(13th December, 2022: Please note I’ve changed some of the pictures and tuning files since I published them, having found some errors – so you may want to download again if you downloaded them before today.)
Hiya – I’ve been asked to provide some project files with the tunings defined in them so that, if you have Apple Logic, you can open them up and play around on the Steinway – or the instrument of your choice, and try these tunings.
These are the same ones, in sequence, as you’ll find here.
Playlist of Beethoven Moonlight Sonata cooked 6 different ways.
And I’ve done some little visuals to show from which “column” of the harmonics the notes come from. What I mean by “column” is how I illustrated the harmonics generation here – so that:
The left column are all 3rd harmonics of a Day.
The middle column are all 5th harmonics of the frequencies in the first column (and this is the column where I had experienced the sub-harmonic Bb and F notes creating the strange non-stirring effect as explained here: www.harmonicsOfNature.com )
The right-column are the 5th harmonics of those middle, “phenomenal” frequencies, and this is where A = 432 Hz
The point here is that we know certain things for sure….
A day is 86,400 seconds – so that is the “clock” of the Earth, and it happens to be a G which octaves up to 388.36148148 rec Hz
Bb is 7.2 Hz, because that’s the way I detected it
Eb is 9.6 Hz, a 3rd harmonic below that Bb, and also corresponding to one beat per “Helek” which was the ancient Babylonian measure of time, equal to 3.3333 recurring of today’s “seconds” and also the time it takes the Earth to rotate 1/72nd of a degree. Also, a peak in the Earth’s electro-magnetic field.
F is 5.4 and 10.8 Hz, which I also detected (see the home page) and it’s a 3rd harmonic above the Bb
C is 8.1 Hz, or 259.2 Hz. I didn’t detect this one, it’s a 3rd harmonic above the F, but it’s interesting that the number of its frequency in Hz is the same as the Great Year (25,920 years, which is what it takes for the Earth’s precession of the equinoxes to go through all 12 signs of the zodiac (360 degrees) and start again.
Basically, all the other frequencies are up for grabs – and the tunings I’ve provided below are different permutations of the different versions of notes from each of the columns to make it work.
There are some handy things, for example:
The “Earth/Geo” G in the first column at 388.36 Hz is almost the same as the middle column G of 388.8 Hz. So notes nearby in the “chain” to these notes are going to sound fine together
The same is true of E as 323.63 Hz and 324 Hz
And also B at 485.45 Hz and 486 Hz
There are certain conditions I’ve followed, primarily that the 3rd and 5th harmonics are the primary medium for propagating the harmonics.
Some might say, “ah, what about the 7th harmonic, or the 11th harmonic” etc. But the fact that I measured the Bb and F frequencies, and then it turned out they (in the 2nd column) were exactly a 5th harmonic related to the harmonics of a Day (1st column) seems strong proof the way the Earth is spinning and creating harmonic frequencies is certainly using the prominent and strong 3rd and 5th harmonics.
My point is, what I’ve been trying to do is create harmonic musical scales based on the facts above which both sound good, and feel therapeutic. So, here they are.
Click on each of the images – and it will prompt you to download a Zip file of the Logic Pro project for the frequencies which are bolded in black text in the pictures:
You can try other combinations of frequencies. Tips:
Where you go right to left, that’s a 5th harmonic or what is known in music as “a major third” interval – it’s what you need for making major chords that are exactly in-tune!
Where you go bottom-up, that’s a 3rd harmonic or what is known in music as “a perfect fifth” and it’s what you need to complete the major chord above. e.g., G across to B, and G up to D gives you a major G chord.
Minor chords have a flattened “5th harmonic” (or “minor third”) and you’ll find these by going from a note up-one and then one to the left. So, G 384 Hz, up one and to the left is Bb 460.8. Combine that with D 288 and you have a perfectly sonorous minor chord
Let me know if you encounter any technical problems. Or just have questions about the choice of frequencies in these “harmonic scales”.
Magic Lemmas:
An interesting thing occurs with this #4, by the way. Take a look at the diagram for it, above:
When you play an Eb (307.2 Hz) and a D (288 Hz) together, you get a difference of 9.6 Hz, which is essentially a binaural Eb again
When you play an A (432 Hz) and a B-flat (460.8 Hz) together, you get a difference-note of 14.4 Hz which again is a low, binaural Bb
So, I did that for therapeutic purposes.
Similarly, tuning #1 enables an E of 327.68 Hz to be played with an Ab of 409.6 Hz. At the sub-audio level these frequencies are 0.05 Hz and 0.04 Hz. Someone I met the other day had intuited these numbers as being the foundation for getting into the Gamma state. So, this tuning may do just that for you.
Also with this tuning, the apparent discord (because all of these harmonic tunings have one) is between the E and the B. The E at 327.68 Hz is hoping for a “perfect” 3rd harmonic B of 491.5199999981 Hz. But what it gets in this tuning is a B of 485.451851851 Hz. So, what’s the difference between these two Bs? 6.0681481463 Hz. Which octaves up to 388.36148 Hz = the G for a day. So the lemma is a fraction of a day. So, an E major chord at 327.68 against a B of 485.4518518518 is ringing out a fractal day! And an E minor chord incorporates that same G anyway! So, just go with the apparent discord! Its how the gamma brain and the world work together, perhaps!
