A "natural" tonic?

What represents the most "natural" tone in your vision of the universe?

I can imagine that concert A and middle C (in their various incarnations) would be popular choices for the obvious reasons. Perhaps there are other worthy candidates, maybe even those not audible to humans. For instance, one might be some octave-multiple or common factor of the terrestrial day, the lunar month, or the solar year. Or perhaps it would come from the microscopic world, or maybe even from some acoustic geometric relationship transformed into an absolute frequency. It seems likely, though, that the audible would be more significant than the inaudible. Perhaps it should be at the maximal average hearing response. Or at the average optimal pitch for singing "ahhh". Or something else entirely. Due to overtones, higher pitches are more commonly experienced than lower tones, so maybe it should be rather high. But then, low tones seem to speak well to humans; perhaps they are especially important for forming mental associations or such. Maybe the frequency should be physiological, somehow related to heart rate or brain wave frequencies or body inertia or sensory response.

I don't mean to promote monotonism here; this is a rather fundamental question that comes up, although I realize its nebulous and highly dependent on the wording of the question itself.

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 2:52 PM, funwithedo19 <nielsed@...> wrote:
>
> What represents the most "natural" tone in your vision of the universe?
>
> I can imagine that concert A and middle C (in their various incarnations) would be popular choices for the obvious reasons. Perhaps there are other worthy candidates, maybe even those not audible to humans. For instance, one might be some octave-multiple or common factor of the terrestrial day, the lunar month, or the solar year. Or perhaps it would come from the microscopic world, or maybe even from some acoustic geometric relationship transformed into an absolute frequency. It seems likely, though, that the audible would be more significant than the inaudible. Perhaps it should be at the maximal average hearing response. Or at the average optimal pitch for singing "ahhh". Or something else entirely. Due to overtones, higher pitches are more commonly experienced than lower tones, so maybe it should be rather high. But then, low tones seem to speak well to humans; perhaps they are especially important for forming mental associations or such. Maybe the frequency should be physiological, somehow related to heart rate or brain wave frequencies or body inertia or sensory response.
>
> I don't mean to promote monotonism here; this is a rather fundamental question that comes up, although I realize its nebulous and highly dependent on the wording of the question itself.

I'm not really sure I understand your question, but middle C is
alright in my book.

-Mike

I like this kind of vague speculative questions!

I used to think the reciprocal of Planck time, the Planck frequency,
might be the most natural "tone". It is an absurdly high frequency of
about 7.4x10^42 Hz derived from the speed of light, gravitational
constant and Planck's constant. But the gravitational constant is
problematic because perhaps general relativity suggest we should use
8*pi*G instead of G.

One very ubiquitous frequency in nature is the resonant frequency of
hydrogen, 1420405751.768 Hz, used in radio astronomy. This too is
very high frequency but we can reduce it by octaves to get audible
frequencies.

Kalle

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "funwithedo19" <nielsed@...> wrote:
>
> What represents the most "natural" tone in your vision of the universe?
>
> I can imagine that concert A and middle C (in their various incarnations) would be popular choices for the obvious reasons. Perhaps there are other worthy candidates, maybe even those not audible to humans. For instance, one might be some octave-multiple or common factor of the terrestrial day, the lunar month, or the solar year. Or perhaps it would come from the microscopic world, or maybe even from some acoustic geometric relationship transformed into an absolute frequency. It seems likely, though, that the audible would be more significant than the inaudible. Perhaps it should be at the maximal average hearing response. Or at the average optimal pitch for singing "ahhh". Or something else entirely. Due to overtones, higher pitches are more commonly experienced than lower tones, so maybe it should be rather high. But then, low tones seem to speak well to humans; perhaps they are especially important for forming mental associations or such. Maybe the frequency should be physiological, somehow related to heart rate or brain wave frequencies or body inertia or sensory response.
>
> I don't mean to promote monotonism here; this is a rather fundamental question that comes up, although I realize its nebulous and highly dependent on the wording of the question itself.
>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "funwithedo19" <nielsed@...> wrote:

