What’s the Frequency?

Of all the possible variables that can connote or qualify music as ‘healing’ frequency would seem to be the easiest to grasp. Since there is so much music out there, a way of sorting it would seem logical.

If you’re interested in sound therapy or healing music, you’ve probably come across the idea that certain musical frequencies—like A432 Hz or C528 Hz—have special, even transformative, properties. These numbers are often promoted as being more “natural,” “soothing,” or “spiritually aligned” than the global music standard of A440 Hz.

As someone who’s been asked about this by therapists and musicians alike, I think it’s time to dive into what frequency really means, where the standard came from, and why this debate is still going strong today.

What Is Frequency, Really?

In physics, frequency simply means the number of times a wave repeats per second. It is measured in Hertz (Hz). A sound wave that vibrates 440 times per second has a frequency of 440 Hz, which corresponds to the musical note A4.

When a musical sound is produced—say, by a vibrating string on a guitar—it doesn’t just create one frequency. It produces a fundamental frequency (the main note you hear) and a series of harmonics or overtones. These overtones give each instrument its unique tone, or timbre. That’s why the same note sounds different on a flute, a clarinet, or a human voice. In music and sound production frequency is generally thought of as a range or band, lows, mids, highs and the ranges are boosted or filtered to feature specific instruments or for psychoacoustic effects. Frequency like resonance has become more than a technical term, it has become personal, a descriptor of consciousness with the measurement of frequency, Hertz, being ascribed metaphysical dimensions beyond its mere function as a measurement of the periodicity of wave forms.

So what is frequency? Frequency is the measure of repetition of a wave event. Once an oscillatory disturbance such as a vibrating string is set in motion it moves as a wave through matter such as air or liquid jostling the particles but not transporting them.  A simple visual analogy is that of pebble thrown into a pond. Waves oscillate out from the disturbance traveling through the water. Sound behaves in a similar manner moving through air, oscillating the air particles and traveling at 770 mph. The speed is a constant but the frequency is a variable.

Our ears and brain are hardwired to interpret frequencies in meaningful ways. We don’t just hear pitch—we feel mood, tension, emotion, and resonance.

If you have researched the frequency debate, you may have heard that A440 is somehow problematic hence the need to retune music to another standard such as A432. There are memes associating the A440 frequency standard with Hitler and its use in Nazi mind control and propaganda.  Here’s the backstory. Because Nazi orchestras in the 1930s adopted this tuning standard, it is assumed it must have been part of the regime’s control over the German population. While it is true the Nazis used music very deviously in conjunction with visual and spatial/architectural stimuli, it was the sensual, emotive power of the music itself combined with words and overwhelming visual symbolism that established a form of dark tribal entrainment, contributing to what amounted to mass hypnosis.  Joseph Goebels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda  was in charge of all German culture, art, theater, film and music.

The story of how A440 got associated with the Nazis is really quite arcane. As the orchestral world was attempting to reconcile the pitch standards of the global heavyweights of orchestral music, with the British stubbornly adhering to A439 Hz, the French at A435 and Italian Opera, notably Verdi,  favoring A432, it seemed irreconcilable. However,  the big emerging market and manufacturer of modern pianos, the Americans, had been using a standard of A440 for several years. The Germans, who carried the heft of history with venerable composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, at Goebel’s urging, came down on the side of the American Standard in 1939.

As music technology improved in the early part of the 20th century, and the invention and proliferation of the phonogram gave birth to a global market of recorded music increasingly broadcast via radio, the need for an agreed upon standard was an imperative. A440 finally became a universal standard in 1955.

The History of Concert Pitch

The global pitch standard of A440 Hz is actually a fairly modern invention. For centuries, pitch standards varied from one country—or even one church organ—to another. Tuning was based on local conditions and often influenced by how metal organ pipes aged or how instruments were built.

Here are a few historical tuning forks for reference:

• Handel’s tuning fork (1840): A=442.5 Hz

• Another from 1880: A=409 Hz

• Beethoven’s tuning fork: A=455.4 Hz

In 1859, France adopted A=435 Hz as its national standard. The British, meanwhile, used A=439 Hz, which matched their own orchestral preferences.

The real shift happened in 1939, when an international conference (driven by the BBC and the growing broadcasting industry) adopted A440 Hz as the universal standard. It was a practical solution, designed to make it easier for orchestras, instrument makers, and broadcasters to work together.

My Jazz Story (And Why Standards Matter)

In the 1980s, I played with a jazz musician in New Zealand who had a beautiful antique flugelhorn, purchased in Australia. It sounded great—until we had to play with a piano. His horn was tuned to the old French standard of A435, while the piano was tuned to A440. The mismatch made his gorgeous horn nearly unusable in modern ensemble settings.

That story illustrates why standardization matters. For music to be shared globally, we need a common reference point.
Is A432 Hz More Relaxing Than A440 Hz?

Here’s where it gets interesting. Many people claim that music tuned to A432 Hz sounds warmer, more peaceful, or more “in tune with nature.” And when you hear the same piece of music played at A440 and then A432, it’s easy to feel a subtle difference. The A432 version often sounds slightly lower, and we tend to associate lower tones with relaxation.

