Is A the harmonic root?

There’s a lot of discussion on the internet about A=432 Hz versus A=440 Hz, the current standard in an “equal temperament” tuning which has existed since around 1880 when church organ pipes in England were cut down to a standard length, for some centralized purpose.  

And A = 432 Hz does show up as the harmonic Major 3rd (5th harmonic) of the F 10.8 Hz “Earth pulse”, which I had detected.

Why A?

This highlights another question:  why should the reference pitch be A, at all?  Is it just convention?  

It’s the first letter of the modern alphabet.  But who assigned these note names to these frequencies?

And, by the way, the celtic Beth-Luis-Nion “alphabet”, based on tree names and moon cycles, started with a B, (before the Romans jumbled it all up in an act of vandalism designed to destroy the Celtic culture and its sacred, animistic connection to Nature, according to Robert Graves.)

As we’ve discussed, ancient instruments, and even today’s modern brass instruments, use F and B-flat as their reference pitch.

Zarlino seems to have used A

To be fair, the work of Gioseffo Zarlino does seem to build a harmonic scale from A 432 Hz.

And Zarlino’s harmonic scale is part of the Earth harmonic series based on the B-flat and F Earth-pulse frequencies I detected.  But his scale lacks both the Bb and the F frequencies.  So, there’s something missing there.

Harmonics of A 

So, let’s see what happens when we generate the harmonic series using A=432 Hz as our foundation. 

Starting with A = 432 Hz, we generate the following harmonic frequencies by multiplying by the lowest prime numbers (e.g. 3, 5, 7, 9). 

The lower the multiplier, the stronger the harmonic rings out:

So far, only G as the 7th harmonic does not give us the frequency we received from the B-flat harmonic series.

This is because, arithmetically, 7 really doesn’t combine with anything much.  The multiples of 3s and 5s multiply at 15, 30, 45.  3s and 9s combine every multiple of 18.  But 7: 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, etc.  It doesn’t intersect with these harmonics often.  So, 7 is  the “virgin”, in esoteric language.

Let’s move on to the second generation of harmonics from A, starting from its third harmonic, a C-sharp:

As indicated in red, only B matches the frequencies generated from the harmonic series of B-flat.  Even F – which should be an octave of our other magic frequencies of 5.4 and 10.8 Hz has been dis-figured from 345.6 (where it should be, and to which the ancient Chinese bells and cymatics were centered) to 337.5 Hz.

Things don’t improve when we generate the harmonics from the next fifth, G-sharp – and now even our B-flat has been mutilated from 230.4 Hz to 227.8 Hz:

Here’s a summary of all the notes generated harmonically from A = 432 Hz versus B-flat = 460.8 Hz.  Besides the notes B, C-sharp and E (all of them en-harmonic with B-flat), every other frequency has been dis-figured slightly:

It is in fact the major 7th of B-flat – or the major third of F – and that’s why using it as the foundation for a harmonic-series seems to take us further from the resonance of the Earth’s resonant grid.

A Might Work if it’s all based on Light

Even though A=432 Hz is part of the harmonic series of B-flat and F – it’s not possible to go the other way and generate the correct harmonic frequencies for B-flat and F from an A – unless of course we are generating the harmonics downwards, slowing the frequency, and dividing each note rather than multiplying it.  There are some who say that all existence coalesces from the vibration of light – so, in that case, we need to be dividing, rather than multiplying.

But here, in this sub-lunary sphere, where mechanical vibration prefers to produce overtones (faster harmonics) rather than under-tones (slower harmonics), then A should not be the reference pitch – just as we saw that the ancient Egyptian flutes didn’t even include the note A in their range.