Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Tuning A Guitar To 432Hz

Of late I've been interested in scales and tuning, and have been reading a lot about the virtues of tuning to 432Hz. The modern convention is to tune A (A4) to 440Hz, but apparently 432Hz has a more natural (or supernatural) feel to it. There are plenty of theories and conspiracy theories out there in Internet-land explaining why this is so. It's the X-Files of tuning.

(The Lute Player - Caravaggio)

Anyway, I was wanting to tune my guitar to 432Hz, but wasn't quite sure how to do it. I think I've cracked it now though (however, if anyone knows better and can put me straight I'd appreciate it). I've done it using this frequencies table I found online;

[You can actually buy tuners that allow you to tune to 432hz, for example the Korg CA-1, which is what I currently use - much easier than all this faffing about :) ~~ Neil, 2018 ]

http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreq432.html

Normally a guitar would be tuned thusly;

E - 82.4Hz
A - 110.0Hz
D - 146.8Hz
G - 196.0Hz
B - 246.9Hz
High E - 329.6Hz

However, for 432Hz those strings would be tuned like this;

E - 80.9Hz
A - 108.0Hz
D - 144.2Hz
G - 192.4Hz
B - 242.5Hz
High E - 323.6Hz

Obviously, you'll need a tuner that can show Hertz to do this. I've been using this free gStrings App on my phone;

I should also point out that even though this tuning is 432Hz, it still uses Equal Temperament spacing. There's a whole other argument out there about Equal Temperament vs Just tuning, etc.

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