> I don't mean to promote monotonism here; this is a rather fundamental question that comes up, although I realize its nebulous and highly dependent on the wording of the question itself.
>

I don't see what's fundamental about it. But I'll note that midi tone 0 is (55/8)*2^(1/4) Hz, approximately 8.1758 Hz. When we had a similar discussion before, I proposed dividing the Planck frequency by some large power of 2. The Planck frequency is basically the highest possible frequency, and is 2.95212 * 10^ 42 Hz. Bring that down 128 octaves, and you've got 8675.5 Hz for a baseline frequency.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "funwithedo19" <nielsed@...> wrote:
>
> What represents the most "natural" tone in your vision of the universe?

I have been travelling in India between 1970 and 1974 and I found almost all the musicians where using naturally the same tonic, one comma less than C sharp as a tonic, without the help of any pitch fork. So I did some experiences about that, by putting some material on the strings of my instruments to avoid any resonance and trying to hear sounds from the silence. I found I was hearing myself this same C#, so I kept it as a tonic to tune my instruments.
I have no idea from where comes this indian C# but it was strong.
However when I returned to Europe I found it much more difficult to hear it, and nowadays I have no fixed tone anymore...
Or perhaps like Jimi Hendrix I might tune to various ambiant electric buzzs - I have no Marshall amp but I tune easily to my refrigerator or washing machine, it's like that...
- - -
jacques

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:23 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "funwithedo19" <nielsed@...> wrote:
>
> > I don't mean to promote monotonism here; this is a rather fundamental question that comes up, although I realize its nebulous and highly dependent on the wording of the question itself.
> >
>
> I don't see what's fundamental about it. But I'll note that midi tone 0 is (55/8)*2^(1/4) Hz, approximately 8.1758 Hz. When we had a similar discussion before, I proposed dividing the Planck frequency by some large power of 2. The Planck frequency is basically the highest possible frequency, and is 2.95212 * 10^ 42 Hz. Bring that down 128 octaves, and you've got 8675.5 Hz for a baseline frequency.

This is 38.3542253 cents flat of C#, if anyone cares.

-Mike

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Jacques Dudon <fotosonix@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "funwithedo19" <nielsed@...> wrote:
> >
> > What represents the most "natural" tone in your vision of the universe?
>
> I have been travelling in India between 1970 and 1974 and I found almost all the musicians where using naturally the same tonic, one comma less than C sharp as a tonic, without the help of any pitch fork. So I did some experiences about that, by putting some material on the strings of my instruments to avoid any resonance and trying to hear sounds from the silence. I found I was hearing myself this same C#, so I kept it as a tonic to tune my instruments.
> I have no idea from where comes this indian C# but it was strong.
> However when I returned to Europe I found it much more difficult to hear it, and nowadays I have no fixed tone anymore...
> Or perhaps like Jimi Hendrix I might tune to various ambiant electric buzzs - I have no Marshall amp but I tune easily to my refrigerator or washing machine, it's like that...

Hm. Must be the Planck frequency!

-Mike

Having now seen both what are possibly the most musically conventional and
cosmologically conventional standard frequencies, I think I am able to
better phrase my question, and it seems to be, Is there a standard role that
the universal constants of physical nature should play in defining a
"standard" pitch?

Hi, Gene, just want to make sure I understand: is your proposition then to
divide that 8675.5Hz by 2^10 (1024) for 8.472Hz ca. = 8.176 Hz to equate
with MIDI, showing that in essence MIDI already "supports" a possible
cosmological standard?

That is truly interesting to me, Jacques. As a violin player, I understand
what you mean by hearing the instrument. I'm a little confused about your
setup, though. So you mean you in essence you "pretended" to play and could
"hear" the note from the instrument? I can't explain why exactly, but this
makes sense to me. Perhaps it was more exotic and so more memorable, or it
was tied to the other timbres and musical associations of the playing - but
I don't know.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Daniel Nielsen <nielsed@...> wrote:

> That is truly interesting to me, Jacques. As a violin player, I understand
> what you mean by hearing the instrument. I'm a little confused about your
> setup, though. So you mean you in essence you "pretended" to play and could
> "hear" the note from the instrument?

