A SHORT "NATURAL" HISTORY OF MUSIC

Music is so natural...

When we're happy, we naturally feel like singing or whistling, like birds in springtime.

Sometimes a melody comes to us, sometimes quite simple, even simplistic, just two or three notes repeated over and over again, but they make us happy.

What is the magic behind it?

Nothing magical, just the wonderful world of HARMONICS.

Music IS Harmonics!

WHAT ARE HARMONICS?

A sound produced by an instrument or the voice is never a single frequency.

It's made up of a dominant frequency and its many harmonics or overtones, which are multiples of the dominant frequency.

The word "harmonics" indicates that these components generate harmony.
Harmony is the orderly and pleasing association of elements in a whole.
The words "orderly" and "pleasing" indicate both mathematically precise and aesthetically pleasing.
Harmony is an expression of nature, of the laws of nature.

A note is therefore a set of harmonious sounds.

Without going into too much detail... when a voice or the sound of an instrument is rich in harmonics, the charm of these harmonics inspires us to sing our own notes that are also in harmony with those harmonics.

And music is born...

Because each note has a particular color or mood or emotion we feel in the notes a closeness to our own emotions.

So the impulse to sing as an expression of our joy is natural.

Just as in a language, there are bonds between the syllables of a word and bounds between the words, in music there's harmony within the notes (the harmonics) and harmony between the notes.

• A note by itself, because it's made up of harmonics, is always "harmonious".
• When there's harmony between several notes, it's because they have harmonics in common. We can call them "harmonic notes".
• A homogeneous set of "harmonic notes" is a "harmonic scale".

How many harmonic scales are there?
Thousands!

Several hundred harmonic scales have been preciously preserved for thousands of years in Gandharva Veda, a branch of Veda, the oldest tradition of wisdom still alive in India.

Today, the purest tradition of these harmonic notes is Dhrupad music.

As each of these scales has its own "color", these harmonic scales are called Raga (color or emotion).

The emotions associated with the Ragas, as well as the time of day or night when this "energy" predominates in nature have also been preserved in this tradition.

Music is natural. We are all musicians.

Since the dawn of time, in all simplicity and innocence, music has been a natural way of expressing our emotions and enjoy them.

Originally, music was improvised. Musicians let themselves be guided by their inspiration of the moment. But as says the beautiful Brazilian song Canções e Mementos: "there are moments that marry song”. And those magical moments come when they please...

So, by memorizing compositions, musicians could more easily recall the subtleties of their notes and scales.

Then, to convey them better, the compositions had to be written down.

As composers continued to draw inspiration from their elders, the beauty and complexity of compositions sometimes developed to the point of eclipsing the natural beauty of the notes themselves.

Little by little, music moved from the street (troubadours) to chamber music, salon music, concert music... music for the elite. From an innocent, improvised music from the heart, music slowly evolved to a music of the learned composers and performers.

Over the centuries, as compositions took precedence over improvisation, music became more and more elaborate, but lost the spontaneity, sensitivity and beauty inherent in the notes themselves when they are pure.

Then, in the industrial age, music "benefited" from several technological advances that were not always in the direction of refinement:

Solid metal wires replaced gut strings for a purer, louder sound (fortepiano, guitar...). But the simplicity of tuning (from the harpsichord to the piano) and the freedom to move notes by feel (metal frets fixed in wood for the guitar...) got lost.

The two most catastrophic "evolutions" for the purity and refinement of music were the equal tempered scale and the fixing of note frequencies.

Those two sentences Mozart said illustrate the extent of the damage caused by the equal tempered scale:

- "My job is to put together the notes that love each other".

Notes that "love each other" are notes that have an affinity, a common trait that unites them. "Birds of the same feather flock together". And to play with this affinity is the musician's work: on the one hand, by "marrying" the notes of the scale he has chosen, and on the other, by selecting from the infinite variety of notes the few he could "marry" into a beautiful family (scale) where all the notes love each other.

- "I'll kill anyone who plays my music with that"Mozart said when he heard the tempered scale. With "that", yuck!

In Mozart's time and before, the instrument (harpsichord) had to be tuned before each performance. For such and such a musical piece, the fifth had to be slightly lowered, the fourth slightly raised...

THE EQUAL TEMPERED SCALE

For reasons of convenience (to avoid retuning the piano and be able to switch quickly from one mode to another), the idea came to create an "equal temperament".

This meant wiping the slate clean of all the subtleties of the different temperaments (scales) by placing the 12 steps (semitones of the chromatic scale) at regular intervals.

- Can you imagine the revolution this "equal tempered scale" represented at the time?

Music went from analog to digital, literally!

Since the adoption of the equal tempered scale, what we still call "music" is no more than an imitation of music, because the intimate and delicate relationship (the harmonics) that united the notes has disappeared.

Today, almost everyone plays Mozart (and all the great composers) with that!

- But why can't we hear this scale is distorted and out of tune?

1. We've heard the equal tempered scale from a very early age, we've heard only this, and we've learned that "this" is music.
2. The virtuosity of the musicians, the elaborate, catchy, charming melodies and rhythms, and the poetry of the lyrics, conceal from us the uniform, unnatural nature of this scale.

FIXING THE FREQUENCIES OF NOTES

At the same time, the importance of setting note frequencies also became apparent.

- What were the advantages of establishing a conventional reference note (A)?

1. To ensure that the various instruments in the orchestra played the same notes, otherwise there would be cacophony.
2. To adapt to the register (the possible pitch of the notes) of the instruments and the singers' voices.

Historically, the lead instrument would play the tonic, and the other instruments would tune to this note.

Once agreed on the tonic, the reference note, musicians find out by ear where the other notes of the scale are placed.

