Reason for Fundamental

I found out today that if you ground the input lead of an amplified speaker
(by touching it to your skin or a large piece of metal) while the speaker is
turned on, it will vibrate to some waform with a fundamental of the
frequency of the AC it is receiving, namely 60 hertz or B-quarter-flat (I
don't know why, so don't ask me.). If one tunes their music to this, the
"crackle" you hear when you plug in your instrument after the speakers are
already on and connected will actually be in tune with the music! In fact,
if you touch the plugs together without them clicking, you can use that buzz
as a tuning fork for acoustic instruments. This is such a wonderfully
obscure and useless benefit that I cannot see any reason to use a global
tuning other that 60 hertz.

Useless Suggestions by
Keenan P.

Keenan Pepper wrote:

> I found out today that if you ground the input lead of an amplified speaker
> (by touching it to your skin or a large piece of metal) while the speaker is
> turned on, it will vibrate to some waform with a fundamental of the
> frequency of the AC it is receiving, namely 60 hertz or B-quarter-flat (I
> don't know why, so don't ask me.). If one tunes their music to this, the
> "crackle" you hear when you plug in your instrument after the speakers are
> already on and connected will actually be in tune with the music! In fact,
> if you touch the plugs together without them clicking, you can use that buzz
> as a tuning fork for acoustic instruments. This is such a wonderfully
> obscure and useless benefit that I cannot see any reason to use a global
> tuning other that 60 hertz.

Yeah, well, before you make it too "global", you should be aware that some of
us get that hum at 50 Hz. Imagine the embarrassment if, on the first day of
your European tour your 1/1 shifted down a minor third!

This has come up before on the list. Somebody, I think LaMonte Young, was
reported to choose his fundamental this way.

Graham

"I toss therefore I am" -- Sartre

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <mtpepper@p...> wrote:
> http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12575
>
> I found out today that if you ground the input lead of an
> amplified speaker (by touching it to your skin or a large piece
> of metal) while the speaker is turned on, it will vibrate to some
> waform with a fundamental of the frequency of the AC it is
> receiving, namely 60 hertz or B-quarter-flat (I don't know why,
> so don't ask me.). If one tunes their music to this, the
> "crackle" you hear when you plug in your instrument after
> the speakers are already on and connected will actually be in
> tune with the music! In fact, if you touch the plugs together
> without them clicking, you can use that buzz as a tuning fork
> for acoustic instruments. This is such a wonderfully obscure
> and useless benefit that I cannot see any reason to use a global
> tuning other that 60 hertz.

Hi Keenan. La Monte Young has been using 60 Hz as his tuning
basis for years for precisely this reason.

He says that as a child in the isolation of the Idaho countryside
he was inspired by the hum of the big electric stepdown transformers
that are part of the high-tension-wire systems you see along the
road. He's written a piece named after them.

I haven't yet read the follow-up to your post, but I'm sure
our European subscribers will point out that their cycle is
50 Hz, and so the fundamental for their tuning would be different.
In fact, when La Monte create his electronic installations in
Europe, he tunes them down to 50 Hz.

I've advocated 1 Hz as an (inaudible) basic fundamental, simply
for mathematic elegance; it's been adopted by some subscribers
on this List such as Drew Skyfyre. This gives an audible
fundamental of 64 Hz, which is a 16/15 higher than 60 Hz
and a 32/25 higher than 50 Hz.

-monz
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

--- In tuning@egroups.com, "Keenan Pepper" <mtpepper@p...> wrote:

http://www.egroups.com/message/tuning/12575

This is such a wonderfully
> obscure and useless benefit that I cannot see any reason to use a
global tuning other that 60 hertz.
>
> Useless Suggestions by
> Keenan P.

I believe La Monte Young has derived a similar basis for music
derived from the cycles of electric current. Is this correct, Young
scholars??

___________ _____ ___ __ _
Joseph Pehrson

> This is such a wonderfully
> obscure and useless benefit that I cannot see any reason to use a global
> tuning other that 60 hertz.

Some places in the world use 50 hertz AC frequency...

Rick