"A half-step is moving from one note to another within the chromatic scale." so im right in saying it is a semi tone ??
 
"Depends, there is a 5 hz difference between 435 and 440 (the two types of A's) but the problem or beauty of the hertz scale is that it is logarithmic." yeah i know that, frequency doubles/halfs with every octave

spacealf
I am tuning to the Arabic scale included with my synth.
Or the India scale.
That's it, no more Western influence on anything anymore.
 
http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/roland-xp-10-system-exclusive-messages-for-arabic-scale/
 

No more Western influence - except for the computer, the language, the font, the credit system you may have used to buy your gear,.... :)
 
Na na na na boo boo, 
 
Bob Bone

Audiounity

Lol!
I like different intonation systems myself, though my familiarity with Indian and Arabic music is more through listening then playing. I have dabbled (in the lightest possible sense) in a handful of Indian ragas before, though Yaman is the only one I remember as it corresponds (if squared off and intonated) to Lydian. I love Indian scales for their use of pure ratios, ... The Western system compromised pure 3rds and the like for being able to modulate to different distant keys. 

Thanks for popping in to this thread, Audiounity.
 
Nice to hear from a fellow fan of Indian and Arabic music.
 
I know we in the West have lost a lot in our separation from "natural" and "pure" intervals.  I just have to listen to the possibilities that equal temperament opened up for us since to know it was worthwhile.
 
Anyway, back to A=342Hz...

 

SteveStrummerUK
 
Sadly, I couldn't think of a way of slipping "Love Hertz" into this post.
 

 
 

guitardood
I just finished reading this entire thread.
 
Now, quite frankly, my brain hertz......... ba dum bum.

 
Oi!
 
That's plaggiarism playgiarism plagiarisum stealing that is

 

To the OP....there is a transpose function. Never used that myself. I always just play my Synths in whatever key the song is in. A - G# whatever....Other than that I'd try to detune the synth in question to the other instruments. I personally just play in the key of the song, it's so much easier! FOR INSTANCE... I did a demo for some kids recently and they played in Drop C#. Some real heavy sounding stuff. I just played the pads and whatever else they wanted in that key. I never detuned anything.

@DaddyV - what the OP is asking is not to transpose, but to "slightly flatten" his reference tuning, so that his material is 8Hz below "standard", regardless of what key it is in.  There has been a lot of hocus pocus about this recently, with people believing it "sounds better".
 
@OP - Perhaps try recording an example in both A=440 and A=432, and listening to them in several different environments.  As spacey pointed out, you could use zeta and detune it to A=432.  See if you can hear an improvement.
 
Perhaps post your tracks, and other people can comment.

I'm glad you bumped it. Otherwise I would have missed this:
 
"you sound like a novice cook trying to argue with a master BBQ chef that Boston Pork Butt is really actually meat from the hiney and not the shoulder because it clearly says "butt." The chef keeps trying to tell you it is from the shoulder but, oh well."
 
Priceless.
 
As for the idea that any particular tuning is more natural/spiritual/magical than the next, I feel compelled to point out that any tuning based on measuring frequencies in Hz (i.e. cycles per second) is highly unlikely to have any special "harmony" with "the universe" given that the duration of a second is a totally arbitrary, man-made value. There's nothing "natural" about it. No harmonic phenomenon in nature fits nicely into our arbitrarily defined frequency scale except insofar as the second has been arbitrarily defined (since 1967) to be:
 
"the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."
 
 
 
 
 

Anyone experiencing psycho social agitation caused by music tuned to 440 HZ should run directly away. At, oh say, a speed of about 20 & 1/2 feet per second. In dry air at about 68 deg F, that is.