Solfeggio frequencies

Solfeggio frequencies, often promoted as "ancient solfeggio frequencies"The Ancient Solfeggio Scale, Attuned Vibrations, are a crank concept in sound healing. They involve grandiose claims about a certain series of sound frequencies (174, 285, 396, 417, 528, 639, 741, 852, 963 Hz) derived from a numerological system of family number groups. The concept hijacks and misapplies terminology (including the name) from the "solfeggio" or music-education method, but other than that, has nothing in common with it. Many who push this woo also push the A440 conspiracy – that is, that the modern international standard for Western tuning is somehow detrimental to our well-being. 
==Claims==
Apparently, an individual by the name of Dr. Joseph Puleo (in mid-1970s) discovered "solfeggio frequencies" through a series of pareidolic numerological calculations involving Bible verses, and it is claimed that these frequencies are "ancient" and "sacred" and were frequently used and sung before being "forgotten" by the modern world.What are the Solfeggio frequencies?, Attuned Vibrations How we were able to measure the exact frequency of sound back then is not addressed. 
One of the foremost promoters of the "solfeggio frequencies" is Leonard Horowitz, and following his lead, the idea has circulated far and wide over the years on YouTube and among New Age websites. The following vaguely miraculous claims are nearly always given for each of the frequencies:Solfeggio Frequencies Set Body Into Full Harmony, The Mind Unleashed6 Frequencies Used by Ancient Cultures to Heal and Connect to the Divine, Humans Are Free
* 174 Hz – Comfort and Security
* 285 Hz – Healing and Rejuvenation
* 396 Hz – Liberating Guilt and Fear
* 417 Hz – Undoing Situations and Facilitating Change
* 528 Hz – Transformation and Miracles (DNA Repair)
* 639 Hz – Connecting/Relationships
* 741 Hz – Expression/Solutions
* 852 Hz – Returning to Spiritual Order
* 963 Hz – Intuitive Awakening
In fact, the series is not based on any actual musical, aesthetic or acoustic considerations, only numerological ones. The apparent connections between these numbers hinges entirely on our use of base ten for counting, and would fall apart in most other number bases. In addition, Hertz is an arbitrary unit of measurement that is based on a thirty-one-million-five-hundred-and-thirty-six-thousandth part of one revolution of an arbitrary planet around an arbitrary star31,536,000 seconds in a common (non-leap) year. – hardly grounds for any claims of cosmic significance. In fact, this supposedly mystical numeric sequence is found in the columns of digits on the standard numeric keypad of a telephone or computer.
==History==
The name "solfeggio frequencies" is a complete misuse of the term "solfeggio" (or ), which properly refers to a music education method that was developed to teach sight-singing and accurate pitch, associating a syllable with each note of the . The system originated with 11th century music theorist Guido of Arezzo assigning six syllables (ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la) to the first six notes of what would later be known as the ; he derived these syllables from the words of the Latin hymn : 
*Ut queant laxīs resonāre fībrīs; Mīra gestōrum famulī tuōrum; Solve pollūtī labiī reātum, Sancte Iōhannēs.
Much later, the "ut" was changed to the open syllable "do", "sol" sometimes to "so", while "si" (later changed to "ti") was added for the seventh scale-note, giving rise to the modern solfège that formed the basis for this famous ditty: 
===Pseudohistory===
Promoters of "solfeggio frequencies" attempt to intertwine them with the history described above, claiming bizarrely that the tones Guido of Arezzo drew from Ut queant laxis actually corresponded to this magical series of frequencies — which, by the way, bear no resemblance whatsoever to the medieval hexachord, the , the major scale, , or anything else in Western tonal music,They can, however, provide an interesting soundscape for modern musicians and composers. despite claims to the contrary.Forgotten in Time: The Ancient Solfeggio Frequencies, Soma Energetics At any rate, even trying to claim that they originated with Guido's 11th-century concept would not justify the appellation "ancient".
==Further misinformation==
As if using the name "solfeggio" wasn't bad enough, the framework also misuses the syllables "ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la" by inexplicably reassigning them to the "solfeggio frequencies" (396Hz = "ut", 417Hz = "re", etc. until 852Hz = "la"Note that the frequency of "la" in this system is more than double that of "ut", placing it higher than the "ut" of the next octave up. To illustrate how silly this is, imagine playing the ascending white notes on a piano keyboard - C, D, E, F, G, A, B - only to find that the next C was of a lower pitch than the preceding A and B!) instead of the diatonic scale tones to which they belong. This is quite a disservice to music educators, students, and anyone else who wants to study the solfège method. It is also highly ironic, given the focus of solfège on singing in tune and the fact that the frequency series is hardly singable at all.In fact, this audio demonstration shows that the tones sound rather "out of tune" with each other.
Unfortunately, the concept is still popular and has been making rounds on the internet for many years, to the extent that the top results of a Google search for the word "solfeggio" include demonstratively New Age YouTube videos and domain names such as attunedvibrations.com, powerthoughtsmeditationclub.com etc. uncritically repeating Puleo and Horowitz's nonsenseGoogle search result for "solfeggio" instead of actually useful information on solfège.
==See also==
* Leonard Horowitz
* Sound healing
* A440 
==External links==
* Craig Good covering this topic on the Skeptoid podcast
* A musician's comprehensive (and quite diplomatic) analysis of the absurdities of the "solfeggio frequencies" claims
* Another deconstruction from the MedSon Research Centre 
* Nine Solfeggio Frequencies: Examples and Descriptions 
==Notes==
==References==
Category:Bible woo
Category:Misnomers
Category:Music
Category:Pseudohistory
Category:Pseudomathematics
Category:Sound woo