Some people claim music at 432 Hz sounds better as opposed to the mainstream music at 430 Hz. I don't know what to think, and i'm not an expert in music, either, but thankfully this forum is full of people who are. So i ask the question...
I take it you mean A=442Hz instead of A=440Hz?
Well, I'm not sure if you're going to get much wiser from an answer, because this is one of the most technical debates there is in music:
It's really a debate from classical music. In the past, exact pitch measurement wasn't possible, so different standards were used in different places, and tuning could vary. I think our modern A=440 ranged from A=380 to A=480 or something thereabout, which is an absolutely HUGE difference. When pitch forks were introduced in the early 18th century, consistent tuning to exactly the same frequency became possible, but 440Hz wasn't the standard yet (when Britain first attempted standardization in the 19th century, they picked A=452, which is noticeably higher than our A=440. If you were to attend a concert of a work you are familiar with in 1875, you'd think it sounded very strange). As such, there is debate among professionals as to what concert pitch should be used in the performance of certain classical works, depending on period and composer. For instance, baroque music is usually played with A=415, because that more accurately represents the tuning of the period, though it is still a rough approximation.
If you want to get really technical, international pitch standardization didn't really start until the late 1930s and the availability of accurate measuring equipment. The 'scientifically most reasonable' pitch was established as A=439, but that turned out to be a problem in laboratory conditions because 439 is a prime number, leading to a whole host of problems, so A=440 was eventually settled on. Most orchestras use that as a standard, but there are many variations, mostly very small ones. The New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra apparently use 442, and in Europe, 442 and 443 are very popular too, though I've also heard of 438.
As you can see, most variations are very small and hardly noticeable without reference material (if you hear A=440 and A=442 one after the other, you'll hear the difference. If you hear a short piece of music at A=440 today, and the same piece tomorrow at A=442, you probably won't notice very much), but the subtleties matter in orchestral material. It is an extremely specialist topic, though, and I know for a fact that theoreticians who are interested in the subject can get into huge fights over this because there is very little agreement on what is appropriate in what context.
EDIT: It's even worse when music involves an organ, because you can't retune an organ in a few minutes and the pitch of an organ is very much affected by temperature and humidity. If you tune up your organ in an empty hall, by the time the hall is full your pitch will be waaaay off. So through arcane calculations an estimate of the temperature at the time of performance has to be made, and you just have to hope that the temperature doesn't shift very much over the course of the performance.
I actually googled 432 Hz.........yeah, that's apparently somewhat of a big thing........playing music at 'A=432 Hz' will make you in tune with the universe or something............
The King Of Rhye wrote:
I actually googled 432 Hz.........yeah, that's apparently somewhat of a big thing........playing music at 'A=432 Hz' will make you in tune with the universe or something............
That's just a load of new age hokum about chakra's and some musicology dropout trying to make an easy buck. 432hz is as random as any other value.
The Real Wizard wrote:
TQ, will you just please stop being so knowledgeable and correct all the time?
(i.e. we mere mortals be jealous)
LOL! There are plenty of people out there who think I'm full of it, and I suppose there are those among them who wouldn't mind putting MY mortality to the test ;-P Thanks for the compliment, though.