I have been asked frequently about the other five frequencies that accompany the 528Hz frequency in the total Solfeggio Frequency array. Just last week I was asked by one of my listeners in a comment they made so I promised them I would write a post on that subject to explain in more detail how things come together.
There are six frequencies that have been designated by many as the Solfeggio Frequencies. They are as follows: 396Hz – 417Hz – 528Hz – 639Hz – 741Hz – 852Hz. I will take each one separately to explain in more detail how to work with each one.
Each frequency is the “anchoring” frequency around which a harmonic scale is built. All of the harmonic scales that accompany these frequencies are corresponding to tuning your instrument to the A = 444Hz rather than the 440Hz. You cannot play any music that we would appreciate by just playing the six Solfeggio Frequency together – it would not sound harmonious. You could play something, but it would be very discordant – at least in my opinion.
So lets look at the 396Hz frequency first. The harmonic scale around which you play in this frequency would be tuned as follows: A – Bb – C – D – Eb – F – G This gives you the key of B flat. Your major chords would be Bb – F – and Eb and your minor chords would be C minor – D minor – and G minor. If you were to play the 396Hz frequency as a droning note throughout a piece you were playing with this key, the note would always be in harmony with whatever chords you were playing.
Next comes the 417Hz frequency. The harmonic scale would be tuned as follows: A# – B – C# – D# – E – F# – G#, which would place you in the key of B natural which would give you the major chords of B – E – and F# and the minor chords would be C# minor – D# minor – and G# minor. Once again, the 417Hz frequency droned would harmonize with all the music played in this key.
The next frequency is the main healing frequency in which I record most of my music. It is the 528Hz frequency and it is tuned in to the F major key which is tuned as follows: A – Bb – C – D – E – F – G. An interesting aspect about this frequency is that you can also tune in the Bb to a B natural giving you the C major key and I find that some of the Psalms sound better in C major and some sound better in F major. In F major, you have the major chords of F – Bb – and C and the minor chords of G minor – A minor – and D minor. In the key of C major you have the major chords of C – F – and G and the minor chords of D minor – E minor – and A minor.
The frequency of 639Hz brings us back to the key of B natural with the tuning of : A# – B – C# – D# – E – F# – G#. The chords are also the same as we noted above.
The 741Hz frequency gives us a new key for the harmonic scale. It is the key of A natural. It is tuned as follows: A – B – C# – D – E – F# – G# and it has the major chords of A – E – and D and the minor chords of B minor – C minor – and F minor.
The final frequency of 852Hz brings us back to the harmonic scale tuned as follows: A# – b – C# – D# – E – F# – G#, which brings us back to the key of B natural with the same chords once again as noted above.
I have recorded a CD titled Tabernacle Prayer which has music recorded in each of these frequencies. I recommend that you purchase the book that is suggested to be included with the CD so that you can read for more understanding about where these frequencies come from and how I believe they were designed to impact our lives.
I hope this explanation has shed a little more light on how these frequencies are harmonized with the harmonic scales and chord keys so that you can begin to play with some music of your own creation and experiment with finding how the various frequencies can effect your lives and the lives of others.
Thank you for your continued interest and support – Steve
I have been getting a lot of questions from readers on what type of harp is referred to in the Scriptures. Many who ask this question are focused on following the Scriptural model and want to make sure that if they are going to play a harp, they want it to be the right one. This is a really good question, but it requires a bit of explanation and it actually has several answers.
There are two words for harp in the Hebrew language. The first is Kinnor which is a smaller more personal instrument that has from 5 to 15 strings on which to play. A couple of the Psalms refer to the 10 string Kinnor, and that I believe has led many to believe that that is the truly Scriptural harp. Some call it the Davidic harp because it is believed that David played the 10 string Kinnor.
