for their opening bassline. Clearly if bands like these are content with sharing some of their stardom with another manufacturer’s hard work, there can be no wrong in me doing much the same. Looking into all of this is less relevant to the content of my actual work and more so the approach I take towards it, which can be considered equally as important. We live in a world of collaboration and borrowing works from one another to benefit both of our successes and I believe that I can take away from this a clearer state of mind and a more positive outlook to working amongst others for mine and their prospect.

Links:

https://www.culturesonar.com/a-sound-that-changed-music-the-yamaha-dx7/

[slaniganblog]

Developing Delay

I had the pleasure in one of my recent lectures of learning about the functionality of a delay machine. Amongst having to brainstorm how the inner circuitry of a basic delay works, I was also shown something that I never realised; a delay can easily be manipulated to function as other modulators, such as a chorus or a phaser. Looking at it logically now, it seems rather straightforward that that would be the case, as a chorus and phaser simply manipulate the sound by modifying different frequencies; a chorus effect can be achieved via changing the delay time and mixing the dry/wet signals and even a flanger effect can be generated via modulating the amount of feedback in the signal. The logic of how these filters are created is now far more clear to me, but it was this bare-bones evaluation that was needed for the dots to connect inside my head.

The website theproaudiofiles.com features a helpful article by Matthew Weiss detailing creative ways in which you can utilise a delay in your music, the first of which detailing how to provide a unique stereo effect in your mix, which I find greatly beneficial as I find myself consistently looking for ways to broaden my thin mono tracks across my stereo mix with other techniques such as the Haas effect. This method is in fact arguably a more precise variant of the Haas effect as it explains that you should pan the same signal across to mono tracks, one using a 100% wet delay with 0 feedback and an almost instantaneous delay signal. Using this particular approach gives you full and efficient control over how much you wish to separate your two mono signals to give off a stereo effect.

The article then goes on to make a suggestion much like the phaser effect I had earlier experienced by showcasing how changing the interval of the delay signal throughout a track will not only modify its tempo but also its pitch. Matthew also discusses that by setting up a dual mono delay and panning them left and right respectively you can achieve a “doubler” effect and introduce width in the mix by yet another means; this is now touching upon the chorus method I was previously shown. A helpful video is provided along with this section to exhibit how the effects sound and a peculiar approach it taken by adding an LFO modulator onto the delay time itself. Matthew goes on to make comparisons in how these effects function to real-world equivalents such as scratching a vinyl record on a turntable and slowing down a tape deck which provide yet more ways in which I can relate digital techniques to more familiar experiences and this provides me a certain level of comfort when dealing with complex and inventive production techniques; yet another reminder that things aren’t as head-scratching as they may appear at the surface. The stereo effects generated in these delays are something I intend to integrate into my own upcoming work, so I value this information greatly.

Links:

https://theproaudiofiles.com/interesting-ways-to-use-delay/

[slaniganblog]

The War on Loudness

The quest for loudness is something that modern EDM artists are desperately embarking on as of late. Of course, music can’t be made “louder” by definition without achieving unwanted distortion, so it becomes a competition to use as much compression and tightening in the master as possible making everything in the mix peak the volume all throughout. Many people are under the presumption that “louder is better” and that’s nothing of a new concept; if you’re listening to music casually and a song you like comes on, you’d most typically turn the volume up so you can appreciate it more. I wanted to have a look into the reasoning behind why exactly our minds function this way, so I turned to audiocheck.net where it discusses the very functions of the human ear and claims that, when exposed to louder music, we get a flatter frequency response and the bass and treble are resultantly more prominent giving off the idea that what we are hearing simply sounds superior; it would appear that much like in the way a musical compressor works by condensing the range to make a signal more punchy, our ears condense what we process to a flatter and punchier response.

My research doesn’t end here, though, as in trying to achieve some of the techniques found in modern EDM in my own music I want to find out just how this tight mastering and compression is executed so well. It is important to note beforehand, however, that some have argued loudness need not take such priority in determining just how “good” a track sounds and it can in fact hinder the quality of the sound and present unpleasant distortion, as well as take away the emotional impact and resonance of the track due to its lack of dynamic range. If everything in a track hits equally as loud, it’s almost though there’s nothing to wait for and build to. Previous experiments have also suggested that the loudness in a mix was valued less to consumers than the actual musical and melodic content, as shown in a journal article by Earl Vickers.

