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Music and Everything — A Brief History of the Cosmic Octave

Text by Fritz Dobetzberger

Cosmic Octave

Music
combines two different frequency bands: tempo and tones. Tones are audible frequencies in the range of Introduction
about 20 to 20 000 Hz and these tones are played at a certain tempo, for example at 60 bpm (beats per minute), Earth-day
which would be once per second (1 Hz).
Earth-year
For the artistic union of the two areas tempi and tones the term music is common. What is Earth, Platonic Year
still missing is a catchy, generally used term for the art of combining all harmonic vibration
Moon
ranges: For the connection of astronomical cycles or molecular frequencies with music
and colors and other ranges. Hans Cousto recognized the formula for this in 1978. Sun

Mercury
What happened so far (until 1978)

Venus
All or almost all music cultures are based on scales that gradate the spectrum between
one and twice the audio frequency. There is a natural reason for this: a tone that has a Mars
certain frequency resonates at double the frequency. This is illustrated by the vibrating string of a musical Jupiter
instrument: not only does it oscillate back and forth along its entire length, but the two halves also oscillate back and
Saturn
forth within themselves, and the three thirds, four quarters, five fifths, and so on. The halving can be seen most
clearly. Nature alone produces twice the frequency (or half the wavelength), it proportions itself.
Uranus

Neptune

Half Half
Pluto
In occidental culture the ratio of 1 to 2 is called 'Octave', according to the seventh scale, Dwarf planets
the eighth tone is then the octave tone (lat. octō 'eight'). The octave tone is so closely related to the fundamental
Other Tones
frequency that it is given the same name. The scale A, B,C, D, E, F, G and A forms the basis of modern music
notation. Table of Tones

Table of the 7 Chakras

Different musical cultures differ in the way in which a spectrum is graded from one frequency to double frequency in
Tuning Forks
five-, twelve- or differently graduated scales, in church or blues scales, Greek, Arabic, Indian, Chinese scales and so
on and so forth. Music and Everything

Frequency doubling is also decisive in the spectrum of musical tempos. Twice as fast tempos are noted as whole,
half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth notes, etc.

The application of the ratio of 1:2 as the basis of music is a paradigm, a way of thinking for the (almost) entire
cultural area of music. If the boundaries of this space are crossed and expanded, a new, expanded paradigm
emerges.

In those days :)

In the autumn of 1978, the Swiss mathematician and music researcher Hans Cousto
realized that the octave - the doubling of fequencies - could serve to artfully combine all
possible vibration ranges beyond music.

How and where did Cousto come up with his idea, in which milieu? As a contemporary
witness, I take the liberty of telling the following from my point of view. At that time we
were a flat-sharing community in Munich, directly at the English Garden near the
Monopteros in the old town house Riedlstraße 7: three floors, open doors; toilets in the
half-floor; washbasins in the stairwell; common clothes shelves in the anteroom. The society called us hippies.

We travelled, especially to India, and got to know other cultures. We became interested in universal contexts,
certainly inspired by Hermann Hesse's Nobel Prize-winning novel "The Glass Bead Game", in which he describes a
language of signs and formulas in which mathematics and music have an equal part and which makes it possible to
combine astronomical and musical formulas and to bring mathematics, architecture, art and music to a common
denominator.

As musicians, painters and mathematicians, we were interested in measurement systems and harmonics. Because
basic measurements such as the meter were mostly derived from nature, we wanted to know the origin of the 440
Hz chamber tone, which was established in Europe as the official tuning tone in 1939 (as we now know without a
specified reference to a natural constant).

Since October 2nd, 1978 we have been using cosmic tunes. On this day, Cousto found
and ate magic mushrooms, Psilocybe semilanceat in the English Garden. Thereupon he
heard and saw in a vision how the planets of the solar system give a concert in a light
show of rainbow colours. This led him to an eye-opener. Cousto took his pocket calculator
and 'octavated' the rotation frequency of the earth. The formula is quite simple:

A rotation of the earth around its own axis takes a day with 24 hours each, 60 minutes each, 60 seconds each, i.e.
86400 seconds. At the calculator:

24 x 60 x 60 = 86400.
 The reciprocal of time is frequency:

1 : 86400 = 0.000 011 574 Hz. This inaudibly low frequency was doubled by Cousto until
an audible tone frequency was calculated: 25 doublings, i.e. 25 octaves, result in
388.36 Hz.

Next, he determined the octave frequency of the Earth's solar orbit. The frequency of 1
time per year is 32 octaves higher a tone with 136.10 times per second (Hz.)

I remember Cousto presenting us the octave frequencies of the earth, the moon and the planets as numbers on
paper in the small room in the attic and telling us how he came up with them. Inspired by the genius of his idea, we
wanted to hear these sound frequencies naturally. Since we didn't have any synthesizers or tone generators at that
time, we had tuning forks made.

Sadja

As one of the first experiences with the tuning fork we noticed in comparisons with record
recordings and later at concerts that Indian master musicians tune their sitar very
precisely to the earth-year-tone C# 136.10 Hz. The astonishing thing about it is that they
tune this fundamental intuitively, without using tuning forks, without having frequency
numbers ready.

That the Indian basic tone, called Sadja, father of all other tones, corresponds to the
octave frequency of the earth year, did not surprise us too much, since the calculations
are based on the natural octave law. What is astonishing for our occidental culture,
however, is how the Indians come to this tone without knowing the numbers.

