Rex Kerr
Mar 30, 2023

--

Innate frequency tuning in the auditory cortex is insufficiently precise to have anything remotely like a sensitivity to a 2% difference in frequency, and although auditory map refinement can, in a select group of people with perfect pitch, enable such exalted levels of discrimination, the world contains a full spectrum of frequencies so the only way it would matter is if you actually trained people with perfect pitch to associate 440Hz with one thing and 432Hz with another. The rest of us would be clueless.

The bottom line is that, biologically, there's no intrinsic difference between the two frequencies. Trying to induce an arbitrary 440Hz-phobia or 432Hz-philia in people seems the height of pointlessness at the very best.

--

--

Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

No responses yet