The transition to the equal tempered scale must have been very upsetting for sensitive musicians, because they could no longer go by their intuition. They had to learn to play out of tune and keep on playing out of tune..

It was at this point that the importance of fixing note frequencies became apparent. Since all the notes in this new scale are at regular intervals, fixing a reference note became very important, since all the other notes were fixed at the same time.

Strangely enough... it was a little before this time that were invented:

1. The technology for accurately counting seconds,
2. The technology for counting the frequencies of a vibrating string per second.

Together, these two technological advances made it possible to calculate frequencies. Before that, knowing a frequency was of absolutely no importance. For this reason, tuning forks didn't count Hertz (cycles per second) simply because it was impossible to count string vibration frequencies...

Moreover, since Pythagoras, and long before him since he studied music in India, the numbers used to qualify notes were known as harmonic RATIOS.

Ratios indeed characterize the relationships between notes. These numbers can be described as "relative" because they always relate one number to another, and not to its absolute value. A number by itself had no value in music.

Examples of ratios of intervals between notes: 3/2, 4/3, 5/4, 9/8...

With the introduction of the equal tempered scale and fixed frequencies, we moved on to absolute numbers. Once again, we went from analog to digital technology.

These two "inventions" made it easier to tune many instruments and change modes during a concert... But in terms of musical refinement, it was a disaster, not a step forward at all.

432 Hz - THE ULTIMATE ! ? ! ?

A Google search for "432 Hz" returns over 17 million pages!

We're told, music in 432 Hertz (A at 432 Hz):

• Is the Divine A,
• Is spiritual music,
• It helps you meditate and relax,
• It realigns your chakras,
• It repairs your DNA,
• It opens your third eye,
• Is the music of nature, birds sing in 432,
• Orthodox monks sing in 432,
• Children scream in 432,
• Human speech is in 432,
• Plants grow faster when listening to music in 432,
• Fibonacci sequence, precession of the equinoxes, Schumann resonance...

But where does this craze come from?

Let's set the record straight

432 Hertz ou 440 Hertz ?

Music is not made of frequencies. It is made of INTERVALS.

By now you've understood the insignificance of talking about frequencies for notes. So whether A is tuned to 440 Hz, 432 Hz or 412 Hz... we can definitely say that it makes absolutely no difference to the beauty and power of music.

If "music soothes the soul", it's thanks to the refinement of the harmonics that bind the notes together.

No harmonics means no soothing or harmonizing agent.

In the "equal tempered scale", apart from the octave, there is no harmony, no resonance between the notes.

This loss of refinement has certainly influenced people's psychology and happiness, because the "notes that love each other" dear to Mozart are made of these fine harmonics.
Do you think it is a coincidence that the adoption of the non-harmonic equal tempered scale “coincided” with the end of great composers, the end of genius and musical inspiration?

The experience of refinement is the key to happiness.

Benefits of tuning an instrument to a specific frequency

The only benefit is that, depending on the structure of the instrument, certain frequencies will resonate better, and the sound will be richer in harmonics. But this frequency differs for each instrument and each voice.

ADVICE TO MUSICIANS

Instead of wasting your time with this 432 Hz stupidity, start by putting aside your synths, pianos and other instruments tuned to this damned equal tempered scale. Sing, and allow the loving notes to come to you. Listen to them, feel them, let their beauty touch you. An almost infinite number of notes and harmonic scales are naturally present at the finest levels of nature, at the finest levels of our own emotions. It's up to you to find them. They are the secret of musical refinement.

Not an easy task...

These harmonic scales, temperaments or moods, are the Ragas of Indian classical music.

The supreme science of Ragas is Dhrupad.

APPENDICES

The power of frequencies

Yes, each frequency has specific properties. Yes, you can heal or kill with frequencies.

But we're here talking about SOUND, not music.

• A sound is a frequency
• Music is a play on harmonics

If you're certain that a given sound frequency - 432 Hz, for example - will stimulate amino acids and help your tomatoes grow, then why not play that frequency continuously, rather than playing them Pachelbel's Canon, where they'll only hear your super A at 432 Hz from time to time?
You'll also avoid polluting them with a non-harmonic tempered scale.

Mathematics

Two kinds of music, two kinds of mathematics:

• In harmonic scales, a myriad of ratios, extremely delicate and varied, an almost infinite richness.
• In the equal tempered scale, a single division into 12 equal parts. Math? Ah! ah! ah!

To the 432 Hz enthusiasts

• To date, no ancient instrument tuned to 432 Hz has been found,
• Johann Andreas Stein’s tuning fork (the craftsman who built Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven pianos), was tuned to 421,6 Hz
• Handel's tuning fork was tuned to 422,5 Hz
• Verdi used several tunings throughout his life.
• Alexander John Ellis (musicologist): "Before standardization, the pitch of A fluctuated between 400 Hz et 460 Hz."
• The convention of A at 440 Hz was agreed at an international conference in London in 1939 organized by the British Standards Institute.

Some natural frequencies – none linked to 432 Hz

• Heart frequency fluctuates between 1 Hz and 2,5 Hz.
• Brain waves vary between approximately 1 Hz and 70 Hz.
• Schumann resonance (electromagnetic oscillations from the earth) currently resonates at an average of 7,83 Hz.
• Water molecules can vibrate in a wide band of frequencies close to the infrared spectrum (90-110 Tera Hz) !

Bertrand Canac

More on harmonic scales and listen to Dhrupad

• Shivala's website, one of Europe's leading Dhrupad experts: http://dhrupadmusic.com
• Gundecha Brothers, Shivala's teachers, among India's finest Dhrupad singers: https://www.dhrupad.org
• To listen to ancient Dhrupad singers, search for "Senior Dagar"