For tunings # “2 and 5” and # 6, the lemma is from the C of 259.2 to the G. It wants a perfect 3rd harmonic of 388.8 Hz, but what it gets in this tuning is a G of 384 Hz. 388.8 – 384 = 4.8 Hz. 4.8 Hz is a low octave of our Eb (9.6 Hz) – which has been measured to be an electro-magnetic peak in the Earth’s resonance and corresponds to an ancient Helek, the time it takes the world to rotate 1/72nd of a degree. So, this tuning will emphasise that frequency as a fractal gap for you.
For tuning # 3, the gap is from A to E. A at 436.9066666 rec Hz wants a perfect 3rd harmonic to E at 327.68 Hz. Instead it gets an E of 323.6345679 Hz. The difference between these two Es is: 4.0454321 Hz. This octaves up to 258.9076544 Hz which is close to our C of 259.2 Hz but no cigar. So, this to me indicates that tuning #3 is not quite the cosmic answer that the others are.
Tuning # 4 goes from G of 388.36148148 to a D of 288 Hz, when the perfect 3rd harmonic D would be 291.27111. The difference between these two Ds is 3.271111 Hz. Which octaves up to 418.702222 rec Hz which again isn’t one of our frequencies. So, perhaps tuning # 4 is also not quite the answer.
So, it looks to me like tunings: 1, 2/5, 6 are the keepers.
Transposition – and other Technicalities
Meanwhile, you’ll notice also in some I’ve altered the Transposition. Putting Eb where F usually goes for this #4 tuning puts all the most sonorous note combinations on the white notes. That said, the black notes when this is done also sound good.
To access the tuning adjustment on a Mac, do Option-P, or from the menu: File – Project Settings – Tuning. It looks like this. You can see I’m using the “User” setting, instead of Equal Tempered. In this case, the offsets I’ve entered in cents are in relation to 440 Hz.
To see the Oscillator at work, to tell you what frequencies you’re playing, click on the “Test Osc” track towards the bottom and then in the “Inspector” window on the left, click in the middle of the blue-button called Test Oscillator and up it will pop. Then, so long as you have “R” for Record on both the “Test Piano” (or whatever instrument you’re playing) and the “Test Osc” track, then you’ll see it moving around to tell you the frequency – it will even do this if you’ve muted it, as I have in the screen-shot below:
Click on the link to listen to three versions of the same performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on piano, tuned three different ways.
Three versions of the Beethoven Moonlight Sonata
One in Equal Temperament.
The second in the “just” tuning I have developed based on natural resonances such as the ancient helek (3.33333 of today’s seconds) equivalent to the time it takes our Earth to rotate 1/72nd of a degree, as an E-flat.
The third recording is in “standard” equal temperament where the A note = 440 Hz
There’s nothing like a side by side comparison of the way we’re told music should be tuned, versus the way that harmonics propagate naturally, and based on the frequencies I’ve discovered to resonate with the fabric of the way in which our planet rotates and generates its magnetic field.
For me, the the first one is ok but doesn’t fully resonate. The second one interacts with the room when you listen – it sounds louder and fuller. The 3rd one is just horrific to me – a bunch of noise, especially after listening to the others. No wonder Beethoven seems to some to be haunted by ghosts and teetering into disonance – when all we hear of him is recorded in the shitty Equal Temperament 440 hz “standard” that was introduced just in time for World War 2, as it happens.
I hope you can enjoy how music is supposed to sound. Feel it in your gut and let me know in the comments!
The “cycle of fifths” is actually a spiral, where in you start with a frequency and go to its third-harmonic, and its third harmonic, in-turn until you get around to the note you started at, but as it turns out, there’s a gap between your starting frequency and your ending frequency. This presents a problem for anyone believing that nature is based on fundamental frequencies because, “where is the beginning?”
We do know a couple of fundamental frequencies which are resonant with the Earth, being an F at 5.4 and 10.8 vibrations per second (Hz), and a B-flat at 7.2 Hz. As it happens, we also know that an Eb, at 9.6 Hz, is a third harmonic below the Bb and corresponds to the time it takes the Earth to rotate 1/72nd of a degree (3.3333 seconds, called a “helek” by the ancient Hebrews and Babylonians. See the home-page for how I found these frequencies, their behavior and even the fact that those numbers are regarded by ancient cultures as sacred.
But, we don’t know if E-flat is the “foundational frequency”, or if there’s a frequency below that which generates E-flat, or a frequency below that which generates that? Is it “turtles all the way down”?
The strongest harmonics are the octave (multiply or divide by 2, or touch your guitar string half way along its length to hear that octave harmonic); and the second strongest harmonic is the 3rd harmonic (multiply or divide by 3, or touch your guitar string 1/3rd along its length). Bb is already a third-harmonic below F, so we know nature is using those harmonics – but how far down do we go? The third harmonic below Bb is Eb, then Ab, then C#, then F#, then B, then E. But, where do we stop? Which frequency is the fundamental – that we can say is the “harmonic root” of all the vibration we experience – before we start repeating ourselves with each 3rd harmonic, e.g. E goes down to A, down to D, to G, to C, to F, etc. And the problem being, that when you get back to the frequencies you started with using the cycle of 3rd harmonics, the frequency you start and end at are not octaves of each other, even though they both should be. There’s a gap because in going around the cycle you actually overshoot your mark. 3rd harmonics are a little aggressive, you might say.
Now, another interesting phenomena is that the next strongest harmonic is the 5thharmonic (AKA our musical major-thirdinterval – do-re-mi, see I told you the intervals were a confusing way to think of it, which is why i refer to the harmonics instead). And where the 3rd harmonic generally overshoots the starting point in the cycle of 3rd harmonics, the 5th harmonic generally falls short.
