There were several concurrent revelations some years back that inspired me to look deeper into this frequency relationships and such. There were two books, “The Cosmic Octave” by Hans Cousteau and “Nada Brahma” by J.E. Berendt. Around the same time of reading these books I was introduced to the “Schumann Resonances”, and also spotted a news article claiming that a super-low, ultra-beefy B-flat was discovered at the heart of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster.
I enjoyed gleaning what I could from Cousteau’s “The Cosmic Octave” but progressively lost interest when the Swiss-born author intermittently insinuated that he was the long-awaited mathematician, scholar, and glass bead gamer “Magister Ludi” of Hermann Hesse lore. I then dropped the book entirely when the sexual pleasures of tuning forks of various pitches was discussed. The book seemed to go astray in terms of academic rigor at that point. Went completely off the rails. [It should be duly noted that this tuning fork phenomenon is not unknown in certain circles. However, as a bass player with an electronic tuner, I had no previous knowledge of such activities.]
At the moment I don’t remember anything specific about Berendt’s “Nada Brahma”, it blew my mind so much. Seriously, this book changed my outlook on many things. One of the 2-3 books in my life that has had a tectonic-shift type of impact. On the other hand, I’ve also spoken with insomniacs who would pick up the book when they really needed sleep, they found it so obtuse. (“Obtuse! Did you say ‘Obtuse’?”)
I admit that I wasn’t able to follow everything in “Nada Brahma”, which is par for the course for somewhat difficult reads since I can be notoriously thick-headed, but extracted enough meaningful content to be extremely happy to have read it. (The same goes for Fritjof Capra’s “The Tao of Physics”, who, incidentally, wrote the introduction for the edition of “Nada Brahma” in my possession.)
The Schumann Resonances are a fascinating phenomenon that is, literally, right under our feet, noses, etc. They are essentially “global electromagnetic resonances excited by lightning discharges in the cavity formed by the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere.” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances]
The resonances are ELFs (Extremely Low Frequencies) consisting of several tones and overtones, the strongest of which is the so-called and aptly-named “Schumann Resonance” after the German physicist Winfried Otto Schumann who mathematically predicted the existence of said frequencies in 1952. This strongest of these at 7.83 Hz I sometimes refer to as the Earth Resonance.
I was introduced to the Schumann Resonance at a sound workshop hosted by Dean and Dudley Evenson, accomplished musicians and founders of “Soundings of the Planet”, an independent record label founded in 1979. They are still actively recording and producing music.
One thing they started to do when they became aware of the Schumann/Earth Resonance was to include the resonance itself in all of their recordings. This strongest resonance of 7.83 Hz is well below our threshold of hearing. However, some fun “facts” I’ve gathered about said resonance follow:
• Whales, crickets, and a myriad of other creatures communicate along this frequency, effectively using the earth as an amplifier to carry their signal over long distances.
• Submarines allegedly use this same frequency for underwater communication and navigation, and have been (correctly, in my opinion) blamed for killing/damaging marine life in the process.
• The Schumann Resonance has been built into space shuttle instrumentation to help prevent space sickness.
• The Earth Resonance is right at the threshold between two critical brain states, that of “theta” (dreaming, subconscious, hypnotic, meditative) and “alpha” (daydreaming, creative, relaxed). [I like to think that humans evolved around this “lullaby” sung by our very planet]
• The Earth Resonance is a B natural when A is tuned to 446.447 Hz (slightly sharp)
The aforementioned facts are as I understand them to be. (I know, “crickets”!) I am in no way a scholar, scientist or academic about this. If any facts or assumptions listed are incorrect, I would appreciate hearing about it.
If you ever google “Schumann Resonance”, you’ll see that some folks believe that the resonance is actually getting higher and higher as our planet’s panic increases, until all will be knocked cattywumpus in 2012. I’m not saying that nothing will happen in 2012, and it does seem that the earth is considered disposable by many, but for the record, a real-life scientist working on ELFs in Alaska told me that the Earth’s pitch is not changing.
As for the lowest known note in the universe, it was found in 2003 at the center of the Perseus Galaxy Cluster by scientists at the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Essentially, there’s this B-flat 57 octaves below middle C emitted by a supermassive black hole at the center of a cluster of galaxies. The note is so low, one sound wave is produced every 10 million years and carries the power of 100 million supernovas.
The fact that the scientists figured out the pitch of something so low inspired me to do some simple figurin’ and octavatin’. As far as I know, I was the first person to figure out that the actual pitch of the Earth Resonance is a B natural. It’s quite beautiful that the earth has been saying “B natural” all along.
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Hmmm, gotta have a little more explanation of this line: “one sound wave is produced every 10 million years”.