Madeon is always an artist I turn to when I think of incredibly loud mixes - the way that he creates his tracks depends heavily on extreme side-chaining as well as specific frequency allocation. What I mean by frequency allocation is that he will let the beat dominate the bass range in the EQ so that nothing else can interfere and one instrument doesn’t dull another in the mix. He then typically occupies the mid register with his heavy synths, but not before slapping on a brutal sidechain of course, then finally the vocals and ambience will take the helm in the treble. This is all done so precisely that each instrument comes out with a rather thin sound, but the compression is what adds all of the weight. I took to an archived thread on Reddit from 6 years ago in which Madeon was answering questions from his fans and no doubt, some prompted him for his production techniques. Credit to him for not being a qualified teacher, he couldn’t articulate his methods extremely well but he does quote, “There's a point where it started clicking for me - it wasn't about the tools or techniques as much as some sort of understanding of the way instruments should interact with each other. It's not necessarily conscious, i'm sorry i can't offer solid practical tips. EQing and sidechaining are certainly the key for me.” He also addresses what I had picked up on, being his very precise sectioning and distinguishing of his instruments in saying, “Avoid redundancy - There's no need to have two simultaneous chorded instruments with loud highs. Dynamic is also a huge asset, having snappy, fast decaying highs on rhythmical elements can go a long way.” To take away from this, it appears that given enough time and experimentation alone I should be able to develop more of a mix I'm happy with much like Madeon has, but it’s important for me to pay more key attentiveness to each instrument individually as well as the role they play in my mix.

Ref:

Vickers, E. (2011). The Loudness War: Do Louder, Hypercompressed Recordings Sell Better? Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. 59(5). p346-351.

Links:

https://www.audiocheck.net/soundtests_nonlinear.php

https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/186kli/im_madeon_lets_talk_production/

[slaniganblog]

The Lo-Fi Legacy

Looking at popular trends in music and online music culture in the recent years, one thing that piques my interest is the rise of lo-fi culture. There’s a certain charm that can be found in giving music a distinct low-quality sound and there’s also a vast audience that resonate with such a sound. I wanted to investigate more about the uprise of the lo-fi sound and I discovered that lo-fi in fact laid its roots some good decades ago. This does in fact make sense, as we as humans are always seeking the fastest and easiest way to achieve our goals; making lo-fi music is arguably just a faster and easier way of doing so. Documentable instances of lo-fi draw all the way back to the 1950s and 60s when we look to staples in the industry such as the Beach Boys; it’s said that Brian Wilson created his very own makeshift studio in the comfort of his own home where several of the Beach Boys’ albums were recorded.

Later on in the century, now looking at the 90s, the “fastest and easiest” reasoning reigns even more true with the uprise of grunge and indie bands such as Nirvana and Beck. The very concept of lo-fi aligns heavily with youth culture and its notorious reputation to rebel and take the “lazy” way out of things, which is where the coalition spawns. The rise of boisterous grunge in this early 90’s era gave way to a new age of rebellion in music and therein followed the trend of perpetuating this raw, lazy sound to give the music both a distinct edge and less demand for such pristine quality, opening the doors to plenty of angsty youths. Grunge was about communicating pent-up angsty emotion and an obsession over quality was unnecessary if not in fact a hinderance for achieving such a result. It’s valuable for me to consider that an over-obsession in the quality of my production could potentially reach a state where it interferes with my raw emotional content and find a harmonious balance somewhere along the line.

The past couple decades and the last especially has granted incredible advancements in accessibility of musical equipment to the general public. Since the rise of affordable and downloadable DAWs available all over the Internet, almost anyone with surprisingly little money to spare can start their career in music from the comfort of their home. In this increase of accessibility and decrease of consistent quality as the market exponentially saturates with rookie producers, an entire new genre in of itself began to skyrocket. Lo-fi continues to adapt and obtain fully-established distinct genres in the music market and the lack of a production skillset has developed itself into a deliberate stylistic approach even used by big industry artists.

We now live in an age where social media dominates our day-to-day life and some music software can be obtained through no cost whatsoever - one of the most popular instances being GarageBand for Apple’s range of products - which offers almost anybody a platform to express their creativity and not only that but make themselves known across the globe by utilising the vast networks and communities of self-made artists on all social platforms. Artists like myself are emerging from their very bedrooms and ending up as titans in their community; look no further than Joji and the now late Lil Peep who made their starts making low-quality tracks and collaborating with other artists of the like on SoundCloud who know see chart-topping success all the while maintaining the stylistics of their bedroom hip-hop roots. Stories like these encourage me to believe that anything is possible and that there are always new ways in which I can adapt and reinvent my own sound to find my own personal niche.