But here’s the catch: unless you have perfect pitch (only 1 in 10,000 people do), you probably wouldn’t be able to tell which was which without being told. And once you’re told—especially if you already believe one is better—that belief can color your perception. It’s like preferring a certain brand of soda because of the label, not necessarily the taste.

There are some practical benefits to a lower tuning standard like A432. For example, singers may find it less strenuous to hit high notes. But for most listeners, the difference between A440 and A432 may be more psychological and symbolic than sonic.

Why the Debate Resurfaces

Today, with the rise of streaming and sound therapy apps, it’s easier than ever to digitally retune music from A440 to A432 or even C528. Some believe these frequencies promote healing or spiritual awakening. And maybe they do—belief itself can be powerful.

Apps and plugins allow you to pitch-shift music without changing its tempo. However, professional audio engineers caution that this isn’t a perfect process. Shifting pitch digitally can subtly blur the harmonic structure of a recording—like converting a RAW photo to a JPEG. Some nuance is inevitably lost.

Still, many people find value in pitch-shifted music. Whether it’s placebo, personal resonance, or real acoustic benefit, it’s part of a much older tradition of finding healing in sound.

The Ancient Roots of Sound as Medicine

Across cultures—from ancient Greece to India, China, and Egypt—music has always been seen as more than entertainment. It was a sacred force, closely tied to the cosmos, emotion, and the human spirit.

The ancients didn’t measure frequency in Hertz. Instead, they focused on ratios between notes (like 2:1 or 3:2), and built scales based on natural harmonics. These ratios had psychoacoustic effects, and were used to invoke specific moods or energies.

Even the architecture of ancient sites reflects acoustic awareness. The Hypogeum of Hal Saflieni in Malta, a 6,000-year-old underground temple, resonates at around 110 Hz—right in the range of a male chanting voice. The Amphitheater in Epidaurus Greece can carry a whisper from the stage to the hillside above. This isn’t accidental. These spaces were designed for sound and music to move people, literally, figuratively and spiritually.

One of the justifications for using  frequency labeled music is that it is somehow connected to a more ancient and therefore sacred vibration. Music has long been considered to have cosmic significance. This is a deeply held belief in all world cultures and the music of antiquity reflected this. The ancient Chinese Indian and Greek traditions are replete with sacro-religious underpinnings and the modern manifestations of special frequencies are an echo of a much deeper, almost lost tradition.

The ancients however did not measure frequency in Hertz, that is a modern invention. The ancients were concerned more with ratios of notes and scales and had a much deeper understanding of the architecture of sound and the psychoacoustic effects of musical intervals and harmonics.

While it is easy in the digital age to retune music from A440 to say A432, it is a much bigger undertaking to change a global standard. All the instrument makers would need to recalibrate. For instance a guitar can be tuned to A432, but if you want to permanently change it you may need to take it to a luthier to reset the intonation for it to sound its best.

A440 has been the agreed standard for decades, but there are instrument makers who are now using A432 as a standard, most notably for sound healing instruments, such as crystal bowls and bells and chimes. If you are building a sound healing instrument collection it is important to choose which pitch standard you want to align with because some crystal singing bowls are tuned to A440 and some to A432 and the tonal distance is about half a semitone - the two will not play well together.

While there are legitimate musical reasons to consider tuning to another standard, particularly for singers or for antique instruments from another era when the concert pitch was lower, picking a pitch for some abstract quality doesn’t gain you anything. Frequency is not a qualitative measure,  It is a functional measurement of waveforms. Because we experience frequency physically, in the range of 20 Hz to 20 KHz it vibrates our ear drums, and at lower frequencies it can vibrate into our bodies, it has visceral meaning to us. A low frequency is a bass sound, a high frequency is a treble sound we experience these differences because our hearing mechanism is calibrated to sort these waveforms and our brains can assign meaning to pitch and pitch relations.

Linda C. Einex has done an exhaustive study on ancient music and ancient musical structures and she concludes: “Although the anatomy and physiology of human beings are essentially the same there are significant differences. Size, weight, heartbeat, blood pressure vary from one person to another; so does the inner resonance of the body. It is not true that there is a universal frequency on which human beings (or the whole universe) are founded or tuned; the myth of AOUM on a fixed “cosmological” frequency that each person should find and hear for his or her physical or spiritual realization is denied by all the professional musicians of India I have met.  Each one has his or her own main tone and drone which changes with the time and years. Megaliths, Music and the Mind - Linda C. Eneix
The allure of being able to fix whatever stresses you by changing the pitch of the music you are listening to is strong. Belief is powerful. However the power of a piece of music goes well beyond its set pitch and this concept is clearly explained by neuroscientist, Daniel J. Leviton,

“Whatever effect a piece of music or sequence of sounds has on you, it’s unlikely that it would stop having that effect if it were shifted by a few hertz (Hz cycles per second) in one direction or the other.” -  I heard there was a Secret Chord Music as Medicine Daniel J. Leviton