The Jewish Talmud even has a reference to the 10 string Kinnor returning just before Messiah comes; so many believe that unless a person is playing on a 10 string Kinnor, they are not playing a real biblical harp. I have had many people ask me if I could make a Davidic harp, and I just completed one so I could demonstrate it to those who are interested.
The second word for harp in Hebrew is Nevel. It refers to a larger instrument that has a sound box. The number of strings placed on this model is not definite. I believe that David may have invented the Nevel because in 1 Chronicles it says he invented instruments for the priests to play in the temple and the word Nevel is used many times throughout the Psalms so David clearly knew what a Nevel was. There have been some archaeological finds recently that show pictures of a Nevel that date close to David’s time so I am convinced that He played a Nevel.
There are some who believe that a Nevel should have 22 strings so that there is one string for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In fact, Micah Harrari (House of Harrari) makes such a harp with a Hebrew letter carved by each string. This allows a novice musician to play a song from the Hebrew text of any Psalm by just playing the string next to the letter that matches the letter that they are reading in the Psalm.
The reality is however that there is no mention in Scripture of how many strings a Nevel has. Further, there are only 7 notes to play before you get to the 8th note which is a repeat of the first note, just an octave higher. So no matter if you have 22 strings or 33 strings, you are going to have the same notes – just the 33 string harp will have more octaves to play with for a greater range and selection.
Many readers ask which modern harp would be a good one to buy that is a good balance between having enough octaves and reasonable cost as well as portability. I have to say that I am particularly impressed with the Harpsicle made by William Rees in Indiana – USA (go to www.harpsicle.com) This is a 26 string harp and you can get it with full sharping levers or partial. One called the Sharpsicle has enough levers for 4 different keys and cost about $600 plus shipping. I have one myself and it is a great starter harp with good sound – you can see me using it on the first 3 lessons on my youtube channel (see link below). It is also very good for traveling as it can fit into the overhead bin in the airplane and I have had no trouble taking it through the security check lines.
My all time favorite is the Voyager Harp that I make from a kit available from Music Makers in Minnesota. It is one of the best harps for the money that I have found and has 33 strings for great range and selection. It is also only 22 pounds so it is very easy to transport. My personal Voyager has been serving me well for over 9 years and has traveled around the US several times. I keep a sleeping bag over it so it doesn’t get too banged or scratched.
I recommend tuning your harp to the 528Hz for best sound and results. I explain how to tune to this in my lesson on tuning. Basically you will calibrate your electronic tuner to 444Hz instead of 440Hz. This will make your C note a 528Hz instead of 523Hz. All the other notes will harmonize just fine.
Playing the music of the Psalms can be performed on any of these instruments. There is a slightly different technique between the Nevel and the Kinnor. It may take a little time to get used to how the strings are laid out, but with a little time spent, you will soon be producing a pleasing sound. I hope my lessons on YouTube will be of use to you in the process.
I hope this will be helpful to some of you asking these questions of what harp to get and where to get it from. If you have any further questions do not hesitate to write and ask.
This article explores the possible ways and routes that have brought music into being such a universal and important aspect of our lives. While I don’t agree with the Darwinian explanations, I find it interesting to note the universal recognition of how important music is to our lives and the attempt to discover its development from beginning to present day.
Scripture presents musicians to us in the early record of man close to creation, and I personally believe we were created with a desire to express ourselves in music. It can be a form of worship of our Creator as well as pure enjoyment and recreation. As our Creator presented us with many ways of interacting with and enjoying His creation around us, so I believe He gave us music. Many aspects of the body He created for us enable us to present and enjoy music for many of the reasons noted in the article below as well as others.
Not all of this article is credible by my standards, but I present it in its entirety for your consideration trusting your discernment to pick out the cherries and spit out the pits! I hope it gives you something to think about.
Mounting evidence suggests that human beings are hard-wired to appreciate music. What researchers want to know now is why our distant ancestors evolved music in the first place.