So, these two harmonics give us something to work with: one overshoots, the other falls short. Perhaps in some combination we could devise a harmonic scale where the ending note and the starting note are octaves of each other, or close enough for our human bodies to perceive.
With this in mind, I’ve read with interest the work of Ernest Macclain, Musical Theory and Ancient Cosmology. In Plato’s Critias he refers to “Poseidon and his five pairs of twin sons”, and McClain interprets this to refer to a harmonic series where Poseidon “begets” the other frequencies. Which frequency is “Poseidon” then, is the question!
So, long story short, I’ve used McClains’s idea to try to derive which our fundamental frequency would be, and to also construct a harmonic scale that doesn’t make war with itself at both ends (e.g. the starting frequency being dissonant with the ending frequency).
Poseidon is of course the God of the deep, the ocean, the abyss. It doesn’t hurt that my hypnotised synesthesia characterised the note B as Black, the abyss, the void. So, I’m going to combine art and science here and you can all hate me for it!
So, just to go with the idea that “Poseidon” is B for a moment, then the “twins” from the circle above are:
F# and C#
Ab and Eb
Bb and F
C and G
D and A
And (their “mother” presumably) would be E. Interestingly, my synesthesia for E also gave it void-like energy (gray or white).
Now, we discovered Bb and F together, so those seem like pairs; and I would say the others form good pairs as well based on the synesthesia colours and my own aesthetics. But besides the subjectivity of my synesthesia, is there some other further evidence that B is the fundamental frequency of the Abyss? Well, let’s look at the numbers of these derived harmonic frequencies themselves:
There is a body of thought, which John Michell probably led, or perhaps Ernest McClain, that the numbers themselves have meaning, regardless of whether they’re vibrations per second, cubits, feet, furlongs, degrees of earth’s rotation, etc. The theory is that the ancient metrology which agreed how many degrees in a circle, how many cubits around the equator, etc., were based on an understanding of an interdependency of rotation and distance in physics (a “unified field theorem” we are yet to re-discover) where the Babylonian 60-digit counting system was the key.
With this in mind, I constructed the following table, just to look at the numbers associated with each musical note, as we go down in third harmonics from Bb (7.2 or 0.9 Hz) to Eb (0.3 Hz) etc. going in 3rd harmonics:
(I’m concerned that table may not be readable (try to zoom in), so I may re-create it, or you can ask me for the original table in Excel). Assuming you can read it, starting with the first row of data we have:
Vibrations per second
Vibrations per helek (1 ancient helek = 3.333 recurring moderns seconds)
Earth degrees of rotation per vibration (e.g. we know that Eb is 1 beat every 3.333 rec seconds which is the time it takes the earth to rotate 1/72nd of a degree
Number of seconds per vibration (for the really low vibrations)
Number of Halakim per vibration – why not?
Here we are using the lens of harmonic numbers to identify the frequency that is the root of our harmonic series. Certain numbers, at various “octaves” and ignoring decimal points, seem to be fundamental and “sacred”. So, by looking at the numbers only, not only for Hz but also for the corresponding degrees of earth’s rotation for that frequency etc., this may help us use the points where the “magic numbers” begin and end as a way to determine the harmonic fundamental frequency which drives them all. Simply by dividing by 3 from our E-flat frequency these number patterns emerged in the table above. I’ve colour-coded the number types to help spot the patterns, e.g.
1234567901234579 recurring
37037037 recurring
11111111 recurring
33333 recurring
1: 8, 16, 32, 64, 256
3: 6, 12, 24, 48, 96
9: 18, 36, 72
27: 54, 108, 216, 432
81: 162, 324
Conclusions of numeric examination:
Using 3rd harmonics, the harmonic number range in the table above seems to start with low B, but goes no lower; and seems to end with C or G and go no higher. (e.g. 0.0012345679 is part of low B and high G, and this is an interesting number as it encompasses all the digits in sequence, except 8, and is recurring, and generated simply as a sub-harmonic of E-flat).
Also, if we notice, Eb is 1/72nd of a degree. The third harmonic below that (Ab) would be 1 divided by 72 divided by 3 = 1/24 degrees. And as harmonics and octaves, 1/24 is equivalent to 1/12, 1/6, 1/3 degrees.
A third-harmonic below that (C#) would be 1/1 = 1 degree. A 3rd harmonic below that (F#) would be 3 degrees; and a 3rd harmonic below that (B) would be 9 degrees of the Earth’s rotation.
9 degrees is harmonically equivalent to 18, 36, 72 degrees, as octaves. And 360 degrees divided by 72 = 5. So, what is the frequency that is 5 times slower than the B? It’s a G with a frequency of 0.0037037 rec / 5 (or 10) = 0.00037037 recurring Hz. And, octaved up, that is a G of 388.36148148 rec. Hz.
So, a day, 360 degrees, is an extremely low G which correspond to a higher G of 388.36148148 rec. Hz. And the good news is that this is very close to the G of 388.8 Hz generated as the 5th harmonic from E flat at 307.2 Hz.
So, we can start our scale at B, knowing that it’s equivalent to the time it takes the Earth to turn 9 degrees, (and also 18, 36, and 72 degrees as sub-octaves.) And if we build our scale in this way, our G for a day, and our G of 388.8 Hz match up. We have symmetry – and minimal discernible dissonance, plus it all aligns with the rotation of the only clock we know is true – the Earth’s rotation.
