44 Cents Low

[Ron Nossaman]

Hi Sy,

I'd say he's out to lunch as far as piano tuning goes, but he's in the
ball-park if he wishes to induce epileptic seizures. The term "flicker
frequency" came, I believe, from studies along these lines.

Ron




At 10:36 PM 1/25/98 -0700, you wrote:
>List--from Sy Zabrocki:
>
>For about six months a music director from a large church asked me to tune
3 pianos low. I was reluctant to do this but finally caved in. One was a
Kawai KG-2 and 2 old uprights. In fact he even gave me a tuning fork which
measured 44 cents low on the Accu-tuner.
>
>He gave me a 14 page document which describes some kind of belief that the
lower pitch is more in tune with the human body. The cover page in entitled:
>
>A Manual--On the Rudiments of Tuning and Registration
>Book I--Introduction and Human Singing Voice     Schiller Institute 1992
>
>I'll just type in one paragraph of "this stuff" which he highlighted.
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------
>Psychologists have long identifed the frequency of 16 cycles per second (4
octaves above the "second pendulum," and 4 octoves below C=256) as a very
important psychophysiological threshold, called the "flicker frequency." It
it this frequency that the mind begins to integrate a series of repeated
stimuli (such as flashes of light or sound pulses) into a continuous
gestalt. Most likely this "flicker frequency" is related to the
characteristic frequency ranges of the brain waves (alpha: 8 Hz and higher;
theta: 4-8 Hz.)
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------
>All this gobble-gook was too much for me and I just smiled at him while he
tried to convince me it has been proven the human voice is more comfortably
at this pitch. There is apparently some group of society promoting this and
this is where he obtained the special tuning fork.
>
>He also had tuned the Allen Organ 44 cents low. When he saw the accuracy of
my SAT he then removed the organ back and re-tuned the organ to the SAT
instead of the tuning fork so the organ and piano were exactly together. 
>
>It wasn't fun lowering these pianos, especially the Kawai KG-2. I felt like
I was committing a mortal sin. It won't hurt the pianos and sooner or later
I'll back over there pulling them back to A-440.
>
>When I saw Robert Gooddale's post I wondered if the circumstances were the
same. Robert did not say why he was asked to tune low.
>
>Sy Zabrocki--RPT
>
>

 Ron Nossaman