By Drake Bennett | September 3, 2006
IF YOU HAVE SPENT any time near a radio during the past couple months, you’ve probably heard a song called “Crazy”, an oddball R&B ballad about insanity. The track is the result of the collaboration between a singer who goes by the name Cee-Lo and a producer who goes by the name Danger Mouse, and it is absurdly catchy. With Labor Day upon us, it seems safe to call it the song of the summer.
Of course, crooning along or tapping our feet to its loping bass line, it may not occur to most of us to ask why “Crazy” – or any song for that matter – can so easily insinuate itself into our consciousness. It just sounds good, the way our favorite foods taste good.
But a growing number of neuroscientists and psychologists are starting to ask exactly that question. Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute, for example, have scanned musicians’ brains and found that the “chills” that they feel when they hear stirring passages of music result from activity in the same parts of the brain stimulated by food and sex.
As evidence mounts that we’re somehow hard-wired to be musical, some thinkers are turning their attention to the next logical question: How did that come to be? And as the McGill University neuroscientist Daniel Levitin writes in his just-published book, This is Your Brain on Music, “To ask a question about a basic, omnipresent human ability is to implicitly ask questions about evolution.”
The fact that music is universal across cultures and has been part of human life for a very long time-archeologists have found musical instruments dating from 34,000 BC, and some believe that a 50,000-year-old hollowed-out bear bone from a Neanderthal campsite is an early flute-does suggest that it may indeed be an innate human tendency. And yet it’s unclear what purpose it serves.
The evolutionary benefits of our affinity for food (nutrition) and sex (procreation) are easy enough to explain, but music is trickier. It has become one of the great puzzles in the field of evolutionary psychology, a controversial discipline dedicated to determining the adaptive roots of aspects of modern behavior, from child-rearing to religion.
Some evolutionary psychologists suggest that music originated as a way for males to impress and attract females. Others see its roots in the relationship between mother and child. In a third hypothesis, music was a social adhesive, helping to forge common identity in early human communities.
And a few leading evolutionary psychologists argue that music has no adaptive purpose at all, but simply manages, as the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has written, to “tickle the sensitive spots” in areas of the brain that evolved for other purposes. In his 1997 book How the Mind Works Pinker dubbed music “auditory cheesecake”, a phrase that in the years since has served as a challenge to the musicologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists who believe otherwise.
The first thinker to try to find a place for music in the Darwinian order was Charles Darwin. In his 1871 book The Descent of Man he argued, “musical notes and rhythm were first acquired by the male or female progenitors of mankind for the sake of charming the opposite sex.” Darwin’s model was bird song. In many bird species, males sing to impress females. Depending on the species, females will tend toward the males with the broadest repertoire or the most complex or unique songs.
The foremost defender of that model today is Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of New Mexico. Miller argues that in prehistoric communities, singing and dancing might have worked – as they do today in some Native American cultures – as proxies for hunting and warfare. The ability to come up with imaginative melodies and rhythms would connote intelligence and creativity, and the long, arduous dances would be proof of one’s endurance – the sort of traits that a choosy female would like to see in her offspring.
Even today, Miller argues, music retains some of its old procreative roots. Looking at 6,000 recent jazz, rock, and classical albums, Miller found that 90 percent were produced by men, and that those male musicians tended to reach their peak musical production around age 30, which he notes, is also the peak of male sexual activity.
Miller points in particular to the example of Jimi Hendrix. Miller has written that, despite dying at 27, Hendrix had “sexual liaisons with hundreds of groupies, maintained parallel long-term relationships with at least two women, and fathered at least three children in the United States, Germany, and Sweden. Under ancestral conditions before birth control, he would have fathered many more.” To Miller, it was Hendrix’s status as a music-maker rather than his fame or charisma that gave him this sexual allure.