“Shut up and play your guitar!” Alright, well this is not guitar but here’s some music I created using this scale in Apple Logic:
It turns out the differentiation between the black notes and the white notes is quite handy because with 7 white notes, and 5 black notes, we can arrange it so that most of those 3rd harmonic (white) notes get a pure 5th harmonic (black) note to give them that “major third” interval:
Eb has G
F has A
Ab has C
Bb has D
C could have E
And here’s how I’ve arranged the notes on my Apple Logic keyboard, where I can transpose by minus-6, like this. This puts the notes that were generated with 5th harmonics (G, A, C, D, E) as black notes, where they can be accessed from their corresponding white notes to form perfect major chords for Eb, F, Ab, Bb, respectively). (In the smallest text below, you can see the cent adjustments for each note (compared to an equal temperament scale where A is 432 Hz)).
(Note: on the Cents adjustments, I originally used this utility to calculate them from the desired Hz frequency. http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-centsratio.htm. What I’ve found though is that the theoretical adjustment doesn’t produce the exact frequency – so the cent adjustments you see above are what I ended up with after using the “Oscillator” in Apple Logic which handily allows you to play every note of the scale and tells you frequency it’s playing, based on the off-sets you had put in the File -> Project Settings -> Tuning. And remember, I use a master offset of -31.8 cents to make my A = 432 Hz first, instead of A = 440Hz which is the default. )
If minus 6 is too extreme of a keyboard transposition for you, I can understand, here’s a plus 1 transposition, so you still get the benefit of the 5th harmonics being on most of the black notes.
One thing I didn’t mention is that last year I bought John Michell’s final book “How The World Is Made” and on page 11 he talks about how the geometry of 5 and 10 pertains to life. And I thought, well, we don’t want a harmonic scale based purely on 3,6,9 that is so sterile it misses out our biological essence! There’s quite a nice video about the 5 and 6 in geometry and music, here by Jain 108:
And also in John Michell’s book he references a print by Albrecht Dürer which seeks to encompass the hexagon and the pentagon into a combined geometry.
Anyway, all this is meaningless if it doesn’t sound good, so, hopefully you clicked on my SoundCloud link above and are enjoying the frequencies, if not necessarily my musicality!
Playing the white notes only – they all sound great together!
Playing the black notes only – they all sound great together!
Wait for it, yes – picking our black notes to go with the white notes for “major thirds” – also sounds great!
Having “major 3rds” in a chord that are harmonically aligned to the tonic of the chord has been a goal of tuning temperaments from Bach and Mozart to the microtonalists of the present day. The trouble is, that unless you have an instrument with more than 12 notes per octave, your D as a major-3rd in a Bb chord, can’t be the “perfect 5th” in a G chord as well, as that D is slightly too low, and it sounds bad with the G. But by playing chords where the tonic or root of the chord is one of the white notes shown above, those “major-3rds” (pure 5th harmonics) are sequestered as black notes and can therefore be played only to give harmonic colour to a chord, rather than to be the tonic or 5th of that chord.
The other challenge of course is, can you play a harmonic scale in any key with this harmonic scale? Usually the answer is “no”, you can generally play in about 3 related keys in a harmonic scale, and then things start to go awry. Frankly, I’ve been trying to play harmoniously, so I haven’t explored if there’s a discordant side to this, but this scale is in harmony with our rotating earth and it’s magnetism, and our “low” 3rd-harmonic E is essentially the same as our high 5th-harmonic E – so it sounds consonant and good.
Being that the modern western scale at 440Hz for A is too high, this is an interesting solution to the problem: we should all transpose our keyboards up a semi-tone, and tune down to these magic frequencies. This would be the true way to “raise our vibration” – by raising it and lowering it!
Long story short, this is the sweetest scale I’ve produced – or heard. It feels more natural in my body. When I play with this tuning, it seems like the birds congregate to sing happily outside my window! It’s a good feeling. Life is good.
And because the low E below our starter B (323.635 Hz) and the high E (derived as the 5th harmonic of C) as 324 Hz, are pretty much the same, the scale is cyclical: there is no “war at the ends of the scale” – so it doesn’t really matter if E is “high” based on 5th harmonics, or low as our starting point for 3rd harmonics – it all gels.
The key sacred numbers are accounted for, as well:
The frequencies I found on my tone generator (7.2 Hz for Bb, and 5.4 and 10.8 Hz for F)
E-flat as 9.6 Hz or 0.3 Hz as a measure of the earth’s rotation
C# as the time it takes the earth to rotate 1 degree
Ab with a frequency of 0.1 Hz or 10 seconds per vibration, which has been thought by some to be the frequency of heart/brain coherence (e.g. Greg Braden)
Plus we have A as 432 Hz – which everyone loves, and D as 288 Hz – both related to the dimensions of the planet.
Our B is also the frequency of 72 degrees of rotation of the Earth;
And a day is a G, the 5th harmonic below that B! – although we’re keeping our G as the 5th harmonic of Eb because it is a harmonic, and it sounds sweeter with the rest of the scale.
Plus, playing it, I feel like a child again, where everything is in tune.
