Application of head scraping combined with five-tone therapy in CFS of liver qi stagnation, Meiling et al, 2018

[oldtimer]

Ok, so i have a question.

I'm assuming that the theory around this treatment is based upon oscillations. (The sound waves cause cells that are vibrating to change?)

Now, I don't understand the maths behind sound waves, but, this is where my equal temperament objection comes in.

1) A note on an equal temperament tuned instrument contains the frequencies of other notes that make up the whole. Correct?

2) Because the notes are not harmonically tuned, the sound wave contains a slight irregular pulse(?)

3) In contrast, a harmonically tuned instrument would not contain this pulse. It would have a perfectly spaced waveform ?

I know what see in an oscilloscope, the waveforms stay static in one case, and move around in the other. So, if the theory was correct, a piano would not work for the therapy due to the pulses contained in different notes of the scale, unless the piano was tuned to be perfectly harmonic in just one key? Am I making sense?

I am clueless when it comes to the physics of tonality so I read the link from the original post and found that they used music from a series of CDs composed by Mr. Shi Feng and played by National Central Musical College Orchestra, published by Chinese Medical Multimedia Press Co.,Ltd. and widely used in clinic practice. The CD series is also recommended by the Chinese Musical Therapeutic Association.

After a bit of digging around I came across an example of the actual music from one of the CDs. Click on the little speaker symbol on the right hand side. It's very nice.

http://www.teahouseoolong.eu/contents/nl/d78.html

 

[BruceInOz]

1) A note on an equal temperament tuned instrument contains the frequencies of other notes that make up the whole. Correct?

Not sure I totally understand what you are getting at here. If you play one note on a piano you are basically plucking a string (ok 2 or 3 strings that maybe tuned slightly differently but let's ignore that for now). Plucking a string means we get the fundamental (lowest possible) frequency plus harmonics that are forced by the physics to be integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. Equal temperament tuning has nothing to do with these harmonics. It just is used to decide what fundamental frequency to tune each of the other strings that are struck when playing other notes.

Are you thinking of the beats that happen because the 2 or 3 strings that are struck for each note are deliberately tuned just slightly differently to create a particular sort of sound? Again I can't see how that's related to equal temperament.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Not sure I totally understand what you are getting at here.

This seems to happen when I ask questions about music theory and physics

I mean that one single note on the piano contains other notes in it.

Let's say play a C note.

The string vibrates along it's whole length and we hear the pitch C

However, we also hear the string vibrating at half it's length, and we hear a C an octave higher.
We hear the string vibrating at a third of it's length, and we hear a G.
We hear the string vibrating at a quarter of it's length, and we hear an E.

We have trouble hearing all the containing notes of the original C, but they are there.

We could say that the first vibrating string is plucked and we hear the pitch of (100 Hz)
we would also hear the pitch of 200 HZ, 300 HZ, and 400 Hz. (etc)

Now this is where the equal temperament part comes in. The piano could be tuned to the key of C, and everything would be harmonically nice to our ears. We don't (usually) tune the piano to a key, because other keys would then sound awful, and we want a piano to be able to play in any key. (correct?)

So what I think I'm saying, is that because we tune the piano to so that a pitch is a 12 root of 2 higher than the previous one, we don't get the same notes as in Chinese music, we just get fractionally different ones which then produce different sound waves. These sound waves vibrate differently, and thus, if this whole therapy where true, affect the body differently. (?!)

I think this video shows what I'm trying to understand in a visual way. Sorry If my questions are really not clear, don't worry, they are making my head hurt too! No need to strain to work out what I'm rambling about, if it doesn't make sense.




Thanks @oldtimer, I like some Chinese classical music.

 

[BruceInOz]

We could say that the first vibrating string is plucked and we hear the pitch of (100 Hz)
we would also hear the pitch of 200 HZ, 300 HZ, and 400 Hz. (etc)

Yes, this is true. You are describing the harmonics that can appear when you pluck one string. The relative amplitude (or volume) of each harmonic determines the quality of the sound and is what is different between say plucking a piano string and a guitar string both tuned to the same note or plucking a guitar string at different positions along it's length.

In this example, if 100 Hz where the frequency of C1 (it isn't) then 200 = 2*C1 is C2, 300 = 3/2*C2 is the G above C2, 400 = 2*C2 is C3, 500 = 5/4*C4 is E above C4, etc.

Now this is where the equal temperament part comes in. The piano could be tuned to the key of C, and everything would be harmonically nice to our ears. We don't (usually) tune the piano to a key, because other keys would then sound awful, and we want a piano to be able to play in any key. (correct?)

Yes. But because the 2^(n/12) happens to line up fairly close to the ratios of smallish integers that make up the just intonation scale (see the table comparing equal temperament and just intonation about half way down the page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament) ordinary mortals (and especially tone deaf ones like me) don't notice a problem when they hear a piano played, although proper musicians can tell the difference. Note that the two most important notes - perfect fourth and perfect fifth - line up extremely well.

So what I think I'm saying, is that because we tune the piano to so that a pitch is a 12 root of 2 higher than the previous one, we don't get the same notes as in Chinese music, we just get fractionally different ones which then produce different sound waves. These sound waves vibrate differently, and thus, if this whole therapy where true, affect the body differently. (?!)

So solutions are: a) Only play music that contains (in key of C) C D F G since they line up particularly well. b) Play on an instrument that can only play notes in a harmonic series like the natural horn or is not fixed to equal temperament like a violin. c) Recognise that this is all probably bullshit and just enjoy the music or do something else.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Thanks Bruce and Oldtimer!

I'm afraid I have a curious interest in avant garde music, sound waves on oscilloscopes, and musical tunings, so this thread interested me more than it probably should have.

 

[AndyPandy]

They lost me at “head scrape therapy”