Levitin sees some merit in the sexual selection model, but he cautions against seeking support for it in contemporary music. It’s important to keep in mind, he argues, that “we’re not talking about someone on the subway listening to an iPod or even someone in a concert hall listening to Mahler.” The environment in which music would have evolved would have been much more participatory. Even today, he argues, the Western idea of the concert, which separates performer from audience and music from movement, is an anomaly. In many of the world’s languages, Levitin points out, “there’s one word for music and dance.”
Others who study the issue are more skeptical. David Huron, a musicologist at Ohio State University, argues that the Darwin model would lead one to expect a differential in musical abilities between the sexes. Typically, he points out, sexual selection leads to “dimorphism,” a divergence in traits between male and female. “It’s only the peacock, not the peahen, that has the plumage,” he notes.
“There’s no evidence whatsoever that men are more sophisticated than women in terms of the ability to serenade someone from beneath a balcony,” he says. Steven Mithen, an archeologist at England’s Reading University, agrees. In his book The Singing Neanderthals published last spring, he writes that the male dominance that Miller sees in the modern recording industry is hardly proof of a difference in innate ability or proclivity. Sexism would explain it just as well.
Indeed, if an alternate explanation is correct, it is women who were the original music-makers. One of the most universal musical forms is the lullaby. “Mothers everywhere soothe infants by using their voice,” says Sandra Trehub, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, “There isn’t a culture in which that doesn’t happen.”
Trehub has done research showing that mothers tend almost automatically to make their speech more musical when they talk to their babies, even more so in experiments when they are not allowed to touch them. This has led a few thinkers, Trehub included, to speculate that music may have evolved as a baby-calming tool in hunter-gatherer societies. Unlike other primate species, human babies can’t simply cling to their mothers’ backs, and singing may have been a way for mothers to maintain contact with their children when they had to put them down to do other tasks.
Perhaps the most widely touted explanation, though, is that music arose as a way for groups of early humans to create a sense of community. Among other things, this might explain why music-whether it’s singing hymns, school fight songs, or simply “Happy Birthday” – is so often a social experience. The model is neither love song nor lullaby but anthem.
In The Singing Neanderthal Mithen argues that communal music-making does two things. By demanding coordination and basic harmony, it works as a sort of rehearsal for the teamwork required for more high-stakes endeavors like hunting and communal defense. And the mere act of singing and moving in time together helps forge a sense of group identity. As evidence he points to the complex musical rituals of the South African Venda people, but also to the US Army, which sees chanting while marching in unison as a vital part of creating esprit de corps.
There is suggestive research linking music and sociability. Daniel Levitin, for instance, points to the difference between two mental disorders, Williams syndrome and autism. People with Williams are mentally retarded, but at the same time, as Levitin puts it, “highly social, highly verbal, and highly musical.” Autism, on the other hand, while it also often causes mental impairment, tends to make people both less social and less musical.
To Steven Pinker, though, none of this adds up to a convincing case for music’s evolutionary purpose. Pinker is not shy about seeing the traces of evolution in modern man-in How the Mind Works he devoted a chapter to arguing that emotions were adaptations – but he stands by his “auditory cheesecake” description.
“They’re completely bogus explanations, because they assume what they set out to prove: that hearing plinking sounds brings the group together, or that music relieves tension,” he says. “But they don’t explain why. They assume as big a mystery as they solve.” Music may well be innate, he argues, but that could just as easily mean it evolved as a useless byproduct of language, which he sees as an actual adaptation.
And Pinker isn’t the only skeptic. Back in April, as part of an experiment led by Levitin to compare the physiological response of performers and listeners, Boston Pops maestro Keith Lockhart conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra while he, a few musicians, and a portion of the audience were wired with monitors that tracked their heart rate, muscle tension, respiration, and other bodily signals of emotion.
Yet though Lockhart was happy to make himself Levitin’s guinea pig, he confesses to be ultimately uninterested in the origins of music.
“It’s enough for me to know that music does have a distinct emotional reaction in almost everybody that no other art form can boast of,” he says. “I’ve never particularly wanted to know why that happens.”
