Look, you came here, alright. This whole thing could be meaningless. I mean everything. But let’s not worry about that. What is just this thing about? Let’s think about Jimi Hendrix again. Most people will say he tuned his guitar to E♭, sometimes D; that is, tuning to the entire guitar down a half or whole step. (It’s complicated by analog recording and playback, the standard of those days. If the speed of either changes, the pitch changes.) If you aren’t using a tuner, this sometimes becomes the default accidentally by tuning to the top string (standard E) which naturally becomes flatter over time. If the notes really matter in themselves, this would change the name of every scale and chord that you play. It doesn’t. That’s because you aren’t tuning to E♭, you are tuning to A=415 or thereabout.

And this is The Problem that led me to this Whole Thing. Learning music as a kid on a horn or strings, you learn that the instrument tends to go flat, and when the orchestra plays in a group it tends to be flatter than the piano. This is known as classical pitch and it’s about A=430. It’s a good idea to have the standard be a little sharp, right? So you tune to the piano and it lands in the ballpark. (If you are playing along with a piano, you’d want it to stay there as close as possible. Most beginner orchestras don’t play along with a piano.) But I’ve gone back and researched it, and you can read the wikis I hope, it’s not just a small adjustment to the standard historically. It really was 415 and one point, which is fully A♭ today. At another point in Germany it became 466, which is A♯ (or B♭). Take a look at the keyboard:

If you shift the tuning a half-step in either direction you get chaos with the the names of the notes. But there’s nothing special about the frequencies themselves that make the white keys the Natural Notes, and the black keys Accidentals (in the Key of C Major, A Minor or any of the traditional church modes). Think about the Modes. They are the first scales in Western music, right? That’s why it’s those keys. But to really hear how they sounded, you have to shift them down a half step. Seems…crazy. But isn’t that WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK? No. It’s not. If “they” is music teachers, they definitely don’t want you to think about this because it’s really distracting and YOU’VE GOT TO FOCUS.

Hm, sounds legal. Not really, but it’s occurring to me now I’m making a system that’s more for analyzing than composing. Having some latitude with changing what frequency the note “A” is, for example, is pretty useful is some cases. Jimi Hendrix, for example, tended to tune down his guitar a little, probably just by ear. In FIN the note might be called 11, or 11.5, or 11.75. The more complex a number it is, the harder it is to read off the page. But if you just want to know what the exact note someone else is playing, it is useful information. I’ve tried making a simple equation to translate the frequencies (in Hz.) to simple decimal numbers, but you run into a problem pretty quick. Let’s ease into this with this very simple, randomly selected video:

Now it gets a little more complicated:

So you see there’s some more work to do. Think about it.