By definition, a “wave” is a continuous process. In the case of sound, it’s a pressure wave in air or some other material. There are peaks of pressure and troughs of pressure, but no such thing as a peak without a trough.
In order for the phenomenon to be a wave, there has to be some sort of continuity between peaks and troughs, not just “occurrence” at regular intervals.
So I’m puzzled by the idea of a wave that occurs only once every xx time periods. Do you mean a wave whose period (i.e. distance between adjacent peaks) is 10 million years, and whose peak amplitude is (equivalent to the power of) 100 million supernovae?
What a cool post! Thanks Jason! I’m a little worried that the Earth’s pitch and the lowest pitch in the universe are one half step apart. That’s a lot of cosmic dissonance for our little planet to take….
My initial description of a “new sound wave every 10 million years” was unclear. The intention was to describe the frequency of the sound wave, so, instead of 440 cycles per second, there’s one cycle every 10 million years. We can take cycle to mean the period between adjacent peaks and/or valleys.
Obtuse, I don’t know, but Berendt’s book certainly is a tour-de-force in well-meaning, often quite poetic obscurantism. The core problem is, in my opinion, that Berendt was a writer/journalist who by the mid-70s had learned so well how to cater to the expectations of his readers – whereas his knowledge and understanding of music was amazingly limited. I’m still not convinced he could tell a major from a minor triad. So what he does is collect a number of, um, facts (honestly, not all of them expertly researched and double-checked, let alone understood), arrange them in a pleasant, highly suggestive (I tend to call it “manipulative”) manner and then trust that 95% of the readers/buyers will draw the conclusions that have really been the author’s highly speculative and debatable assumptions all along. What’s missing almost all of the time is a clear, comprehensible, reproducible description of how these alleged facts connect logically. Well, that’s just the way a certain scene used to discuss matters in the mid- to late 70s, but hey folks, don’t be taken in so easily! OK, space is big, REALLY big, but that doesn’t automatically prove that out there, there must be “something” that, say, a Bach fugue would only be a vague reminiscent of. I really like the idea expressed by a character in Umberto Eco’s “Island of the Day Before” who makes a point to the effect that it’s absurd to assume that the Universe out there would be some kind of cosmic organ grinder playing the music of the spheres to us. Talking about Eco: There’s another character in another book of his (“Foucault’s Pendulum”) who warns us against the use of pseudo-mathematics in these highly-speculative contexts: “You can prove anything with numbers!”
Were a sound wave to exist at 57 octaves below Middle-C, the resulting cycle would be about 1 every 525,094,698.2 years. It would require an impossibly enormous expanse of air for it to exist as a sound wave. Furthermore, the repetition required to make it perceivable as a sound is not only well beyond the tolerance of human hearing, but also well beyond the tolerance of human existence. (If a tree falls in the forest,…)
Rainer, I imagine you are correct in most respects and agree that not all of Berendt’s book is to be taken seriously. The fact that he would have probably been unable to differentiate a major from a minor chord is very funny indeed! For what’s it’s worth, it did help “open my mind” in certain respects, and the primary approach I’ve taken with this frequency material is as a creative springboard.
Mathematics differs from physics in that mathematics does not to be “validated” by the physical world in any way. String theory is a perfect example of how one can prove anything with numbers, in that sense that string theories also require the existence of several extra dimensions to the universe, in addition to the usual three spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time. At least at this time, string theories fall into the realm of theoretical physics because they can not be proven in any “physical” way.
Have you encountered Keplar’s, “Music of the Spheres”?
Berendt wrote another book titled, “The Third Ear”.
Another excellent spiritual, philosophical work based upon “sound” as a basis for our existence in the universe.
Obtuse…..? I don’t know. He presents an enormous amount of compelling facts.
As a bassist and life-long musician, these writings have inspired and re-enforced my musical belief system. They are also a great resource for other sources of knowledge as Berendt is extremely well read and provides historic references in virtually the entire history of human history and scholarship.
The chapter on ‘Overtones’ in the Third Ear explains the method in which he tones of “spheres” such as Earth and the planets are manifest in our aural language.
Anyway, good stuff Jason!
p.s. is that “obtuse” quote from Shawshank Redemption?
Rainer,
Is the fact that Berendt comes from a ‘Jazz’ background make you think he was musically ‘ignorant’ ? That is typical of the general Euro-centric view. Fact is, he devoted his life to music and facilitated the creation of a massive amount of music through performances and recordings he produced.
The greater point is, the crisis in the human experience right now exists, mostly, from a denial and departure from natural principals and sensory balance. You really don’t “hear” what Berendt has to say, not surprising from someone who would rather “see” the logic of a Bach fugue than hear the spiritual essence of it performed in real time and space.
My 2 cents