I feel that western music has been so bastardized in every way: (the wrong frequency for A, the fact that A shouldn’t even be the reference note (e.g. probably should be E or B as the harmonic foundation, as we’ve discovered); plus we’ve been lumped with equal temperament – pretending that harmonic propagation doesn’t need to start with a common root. So, I figure if want to flip the black notes and white notes so that it’s more playable, that seems like a good thing. That said, playing the now black notes (the 5th-harmonic derived notes) all sounds great as I mentioned – so you don’t have to do the transposition if you don’t want to although you’re more likely to get combinations of notes that don’t gel quite perfectly.
So, now we have harmonic propagation from our fundamental B “word” of 0.0037037037 recurring Hz, using both the 3rd harmonic and the 5th harmonic: the numbers of sacred geometry and sacred biology.
By the way, I really recommend John Michell’s books if you’re interested in sacred geometry. The correlation between the numbers of geometry, ancient metrology, and now music can probably only be explained by a correlation between mass, gravity, electro-magnetism rotation and frequency. If you think about it, we’ve found that the Eb frequency of 9.6 Hz which corresponds to the Earth’s magnetic field is also an octave of 0.3 Hz which is the time it takes the Earth to turn 1/72nd of a degree (3.3333 recurring of today’s seconds, referred to as a ‘Helek’ in ancient Babylon). I suspect that all “vibration”, whether at the macro level like our planet, or the quantum level like electrons, is all really just rotation as a function of mass (or energy, as Einstein pointed out).
So, “energy has rotation” is basically the formula. Some clever mathematician will come up with the “holy-grail” unified field theory at some point proving that mass, rotation speed, gravity, and electromagnetism are directly related mathematically, but it’s clear that all we’re really doing here is rediscovering truths about the fabric of our universe which were also known by the ancient Babylonians and Hebrews when they developed geometry and their units of measurement. Somehow they incorporated these numbers into how they measured the rotating earth, their concept of time, and how they measured distance – and how they blew their walls down with trumpets!
And in the interim, the loss of this knowledge which we’re now re-assembling, has been at the heart of the horrible way we’ve treated each other, ourselves and our planet for the past few thousand years. But now we’ve got this harmonic knowledge back (or pretty darn close to it, I would say!) and are once more coherent, so we can feel good – music can be restored – our bond with nature and the conscious cosmos can be strengthened – and we can live natural lives in harmony with our natural world and each other!
Stop the presses. A while ago, I figured it would make an amazing fractal if we could feed the equation for harmonic propagation into a fractal programme – because as we know, when harmonics propagate, the gap between your starting frequency and your ending frequency is always a harmonic of your starting frequency.
Well, I found this video where he shows how fractals can be shown to make music. If someone could just help me figure out what the equation is to represent:
* a starting frequency, * multiplied by 3, * multiplied by 11 to get us back nearly to where we started, where the difference nearly matches an octave of our starting frequency
* and the difference between that gap frequency and an octave of the starting frequency again becomes the input to the next iteration of the equation.
E.g.
0.9 Hz x 3 = 2.7 hz X 11 = 29.7 hz The ‘expected’ frequency is 28.8 hz (0.9 hz x 32, which is several octaves above our starting frequency).
And the difference between the starting octave and the ending frequency is 29.7 minus 28.8 = 0.9 hz, which in this case is our starting frequency, although sometimes it might be the 9th or the 5th harmonic, etc.
So, the gap is the part that makes it fractal because the gap is always a whole number harmonic of the starting frequency. It would be a really amazing fractal because it would visualise how vibrational harmonics actually propagate, while also emitting the sounds of this process!
Dear All, I’ve been going down a line of enquiry recently and wasn’t sure how to share it, but I think I’ve today reached an interesting insight. This entry is going to be a little more technical than some of the others, but hopefully I won’t lose you. Meanwhile, here’s a recording of me playing my keyboard tuned as discussed below, which you can listen to while you read (sounds better loud).
And here’s the same track – in Equal Temperament. Sounds more like the kind of music we’re used to, but somehow the beneficial, therapeutic effect is missing. See what you think:
As you know, this website is based on my discovery of some odd, resonant audio behavior which I identified using an iPhone tone generator connected to Bluetooth headphones (video of this phenomenon is on the home-page, here). Here, I discovered that the frequencies 5.4 Hz (F), 7.2 Hz (B-flat) and 10.8 Hz (F again) are the point where a sub-audible “interference warble” on either side of these frequencies stops beating.
7.2 Hz is a B-flat. While 5.4 Hz and 10.8 Hz are both the F note, an octave apart (5.4 Hz x 2 = 10.8 Hz), both the 3rd harmonic of B-flat (7.2 x 3 /2 = 10.8 Hz) – as it turns out. (It’s the “so” in do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.)
When I say these are the F and Bb notes, I mean in a new tuning based on these frequencies – rather than the 440 Hz, equal temperament standard we’re lumped with – and this site is dedicated to putting together a harmonic scale based on these “found” frequencies. So, so my initial assumption was that the lowest of these notes, the B-flat, would be the fundamental frequency from which we could derive a harmonic musical scale – and I’ve done that analysis on the homepage: calculating the 9th, 3rd, 5th, and 7th harmonic of these notes; and in turn the 9th, 3rd, 5th, and 7th of those harmonics, etc. until we’d found harmonic frequencies for each of the 12 notes required for the the western scale.
Well, then I discovered here on the EarthPulse web-site that an E-flat (a 3rd harmonic below our B-flat frequency (7.2 Hz / 3 x 2 = 9.6 Hz)), is the frequency of the Earth’s magnetic field, as measured by Robert Becker (who wrote the book, The Body Electric) by driving poles into the ground and measuring the frequency.