Not exactly, I was just stopping the strings of the instruments in the room in order to not be influenced by their resonances. And I had a meditative moment in the silence, or I would go out in the nature and I would try to hear some tonic in the silence until I was able to sing it and compare it to a known fixed pitch. I did this everyday during two years, in different places. 90% of the time I would find the same "C# less a comma", and the left 10% a D# (one 9/8 above). Of course it could well be a simple "memory" of the music I was doing from day to day, or that I could have heard from some indian musicians (what we call "absolute ear" - I don't know if that's the way you call it in english), but the origin of this C# is still a mystery for me.

>
> Not exactly, I was just stopping the strings of the instruments in the room
> in order to not be influenced by their resonances. And I had a meditative
> moment in the silence, or I would go out in the nature and I would try to
> hear some tonic in the silence until I was able to sing it and compare it to
> a known fixed pitch. I did this everyday during two years, in different
> places. 90% of the time I would find the same "C# less a comma", and the
> left 10% a D# (one 9/8 above). Of course it could well be a simple "memory"
> of the music I was doing from day to day, or that I could have heard from
> some indian musicians (what we call "absolute ear" - I don't know if that's
> the way you call it in english), but the origin of this C# is still a
> mystery for me.
>

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for the story; that was great dedication.
I look forward to downloading your recording. By the way, in English we most
often call it "perfect pitch", or sometimes absolute pitch (I think
"absolute ear" would be slightly more precise and less ambiguous, though).
One more possibility is that it fit your voice a little better. Perhaps I
can get a start on microtonal ear training in a similar fashion. While I've
played some Indian tunes that I enjoyed in the past, and have improvised
some in a similar style, I always had a bit of difficulty switching back and
forth.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> This is 38.3542253 cents flat of C#, if anyone cares.

I care :)

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Jacques Dudon" <fotosonix@...> wrote:
> I have been travelling in India between 1970 and 1974 and I found almost all the musicians where using naturally the same tonic, one comma less than C sharp as a tonic, without the help of any pitch fork.

I have thought about 'natural tonics' too. I transposed some fundamental planetary frequencies by octaves and, interestingly, the tropical year (cycle of the solstices / equinoxes) comes out as C#-31.38 cents! (with A4=440Hz).

I also transposed this frequency into bpm and spectral light frequency, and coloured the image with the corresponding colour. See my image here ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/parramatta/tropicalyearbright2.jpg

I have thought about what could be the most fundamental fixed frequency for a human. So far I'm considering it to be the day frequency, G-16.12 cents (with A4=440Hz). Image here ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v643/parramatta/day.jpg

Mat Cooper

I think Mike B is may mean to lead us off the deep end here, but why stop
now :)

I like the way you did that, MC, nice and easy to read. Since the length of
the year has so far been much more fixed than the terrestrial day (which
varies and on average adds a second every 62.5ky or so), the seasonal cycle
might seem more of a fixed influence on a geological timespan. Of course,
the day light/temperature cycle causes us to change our habits more quickly
and repetitively, but not necessarily as significantly as the seasons, for
the sake of survival.

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 4:23 PM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "funwithedo19" <nielsed@...> wrote:
>
> > I don't mean to promote monotonism here; this is a rather fundamental question that comes up, although I realize its nebulous and highly dependent on the wording of the question itself.
> >
>
> I don't see what's fundamental about it. But I'll note that midi tone 0 is (55/8)*2^(1/4) Hz, approximately 8.1758 Hz. When we had a similar discussion before, I proposed dividing the Planck frequency by some large power of 2. The Planck frequency is basically the highest possible frequency, and is 2.95212 * 10^ 42 Hz. Bring that down 128 octaves, and you've got 8675.5 Hz for a baseline frequency.