Ref:

Harper, A. (2014). Lo-Fi Aesthetics in Popular Music Discourse. Wadham College, University of Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Links:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/time.com/5535187/joji-interview/%3famp=true

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8039377/lil-peep-career-timeline

[slaniganblog]

The Necessity of Consistency

I find myself wanting to delve into somewhat of a variety with my musical genre as I'm rather fond of a number of sounds. Most commonly, I’m a major fan of elements found in both electronic and modern rock music, so I resort to crafting a blend of the two within my music; however some of my ideas lean more heavily towards a solid electronic sound and in more recent cases I’ve taken up an interest in simple piano and vocal tracks to be more attentive with my voice. With all this considered, I’ve recently been reflecting on the relevance for me as an artist to maintain a certain musical identity in terms of keeping a consistent genre, so as not to stray from my key audience. In considering this, I look to certain examples of artists and there are in fact some cases, more typically of artists with a cult following, that despite taking a rather drastic turn in their genre they still managed to hold down a loyal following. This, to me, begs the question of whether or not an artist’s following is possibly dependent on the personality themselves instead of the actual musical content that they produce.

I turn to a cult artist known as Poppy, as I am quite the fan of her myself, and reflect on how her career began back in 2016 as a creator of pure bubblegum pop. This sound, albeit drawing in some more alternative influences, held its ground through the release of her debut album and for a while after, but more recently she has seen to delve straight into heavy metal with her latest works, signing onto a brand new label. Her music videos on YouTube appear to have seen a loss in views, although this is a trend that can be seen to develop even during her pop phase leaving it unclear as to whether or not this is a result of the genre change. That being said, her more recent videos have still been met with millions of views which is nothing short of successful for an artist like herself.

Gwen Stefani could be a more classic example of this, emerging from her rock band No Doubt in the 90s into a solo career in pop music. Stefani went on to continue with great success in the charts and her debut album “Love. Angel. Music. Baby.” managed to sell over a million copies. Despite this, when we contrast these sales to No Doubt’s debut, which reportedly sold upwards of 8,000,000 copies we can see that the success is merely that of a fraction compared to where she made her start in the industry. All of this could be a cautionary tale to not stray so far from your roots in the music industry lest you lose a crucial portion of your initial fanbase. None of this is to say that Gwen Stefani and even Poppy aren’t living lives of pure success and prosperity, but when looking more towards artists such as myself who have yet to even make their debut, it may be important to start off with consistency and know my audience.

Links:

https://youtu.be/WwoGhpYdebQ

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https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/gwen-stefanis-official-top-20-biggest-selling-singles-revealed__14183/

[slaniganblog]

Being Weird Sells

Whilst looking into Poppy’s success, I couldn’t help but also address her online presence and how she amassed her cult following from the beginning. We now live in an age where the music industry is utterly thriving and people are starting to ask, “is there anything that hasn’t already been done?” The pondering of this is possibly what leads to the uprise of weird and quirky artists in the recent years; creators are in a constant battle to draw in their audience by standing out of the crowd and what better way to do that than surround yourself with an absurd and/or outlandish persona? 

People and businesses are constantly attempting to push boundaries wherever possible to stand out as much as they can and maintain a unique identity. What has proven vastly effective in a world of status quo and formality is the abnormal; it piques an innate interest in us as we question its purpose and by that point, we’ve already cared enough to devote our attention and typically explore further. Being weird sells and cult artists such as Poppy, a band known as Death Grips, as well as even top-selling artists like Billie Eilish are success stories of the matter. Billie Eilish is a fairly recent up-and-coming chart-topping artist who’s been known particularly for her odd brand. In her music video, “you should see me in a crown”, she’s featured covered in various types of spiders and even at one point has a tarantula crawling out of her mouth. She’s continued this odd, creepy branding to this day featuring an image of her edited with whited-out eyes and a demented-looking smile on the cover of her debut album. This type of shock value that Billie presents with her work plays on one’s morbid curiosity and draws more attention from an audience that may have initially not even batted an eyelid towards her work.