(I have bought one of these EarthPulse devices to experiment with for sleep – and interestingly, the default setting is this 9.6 Hz frequency, which is how by Googling this frequency I found out about EarthPulse in the first place. But the best advice came from Sadhguru who advised sleeping East/West, rather than North/South!).
So, it turns out that the Earth itself happens to generate a frequency precisely a 3rd harmonic below my frequencies – indicating that it is the Earth itself which is responsible for that “interference” frequency which you can witness in the video – (or the Earth is following a universal frequency).
I have also previously reported in this blog entry about the ancient Hebrew and Babylonian measure of time known as the “Helek” – equal to 3.3333 recurring of today’s seconds. A Helek was determined in the ancient metrology as the time it takes the Earth to rotate 1/72nd of a degree as it turns on its axis! (There’s that number again, 72. Our Bb is 7.2 Hz, by the way.) If you banged a drum once every Helek, that’s 1 beat every 3.3333 seconds = 1 / 3.3333 secs = 0.3 Hz. So, 0.3 Hz can be though of as the vibration of the Helek. And 0.3 Hz is a sub-octave of 9.6 Hz Eb (0.3 Hz x 32 = 9.6 Hz), the earth’s magnetic resonance.
So the Earth’s rotation, and it’s magnetic field both happen to resonate at a very low E-flat, the 3rd harmonic below the B-flat which I experienced. So, there is a series of 3rd harmonics being propagated naturally here from the Earth: E-flat, to B-flat to F. (Interesting, isn’t it that the resonance of the Earth’s magnetic field and the Earth’s rotation are based on that same E-flat building block of 9.6 Hz. There must be a physics formula, and if there isn’t, we’ve just discovered something!)
(It’s also worth noting here that the “magical” number of 316.8 which John Michell documents in the The Dimensions of Paradise as appearing in Revelations, Plato’s Republic, Glastonbury Abbey and Stonehenge, and in the dimensions of the Earth and Moon, turns out to be the 11th harmonic of our 7.2 Hz B-flat tone (7.2 Hz x 11 x 4 = 316.8 Hz). And the “solfeggio tone” of 528 Hz turns out to be the 11th harmonic of the G note that is a major-3rd harmonic of this E-flat frequency (9.6 Hz x 11 x 5 = 528 Hz!).) Click on the links here to read my investigation of both of these.
And you can find out more about the miraculous power of the 11th harmonic for destroying cancer in this video. (I have suggested to them that if they’re going to use an 11th harmonic, they should base it off these particular frequencies, but they haven’t gotten back to me on that!)
So, to build a harmonic scale from these “found” frequencies we can keep going up in 3rd harmonics (multiplying the frequency by 3) until we’ve got all 12 notes of the western musical scale, or we could also try going down in 3rd harmonics (divide by 3) to see if there are other fundamental tones below the ones that presented themselves to me (the Bb and F frequencies).
Our E-flat is based on the rotation of the Earth (1 vibration per Helek) and gives us 0.3 Hz. Divide this by three to go down a fifth to an A-flat (0.3 Hz / 3 = 0.1 Hz). It’s interesting to me how we’ve now gone from 3 to 1, in an almost biblical, Trinity sort of way. Is this what the Trinity was referring to, “first there was the word, and the word was [a vibration of 0.1 Hz]?! From this came the Two (octave at 0.2 Hz), and the Three, the Trinity at 0.3 Hz, E-flat?
A-flat: 0.1 Hz
E-flat: 0.3 Hz
B-flat: 0.9 Hz
F: 2.7 Hz
C: 8.1 Hz
If 0.1 Hz is the A-flat building block from which all of the universe is constructed, then I think its interesting that however odd and discordant any frequency is that you might be playing, it’s going to be based upon that 0.1 Hz building-block. In terms of the “Aleph” at the beginning of Hebrew creation, it’s interesting that this note is an A (and an A-flat at that) as fundamental as you can get. In other words, the universe is fractal, built from this 0.1 Hz building block – and its harmonics.
Like the four fundamental musical tones of creation described by JRR Tolkien in the Silmarillion, (which I just started reading – funny how the poetic mind tends to be 100 years ahead of the scientific mind) even when over-reaching ambition makes us think we’re the centre of the universe and all reality emanates from our frequency, we cannot break the fabric of the universe, made up as it is in 0.1 Hz increments. The harmonic truth always rings through. Every evil plan is somehow botched by the goodness inherent in the system: Rockefeller also gave us mobility, Bill Gates also gave us computers. Anyway, enough of the realms of literature and tyrants 🙂
An additional interesting aspect of A-flat at 0.1 Hz as the fundamental frequency is that its octaves correspond to the doubling we’re familiar with from the binary scale (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512) except that because we’re starting with a decimal, the frequencies for the octaves of A-flat are 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 3.2, 6.4, 12.8, 25.6, 51.2, 102.4, 204.8, 409.6 Hz, etc.
But keeping with the goal of delving ever downward to find that “fundamental of fundamental” (or holiest of holies – the quarks of sound, let’s say) I tried then going down a 3rd harmonic from our 0.1 Hz A-flat to C#. 0.1 Hz / 3 = 0.0333333333333333 recurring Hz. (Recurring numbers are always interesting, I think. And if as Nikola Tesla said, the universe is built of 3s, 6s, and 9s – this seems like a good sort of number to find at this point!) (The C# octave for this is 273.066666666666 recurring Hz, by the way)
And a 3rd harmonic below that C# is F#: 0.0333333333333333 Hz / 3 = 0.0111111111111111 recurring Hz. We’re back to “the one” again – (and this corresponds to an F# at 364.08888 recurring Hz.)
