From classical to rock, musicians tune their instruments to a common pitch in order to play together harmoniously. A440 Hz has been the standard for at least 80 years – this defines the A above middle C and therefore all the other notes around it. But this time-honored tuning standard is now being challenged across genres: more and more artists, including two Grammy-winning acts, are releasing albums tuned to A432 Hz instead. A slightly lower mood – and for these musicians it makes all the difference.
Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien’s interest in this topic began about twelve years ago at the Glastonbury Festival. “I had an inspiring conversation about the Solfeggio scale, an ancient musical scale, and that led me to discover 432 Hz,” says O’Brien, whose second solo album, Blue Morpho, is out May 22. “I liked the idea that music could be more than just pleasing to the ear or moving – that the frequency at which it was played could actually have a healing effect or resonate in harmony with the cells of your body and the world around you.”
For O’Brien, the implications of 432 Hz tuning are profound. “It just feels right to me,” he says. “It has more depth and power, it feels complete. In comparison, music sounds slightly shrill at 440 Hz. Instruments sound better and vibrate more freely at this frequency, especially acoustic instruments like guitars. It feels deeper.”
New Age to Mainstream
New Age artists have been releasing records in 432 Hz for decades. Proponents believe that music sounds better in this tuning – and that 432 Hz and its associated tones and overtones are more harmonious with the natural frequencies of the human body and the earth.
The difference between 432 Hz and 440 Hz is negligible: less than a third of a semitone. But current studies show fascinating effects of 432 Hz on listeners – such as an increased appreciation of music compared to 440 Hz, lower heart and breathing rates and fewer feelings of anxiety. These apparently disproportionately strong effects of the slightly lower tuning drive the growing 432 Hz movement.
“It’s just a different feeling,” says James Blake, who discovered this vibe while working on his latest album “Trying Times.” “I don’t tune everything to it, but I find that I find music at this frequency very relaxing.”
YouTube, Spotify and science
YouTube is naturally full of 432 Hz music videos that promise to relieve stress – while listening to meditative drones, slightly slowed down Mozart pieces or thousands of retuned hits and ambient tracks. Veterans recording in 432 Hz include Grammy-nominated composer Steven Halpern, whose albums are said to act like a “tuning fork for the brain.” And there are extensive 432 Hz playlists on Spotify and Apple Music – with a noticeable number of Italian artists.
Nevertheless, hardly any popular artists have dared to deviate from A440 Hz. The claims that legends like Jimi Hendrix, Prince, John Lennon and the Grateful Dead played and recorded in 432 Hz can probably be attributed to experiments – or simply to out-of-tune guitars.
Ziggy Marley is another prominent supporter of the 432 Hz tuning. In a conversation from his brand new Rebel Lion studio in Los Angeles, he explains why he recorded his new album “Brightside” this way. “All my musical life I’ve been searching, reading, trying to make music the way I imagine it – spiritually, with all the visionary qualities I think music should have,” says Marley. “432 Hz had been on my radar for a while. I had heard that this frequency was closer to the human natural frequency at which we vibrate – and everything has a frequency. We all vibrate at frequencies. So when I decided on 432, I started doing my demos. I feel much more comfortable with this hertz number.”
Marley retunes the band
Marley, who has won nine Grammys – including Best Reggae Album in 2026 for “One Love–Music Inspired by the Film (Deluxe)” – now also performs live with instruments tuned to 432 Hz.
“I told the band, ‘We’re doing 432, everything has to be in tune to 432.’ They’re like, ‘What?’ So suddenly every instrument on stage had to be on 432, and playing the first shows in 432 was an exhilarating experience. What I observe: It actually has an effect on the audience, on me and on the band. The connection is stronger. The response at this frequency is different.”
Throughout music history, vocal standards have changed again and again. In the 17th century, orchestral instruments were commonly tuned lower, and since then the tunings have steadily climbed upwards and become increasingly standardized. Today A440 dominates most western music.
Schumann resonance and pseudoscience
Proponents argue that 432 Hz corresponds to the Earth’s ionosphere cavity’s natural electromagnetic resonance frequency – 7.83 Hz – along with its overtones known as “Schumann resonances.” Despite these and other questionable mathematical claims – often accompanied by pseudoscientific vocabulary and AI-generated “harmonic” imagery – evidence for the benefits of 432 Hz has so far been thin on the ground.
But does that matter? Artists like Ed O’Brien and Ziggy Marley feel the difference. As Ziggy Marley’s mother Rita Marley’s title on her 1980 album succinctly puts it: “Who Feels It Knows It.”
“It gives new inspiration to the music,” says Ziggy. “If you do it at a different frequency, the mind hears things differently, and that creates exactly that kind of energy – like the first time.”
A new renaissance
Whatever the studies show about the effects on heart and breathing rates, Marley has no doubts about the power of frequencies. And he is convinced that the musical side of 432 Hz is on the verge of a new renaissance.
“Listen, it’s going to be incredible,” he says.