Whoa whoa whoa!

If time is sampled at 2.95212 * 10^42 Hz, then the Nyquist frequency
of reality is half that, which is 1.47606 * 10^42 Hz. This is the
actual highest frequency that could possibly exist - it means that in
one sample of reality, the waveform can be up, and in the next sample
the waveform can be down. The period can't be the Planck time itself,
because you can't have a waveform oscillating within the Planck time
to repeat. So 8675.5 Hz is actually only 127 octaves down from the
frequency you mentioned.

*grumble grumble grumble*

-Mike

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:37 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> *grumble grumble grumble*

Also, where are you guys getting these values for the Planck time and
the Planck frequency? Wikipedia states the Planck time is 5.39124e-44
seconds, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time), and its
reciprocal is 1.85486085e43 Hz (at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_angular_frequency).

If the sampling frequency of existence is 1.85486085e43 Hz, then the
Nyquist frequency of existence is 9.27430425e42. 134 octaves below
that is 425.855166 Hz. This is 56.5688072 cents below A440. So the
Planck frequency is a quarter tone below A.

Where did you guys get the figures you used? *grumble grumble*

-Mike

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:37 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > *grumble grumble grumble*
>
> Also, where are you guys getting these values for the Planck time and
> the Planck frequency? Wikipedia states the Planck time is 5.39124e-44
> seconds, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time), and its
> reciprocal is 1.85486085e43 Hz (at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_angular_frequency).

I used the actual frequency in Hz, not the angular frequency, like a sensible person. Presuming anyone sensible would look at this at all.

On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 2:44 AM, genewardsmith
<genewardsmith@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 1:37 AM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > >
> > > *grumble grumble grumble*
> >
> > Also, where are you guys getting these values for the Planck time and
> > the Planck frequency? Wikipedia states the Planck time is 5.39124e-44
> > seconds, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time), and its
> > reciprocal is 1.85486085e43 Hz (at
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_angular_frequency).
>
> I used the actual frequency in Hz, not the angular frequency, like a sensible person. Presuming anyone sensible would look at this at all.

What they have listed as the "Planck angular frequency" is also in Hz,
and the value given matches up with the reciprocal of the value they
gave for the Planck time. But I'm going to be honest, I now feel like
I'm losing my mind to be actually talking about this.

-Mike

Mike wrote:

> What they have listed as the "Planck angular frequency" is also in Hz,
> and the value given matches up with the reciprocal of the value they
> gave for the Planck time. But I'm going to be honest, I now feel like
> I'm losing my mind to be actually talking about this.

Maybe Gene already gave it, but the Planck F is 340 Hz
(compare to F 349 concert pitch). -Carl

On 12 March 2011 11:47, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> What they have listed as the "Planck angular frequency" is also in Hz,
> and the value given matches up with the reciprocal of the value they
> gave for the Planck time. But I'm going to be honest, I now feel like
> I'm losing my mind to be actually talking about this.

Yes, angular frequency can be measured in Hz, but it still isn't the
frequency you're looking for, in so far as it matters.

A more relevant standard is mains frequency: 50 or 60 Hz depending on
your country. It's probably what Hendrix was tuning to, and has a
history in microtonality that somebody will fill you in on. It's a
fair way off concert pitch.

Graham

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "genewardsmith" <genewardsmith@...> wrote:

> The Planck frequency is basically the highest possible frequency, and
> is 2.95212 * 10^ 42 Hz.

No, 1/sqrt(G*h/c^5) is about 7.4 x 10^42 Hz and 1/sqrt(G*h-bar/c^5) is about 1.85487 x 10^43 Hz. But only the scale of these numbers really mean anything in physics. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units#Other_possible_normalizations

Kalle

   Just by ear..I'd say 248 hz seems to give the strongest sense of "tonicism" to my ears...though why is beyond me.  Still, that's pretty close to the plain old middle c.

-