44 Cents Low

[Danny Moore]

Sy, List,
There is in fact some merit to this theory.  I have also read that, unfortunately, it was "tested" during WWII in Nazi Germany and then in the US during the Cold War as a means of extracting information from people.  It has long been suspected that audio waves of various durations have different effects on the human psyche.
For an introduction, see this web site  http://www.dnamusic.com/
While 16 CPS is in the sub-harmonic range and perhaps may have some effect on the human psyche, I've been led to believe that the physical body must be "bombarded" with relatively powerful sound waves in the 4 to 16 Hz range and the upper partials of these frequencies have no measurable effect.  The experiments actually placed people in underground concrete rooms with transducers mounted to the concrete.  The vibrations were actually transmitted through the structure, but they were too low to be audible.

Unless he has a vocalist that is capable of sustaining sub-harmonic tones for extended periods, it's really not relevant what pitch he chooses as a reference to tune his instruments.  Some of the organ techs may shed some light on this, but I don't think that even a 32' diapason stop goes down to 16 Hz does it?

This phenomenon does sort-of explain the interest in the chants of the Tantric Buddhist monks.  You can catch them on CD - catalog# 979198-2, "TIBETAN BUDDHISM - Tantras of Gyuto" copyright 1988 Elektra/Asylum/Nonesuch Records, division of Warner Communications.  They have developed the capacity to reproduce these sub-harmonic tones.

Er, what kind of church did you say this was?  Na, I don't want to know.

Danny Moore
http://www.setexas.com/danmoore/

Sy Zabrocki wrote:

> 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.)