   Death Grips are a key example of what’s known as a “cult” band – a band who lays low on the radar of popular media but still has a highly committed niche fanbase to support them. They’re known for their absurd imagery and experimental sound which can be seen pasted all over their work, such as in the music video of one of their most popular songs, “Guillotine” and even the cover of their most recent album, “Year of the Snitch”. They have managed to create an entire unique aesthetic to the point where I've seen a particular community on Facebook, namely a group called “Death Grips Snitchposting”, circulate absurd content they find online that they deem fits within the aesthetic that the band has crafted. This is a powerful indicator of instilled brand recognition and a dedicated community that enforces the brand.

Poppy has also built a cult following with her bizarre online presence, especially in regards to her YouTube channel. Vague and sometimes borderline disturbing videos are upload regularly to her channel, each one typically being a short, outlandish video featuring Poppy acting almost like a puppet to a greater power with context nowhere to be found, accompanied by ominous backing music. To promote her second album, Poppy.Church, a new website was made featuring ambiguous and unnerving imagery as well as a mailing list literally designed as though you’re signing up to join a cult. Even her website to promote her debut album, albeit appearing innocent at the surface, displays imagery relating to the Illuminati when viewing the HTML script for the home page. All of these vastly creative methods in selling your brand spark discussions amongst audiences and prompt outsiders to investigate, thus drawing a cycle of attention to your work and it is definitely an approach I should try to integrate into my own marketing strategy.

Links:

https://youtu.be/Ah0Ys50CqO8

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https://youtu.be/Orlbo9WkZ2E

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https://youtu.be/mVC-AEdOT04

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[slaniganblog]

Minimalist Marketing

Following the debate on how much a musician’s identity takes priority over their music, I decided to pull away from the music entirely and look purely towards the marketing aspect of one’s career, as there is a clear detectable ongoing trend in the way top-selling artists are branding themselves and their upcoming content. A highly effective way of attracting interest to one’s platform is minimalism; to present a new idea with such ambiguity and leave it devoid of all details makes people want more. People don’t like not knowing how a story ends once they’re partway through and when marketing is presented with such minimalism it doesn’t have to matter whether or not people were engaged with the brand prior; we as humans have bred a certain sense of entitlement in modern day media where we demand an explanation for unanswered phenomena and that festers as an obsession over things we don’t even want to care about. Ambiguity has the inevitable tendency to tease us and we want to get the better of it by learning more.

Before the announcement of Taylor Swift’s album “Reputation”, she had put a hard reset on all her social media removing all posts, icons and headers from all of her accounts. This is how things remained for multiple days before anything further was said and already just by saying absolutely NOTHING, countless news reporters and fans had already blown up about the situation gaining huge traction for her in anticipation of the coming album. Another benefit of minimalism is how easy it is to ingrain a brand universally when its key components have been broken down to something as incredibly basic as, for example, a colour. to launch the marketing for Ed Sheeran’s latest chart-topping album “Divide”, his Twitter had simply been updated with a picture of a sky blue square and no further context. To follow, all iconography surrounding the album had featured that same shade of blue and worked on making the audience subconsciously associate that certain colour with his brand.

  Fall Out Boy took a similar approach in the following months by centring the promotion for their own latest album “MANIA” around the colour purple, attaching purple heart Emojis to their posts on social media, placing a purple filter over various promotional artworks and releasing a new line of merchandise prominently featuring the colour. They took their promotion a step further by latching their brand onto a Unicode symbol that’s literally built into millions of smartphones we carry around in our pockets every day, namely the Emoji. Ariana Grande is also one to take advantage of the widespread of Emojis as a universal communicative tool when she released her single, “no tears left to cry”, earlier last year and featured teardrop Emojis within her promoting posts across social media. There are many ways to communicate a brand to an audience and by breaking things down to the most basic iconography it enables us to implant our ideas into vast and increasingly niche amounts of media.

To see if there is any more to be said on this recent trend I see if I can find what others have discussed on the matter online and to my delight I stumble across an article discussing the benefits and advantaged of minimalist marketing titled “Minimalistic marketing: The perfect blend of creativity and simplicity” from IRJMST in India. The article supports my earlier claims like breaking down your advertising to a simple block colour by quoting, “Using a single colour, followed by tints and tones of that colour creates an attractive composition that is simple for the viewer to understand.” What this article mentions that I didn’t even stop to consider was that minimalism is also efficient in the sense that it requires less time, money and people in the works. It also goes on to provide many examples of minimalistic marketing from several mass corporations such as Pepsi and McDonald’s. Though the article never refers directly to music marketing specifically, it is clear that the trend here has universal value across all platforms and businesses. One of the most important factors of having a successful career is knowing how to sell yourself to your customer from the very first impression and thus all of this information is greatly beneficial for me to gear myself towards my career goals.