This is where the harmonic simplicity seems to stop, however: If we go one more 3rd harmonic down, from F# to a B, we get: 0.0111111111111111 / 3 = 0.0037037037037037 recurring Hz. We’re no longer dealing with simple 1s and 3s.
So, it’s possible that B, is the underlying frequency – the foundation of it all. “Darkness was upon the face of the deep” and all that. We know from the cycle-of-fifths, that we can go upwards or downwards to get to our destination. In this case, I think we’d go down – and it sounds better there, but I’ve positioned B in both places in the table below, if you’d like to experiment)
( Now, it did occur to me to look at this B frequency in terms of Heleks: I just mention this because I think it’s interesting. I Googled this number, 0.0037037037037037, to see if it’s significant. Interestingly, this “day calculator” tells us that (0.00370370370370 days happens to be 320 seconds. In Heleks, 320 seconds / 3.3333 seconds = 96 Heleks:
If one Helek is the time it takes the Earth to rotate 1/72 nd of a degree
So, 96 Heleks = 1.3333 recurring; that’s 1 and-a-third 3 degrees of Earth’s rotation = 0.00370370370370 Hz = B, corresponding to 485.5 Hz )
So, then starting with B (or F#) as the fundamental frequency from which all of Earth’s vibrations emanate, then our harmonic table of 3rd harmonics (“cycle of 5ths” as it’s known in musical circles) looks like this:
Above, so that you could tune your keyboard or guitar to these frequencies, I’ve added the tuning “offsets” in cents from 432 Hz Equal Temperament as well as offsets from 440 Hz Equal Temperament, For example, to adjust to get an F# of 364.089 Hz, as above, if your reference pitch in your software is A=432 Hz then you adjust by +3.755 Hz. Or if your reference pitch is A=440 Hz you’d adjust by minus 27.834 Hz, as shown above.)
Regarding the title of this blog entry, about black notes and white notes, here’s the thing I wanted to share with you all: if we make F# the starting point of our cycle-of-fifths, as shown in the table above, you notice that all the sharps (and flats) happen in the first four ‘hops’ of this cycle-of-fifths: (F# => C#, C# => G#/Ab, G# => D#/Eb, and D# => A#/Bb. All black notes to start with. And then when we go from A#/Bb => F, we get the first white note.
Looking at the piano keyboard then, where we have the black notes and the white notes, isn’t it really interesting that the black notes are the fundamental building blocks from which our harmonic series (and perhaps the universe) is constructed; while the white notes are the later tones, more mundane, perhaps?
When constructing a piece of music, you could dip into the flats/sharps when you want to make those deeper connections to creation, and use the white notes when you’re dealing with things more in our every day experience. I’ll tell you, for me, playing these notes with my keyboard, using Apple Logic adjusted to these frequencies, I really feel it. And with the mind-set that when you’re playing the white notes your dealing with the more exoteric, day-to-day side of things, and when you’re playing the black notes your dipping into the more esoteric, fundamental side of things – it really gives a sort of quantum way of thinking about what each note stands for and corresponds to in the “sonic geometry” of creation.
Post-script:
Well, I learned today (on Reddit) where the white notes and the black notes come from: It turns out that the medieval church organ keyboards were designed with only 8 keys, to only play the key of C-major (AKA mixolydian G, AKA only today’s white notes). The black-notes were added in later. When I was growing up, we had an 18th century piano in the house (tuned down so it wouldn’t break), and the first piece of music in the piano book was “I am C, middle-C, left-hand, right-hand middle-C!” – and I always wondered why it was “middle-C” – why not middle-D, which looks more like it’s in the middle?!. But one thing in all this I’ve noticed is that when we do arrange the cycle-of-5ths in the sequence as I have in the table above (where F-sharp is the fundamental from which all harmonics generate), C is indeed the middle key of all of that (6 5ths below C to get back to our starting frequency at F-sharp, and 6 fifths above C to return us to F-sharp (cycle-of-fifths – the lemma is fractal!). Maybe that’s why the Church favored it. In my approach though, C is more a minor key than the “white-notes-only” C-major, .
Technical Note:
The astute will notice, hey your scale doesn’t have A = 432 Hz, or D = 288 Hz. We thought you were a hippie!
So, let’s just explore that for a moment. I have noticed when exploring the octaves of my “found” frequencies for Bb and F is that they reflect the magic numbers of 432 and 288 and 72 – but behind the veil of a decimal point! For example, the B-flat octaves are: 0.9, 1.8, 3.6, 7.2, 14.4, 28.8 Hz. The magic numbers of 72, 144 and 288 are there, but as decimals.
Similarly with the octaves of F: 2.7, 5.4, 10.8, 21.6, 43.2 Hz. The magic “432” is there, along with 54 and 108, but as decimals.
Now, it’s a fact that the major-third interval can be found harmonically by multiplying a frequency by 10. So, 43.2 Hz as an F corresponds, when multiplied by 10, with an A of 432 Hz which is the major-third of F. And if you look at my home-page, those are the frequencies I gave for A (432 Hz), D (288 Hz), G (384 Hz), C# (270 Hz) and F# (360 Hz) – but these are all derived as major-third harmonics (of F, Bb, Eb, A and D, respectively), and they can make the overall scale less cohesive than when the frequencies are generated from perfect-fifths – in my perception.