For me, the following experience was like looking through a keyhole: One day I tuned an
Indian sitar with the Earth Year Tuning Fork so precisely that all other strings resonated
after striking the lowest sounding string. Late at night we sat in a small circle in the room
where the well tuned sitar stood. We were all in a completely relaxed mood - and heard
how the sitar strings resonated and accompanied the sound of our sometimes spoken
words!

Indian masters do not seem ostensibly to seek a certain tone frequency but to swing by
themselves in a meditative serenity in this tone. According to my experience with the sitar resonating to the sound of
the words, the mood is a relaxed and cordial one, with - I suppose - a low brainwave frequency, similar to awakening
after a deep sleep, even before the onset of the usual hustle and bustle.

ColorMusic

The violet end of the rainbow has about twice the frequency of the red end. The light
spectrum therefore comprises one octave. This makes it possible to see a color as a
higher octave of a tone (or any other frequency). So a tone A with 440 Hz is many octaves
over the audible range a light frequency that we see as yellow-orange. Twelve-tone scale
and twelve-color circle are similar, both divide the octave space into 12 steps.

Accordingly, we first colored the piano keyboard of Michael Samay, pianist and close friend of the house. His brother
Martin designed the first rudimentary colour notes, which Johannes Paul, also a Riedlhaus communarde, and I
perfected over the years to the diagramm-like colour notes. In 1993 our book "Farbmusik - Leitfaden für eine
kombinierte Farben- und Musiklehre" (ColorMusic - Guide to Combining Color and Music Teaching) was published
by Simon+Leutner Verlag in Berlin.

Cousto tells his story

How it came to the first handwritten, photocopied and hand-sewn booklet „Farbton
Tonfarbe und die Kosmische Oktave“ (Realting Sound To Colors And The Cosmic Octave)
and to his printed books afterwards; how his mushroom trip developed into an industrial
standard, Cousto told in his lecture at the anniversary celebration "40 Years Cosmic
Octave", which took place on October 2, 2018 in the Berlin KitKat-Club. It was a party
arranged by Ananto (Mystic Rose) and organized by Klangwirkstoff Records and Hans
Cousto. DJs and live music by B. Ashra, Akasha Project and many others, as well as visuals, art performances and
lectures by Hans Cousto and Norbert Böhm designed the celebration.

Video
40 Years Cosmic Octave

Part 1

„Die Geschichte und Möglichkeiten der Kosmischen Oktave“

(The History and Possibilities of the Cosmic Octave)

Lecture by Hans Cousto (in German with automatic subtitles

Video by Tristans Transit

40 Jahre Kosmische Oktav…

Oktav…

direct link

Bordering on genius

Designating the idea of the Cosmic Octave as bordering on genius is appropriate because now the octave unites all
vibrational ranges beyond the borders of the audible range. Cousto has thus created a new paradigm. At the party
for the 40th anniversary of the Cosmic Octave, the philosopher and harmonian Norbert Böhm presented a once
again extended view of the world.

Norbert Böhm from Brandenburg near Berlin is a friend of Hans Cousto and has been familiar with the theme of the
Cosmic Octave for 20 years. For almost 10 years he has been working on his 900-page masterpiece "Stimmfibel zur
Sphärenmusik" ("Tuning Primer for Sphere Music"), which will be published as a book in 2019 to mark the 400th
birthday of Kepler's World Harmony.
 Norbert Böhm expands the field of the Cosmic Octave. While Cousto calculated stable
sound frequencies from the stable planetary orbital frequencies, Norbert Böhm takes a
close look at the planetary orbit. Because a planet does not orbit the sun in a circle but in
an ellipse, it is sometimes faster and sometimes slower, which can be represented as a
variable audio frequency.*1

Eternal and Now

The two methods of Hans Cousto and Norbert Böhm represent two dual views of one and
the same fact. From a long, 'eternal' perspective we measure the frequency of repetitions
per unit of time. The earth orbits the sun once a year. Several octaves higher is that with 136.10 times per second
(Hz) a certain audible frequency, which can serve as a tuning tone.

From the point of view of the momentary now, however, the inner life of an elliptical wave
becomes clear. Depending on which point of the wave the planet is currently 'surfing' on,
its orbit speed changes. Norbert Böhm has calculated the corresponding increasing and
decreasing pitches.

When around January 3rd the earth is closest to the sun on its orbit, it has its highest
speed with the octav-tone of 140,8 Hz. It is slowest around July 5th with 131.7 Hz. At
medium speed around April 3rd and October 6th, the audio frequency is 136.1 Hz. That is a transition from a bluish
to a greenish turquoise analogue in color..

World Premiere

At the anniversary party on October 2nd, a world premiere took place during the informative and exciting lecture by
Norbert Böhm: Steffen Günther, musician at Planetary Cymatic Resonance, made Böhm's planetary 'ellipse
tones' audible. Because - as mentioned at the beginning of the first of the two videos - Ludwig van Beethoven
already knew: "Music is higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy".

Video
40 Years Cosmic Octave

Part 2

„Die Sphärenmusik vom Himmel holen“

(Get the music of the spheres from heaven)

Lecture by Norbert Böhm (in German with automatic subtitles).

Video by Tristans Transit

40 Jahre Kosmische Oktav…

Oktav…

direct link

*1 To be precise, the solar orbit of a planet resembles an elliptical spiral, since the sun in its galaxy itself moves
forward in an orbit (while it is orbited by its planets).

Translated from German with the help of www.DeepL.com/Translator and Michael Kobler.

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