The gift of music

Joy

Let's talk music. Let's talk Christmas and gifts. And let's talk about the beautiful classical high fidelity sound.

Nearly finishing this article I'm listening to my brother's playing on a really good guitar, playing the greatest etudes like from Leo Brouwer. Live music who can have that at home?

It starts early

Since being a kid I have been subjected to classical music but during puberty I think I did become quite averse to not only classical music but also to music in general. For some reason I found it to be fake. And I eventually abanded music all together.

I had played on the piano of my grandmother, and until the brother of my grandmother tragically died of pancreatic cancer I had no piano to play on. He was a brilliant man, a composer, self-thaugt like me. I even have a picture of him, a caricature which resembles me. Unfortunately I didn't have time to get to know him because he lived in Prague and I had to go to school in the Netherlands. I wish I could have talked to him about music, I mean I would talk to him now! Lost opportunities, lost forever?

I played on the piano on and off. Sometimes I loved it, sometimes I hated it. A strange love and hate relationship. Maybe it is perfectionism. I cringe when something is off and I fall in love when something is absolutely haunting like this:

or this:

What both of these songs have in common

Sure both are rather classical music interpretations but also quite late renditions. No Mozart or Bach no impressionist composers like Eric Satie and Claude Debussy. I also love Maurice Ravel which would be maybe my all-time favourite. But even this is not the point.

Somewhere in the equation for perfection is the tuning frequency. Logic would tell you that it doesn't matter so much at what frequency you tune but what harmony you create or the intervals you use for your composition.

Temper temper

Reffering to a song from Goldie for some reason but what I really want to talk about is temperament. Temperament is the tuning actually, but the tuning between a fifth or a major third. As the colour of harmony in jazz is made with 7th and 9th or 13th chords you can't really play jazz in meantone temperament because it will sound out of tune. However major thirds in meantone temperament sound and actually are perfect.

Temperament basically means "detuning" since you can't really tune an instrument perfectly, you'll either end up having perfect octaves and fifths or thirds. You can't have both, sadly, well on a computer you can but then again these tempered tunings or temperaments are actually made so that you can play in more keys but so that those keys sound different enough but no too much out of tune.

Sound

Pianos have evolved a lot and play back Bach on a modern piano and in equal temperament and tuning the A to 440 or 443Hz is just heresy. Modern pianos sound too much bell-like and even in Mozart's time piano's where having more a sound like in-between a harpsichord and a modern piano:

a great explanation From the Clavichord to the Modern Piano

So tuning and temperament have both evolved with the instruments!

432Hz

Here it becomes weird because I have little scientific evidence to why tuning an instrument to 432Hz, regardless of temperament sounds better. There's a very extensive blog of someone I hold dear, about tuning and frequency where you can find everything you'd ever want to know about this subject.

But for myself I can say I just love when music or intstruments are made to be tuned to 432Hz or just sound good at that frequency. The perfection of the sound has a more broad stereo quality and is less narrow and harsh.

I've experimented with different tunings and temperaments for quite some time but 432Hz is something special:

432 Hz instruments

Instruments designed for 432Hz will naturally sound best at the frequency and likewise many instruments will sound good at their standard, which is 440Hz. Maybe one day my brother who is finishing building his own guitar will make a guitar to be tuned to 432 Hz. Mind you many guitars sound great at 432Hz but tension on the strings might be to loose or the resonance might not be adequate simply because the instrument wasn't build to sound well at that frequency while other models sound better.

Gift

So what will you give your loved ones? Will it be also music or a subscription? Or even a real instrument? Or a wonderful software plugin like pianoteq? Because playing great (MIDI) performances on this plugin has given me a lot of joy! We live in a world of amazing technology and I hope to one day build a music asset sharing blockchain with smart contracts where you can be sure that your recordings or performance will always receive a part of the upvotes or sales when someone (famous) enjoy and uses your ideas or unfinished music. Like being the inspiration for someone who can make something great without taking risks. That would be awesome right?

Please engage with me in the comments, I'll be replying for sure!