Ref:

5. Kumar, S., Kumar, S., Joshi, S. and Avinash, S. (2018). Minimalistic marketing: The perfect blend of creativity and simplicity. International Research Journal of Management Science and Technology. 9(2). p312-321.

[slaniganblog]

The 432Hz Conspiracy

Sometimes when I’m casually browsing recent trends in music, I will stumble across something that truly dumbfounds me and is something I’d never even previously stopped to consider. The most recent instance of this is the advocation of tuning instruments to different frequencies than the set universal standard. Before discovering any of this, I wasn’t even aware that there were different tuning standards whatsoever, but the most prevalent of this instance is the A=432Hz pitch referred to as the “Verdi” pitch, differing to the universal standard that we’re more familiar with of A=440Hz, otherwise known as the Stuttgart pitch. The fact of the matter is that pitch standards went through many iterations even as recent as the last century, but as of 1955, Stuttgart’s 440 has been the constant and I imagine is unlikely to change anytime soon on account of the vast developments in the music industry in which many collaborate and blend one another’s sounds - switching this up after a decades-long backlog of music would surely create an unneeded divide between future music and all that has preceded.

It appears that the idea surrounding the A=432Hz tuning preference makes an odd spiritual argument that the select frequencies harmonise better with our hearts and bodies as well as the universe around us, so we resultantly find the sounds more soothing as opposed to the now standard; however, as far as I’m aware, the argument fails to provide any true relevant backing other than pure superficial speculation. The origins of this phenomenon dates back to 1988 from the Schiller Institute when they made an argument against the 440 standard with an experiment ran by scientists Bruno Barosi and Norbert Brainin in which the two tuned a violin to our Stuttgart as well as the 432 pitch to compare and contrast recordings of the tunings through spectral analysis. After taking the recordings, Barosi and Brainin concluded that the latter contained more overtones and was therefore superior, though this immediately comes off to me as an entirely arbitrary decider of which is the ideal tuning method.

If the argument for this is arbitrary and devoid of true purpose, I have to question why an entire institute pleads to enforce it, so I decided to press further and see if I could find any convincing basis for this 432 argument. I read about an experiment Simon Palmblad from the University of Skövde carries out to determine if an audience can distinguish what they believe to be the “better” of the two recordings when given no context behind their differences. The results concluded that the majority in fact preferred the 440 recording and as much as a quarter even said they had no preference whatsoever. The more I look into this phenomenon the less sense I appear to make of it. I can only assume that the idea sparked from how we can often prefer a lower-register piece as opposed to one marginally higher because we feel more warmth and less harshness in lower pitches, yet this still leaves the question for the fixation on 432 specifically. 

Once again, I see if I can gather any validity on this debate whatsoever; the last dying breath of this argument I can find relies on what’s known as the “Schumann Resonance”, AKA 8Hz, which is claimed to be the frequency at which the Earth electromagnetically resonates (more or less). I’ve abandoned all hope of finding a compelling argument at this point and simply wish to locate the origin of the precise choice of 432Hz. Taking a direct quote from attunedvibrations.com, “On the musical scale where A has a frequency of 440Hz, the note C is at about 261.656 Hz. On the other hand, if we take 8Hz as our starting point and work upwards by five octaves (i.e. by the seven notes in the scale five times), we reach a frequency of 256Hz in whose scale the note A has a frequency of 432Hz.” This appears to be where my answer lies and at this point I lay my search to rest concluding that I’ve stumbled upon what I can only at this point call a fully-fledged conspiracy. I began this journey wondering that if by modifying the tunings of my own music it could somehow sound “better” and have ended it answering that question with a firm no. At least I can say I’ve had a fascinating evening.

Ref:

1. Palmblad, S. (2018). A=432: A Superior Tuning or Just a Different Intonation? How tuning standards affects emotional response, timbre and sound quality in music. University of Skövde, Skövde, Sweden.

Links:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/gallery/schumann-resonance.html

https://attunedvibrations.com/432hz-healing/