In fact, using these 3rds-based frequencies basically renders half of the harmonic series incompatible with the other half. And here’s why: When we’re dealing with 5ths, 4ths and 9th harmonics, these frequencies are all multiples of 3: for 5ths we multiply by 3, for 4ths we divide by 3, and for 9ths we multiply 9. 3 and 9 (and 6) are all multiples of 3, and therefore any frequencies generated by using this multiplier will overlap and intersect when we go around the cycle-of-fifths (see my exploration of the cycle of fifths) and the infamous gap or “lemma”.
But, in terms of constructing a harmonic, musical scale that aligns with a fundamental frequency and reflects the power of that fundamental fully, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s best to only use the perfect-5th (3rd harmonics). Because they are based on 3, and therefore the symmetry of the pattern is not complicated by deriving notes using major-thirds (based on 5 or 10 as the multiplier). (Frequencies multiplied by 5 and 3 only coincide as multipliers at multiples of 15. A bit like the Aztec calendar they don’t harmonise very often! – whereas 3s coincide often at 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, etc.)
I tend to think, like Nikola Tesla, that 3, 6 and 9 are the cosmic numbers. Actually, I believe the cosmic numbers are just 1, 2, and 3 because you can make 3, 6 and 9 from 1, 2 and 3, as well as every other number.
For example, let’s pick any old frequency. Let’s say 1.3 H. Harmonically, it would be 0.3 Hz (Eb) x 2 x 2 + 0.1 Hz (from the Ab). Meanwhile, in the Tarot, the number 5 is considered the human number – 5 senses, 5 limbs – it’s who we are, but as we know, we’re kind of out-of-kilter with the rest of creation – except at places where multiples of 5 and 3 coincide – such as 15, 45, 60, 90, 180, 360 (which might say something about geometry).
So, I’m thinking of harmonics derived from major-thirds as “satellite” frequencies – they compliment the music in a fractal sort of way, but cannot be used to generate other frequencies from. Therefore, I’ve released myself from the prejudice that my A has to be 432 Hz, and that my D has to be 288 Hz, etc. – even though harmonically those frequencies can be generated as major thirds from our “magic notes” of F at 10.8 Hz (10.8 Hz x 10 x 4 = 432 Hz), and Bb at 7.2 Hz (7.2 Hz x 10 x 4 = 288 Hz). With perfect-fifths, we still have the magical numbers of 432, 288, 72, 54 as decimals within the harmonic sequences or Bb and F (43.2, 28.8, 7.2, 5.4, as explained above) – plus, to my ears, it sounds better.
In fact, this is where I think most attempts like this go off the rails because they don’t understand about the decimal point, so you see scales where C is defined as 256 Hz (generated as the major-third of A-flat (0.1 Hz x 5 = 0.5 Hz), with octaves at 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 … 256 Hz), instead of our C of 259.2 Hz generated as the perfect-fifth from our F of 10.8 Hz). But, we do have the number 25.6Hz, disguised as a decimal, as one of the octaves of Ab.
Nature is subtle, it understands decimal points! In fact, it’s almost as if the subtle roots of life emerge from the other side of the decimal point at A-flat = 0.1 Hz; and before that the origins of the C# and F# are tiny decimals, “lost in the mists of time”. Ha ha – perhaps that’s what that phrase really means!
It would be possible to construct a musical scale which included the major-3rds as well as the 5ths and even the 7ths, but we’d end up with the 11 notes each with their 3 harmonic “flavours”, so that’s 11 x 3 notes in an octave = 33 notes, which is probably the truth, but it makes making music on a keyboard or guitar, very, very ergonomically challenging! I had a guitar neck with 24 frets per-octave for a while, and in the end, I had to pull half of them out – the music actually ends up being more discordant because half the time you’ve accidentally played the wrong variant of the harmonic. Too much choice!
The good news is that most of the fundamental frequencies I had woven into a musical scale on the home-page and on the page on instrument design have not changed (what has changed are the F#, C#, D, A, and E) – and I have both tuning files in my Apple Logic, so I can go back to the old one if I want to. (I’ll add a link to the other one here, soon.) There is a different flavour between those two scales – but right now, I’m really liking this one, just based on the perfect-fifths.
And yes, using this harmonic scale, we can only play in certain keys – but if we really are playing “in the key of Earth” – then why would you want to play in keys not compatible with that?! Frankly, that doesn’t seem to be relevant because when I’m playing these notes, they feel so resonant with the fabric of reality – that I know it’s the right key!
Here’s a link to the Apple Logic project file with these offsets already in it. Hopefully it will download for you – and assuming you have Apple Logic. The other thing I’ve done is transpose the keyboard on each track so it’s playing 3 semi-tones higher. In this way, when it looks like I’m playing an F I’m really playing an Ab, a G is really a Bb, an A-minor is really a C-minor, etc. This is because I’m kind of new to the keyboard, and by transposing in this way I can play all the most sonorous chords and modes on the white notes (e.g. Ab Lydian, Bb Mixolydian, C-minor, Eb major, F Dorian). Also, remember, this isn’t a temperament – I haven’t adjusted the frequencies from the cycle of fifths – so some keys will sound great, like the ones I mentioned above; other keys won’t sound so good. After I worked out this harmonic series, I spent a day questioning all this and went back to my original mixed tuning using some major thirds, but in the end, this 5ths-based series just sounds more awesome!
The Harmonics of Nature 