Gregorian Chant

What the recording actually contains

Two features identify it. First, the melody is monophonic: tracking the pitch across 32 seconds gives one line at a time, moving mostly by step through E4, F4, G4, A4, B4, C5, E5 and F5, with no second part underneath and no instrumental accompaniment. Second, the strongest pitch is not a single clean tone but a tight cluster spread across roughly 489 to 495 Hz, which is what several voices singing the same note look like when measured. There is no regular pulse. Below 250 Hz the file is nearly empty, and both channels are identical.

A historical note worth getting right

Plainchant forms a documented musical tradition of the Western church: Latin, unaccompanied, and notated since roughly the ninth century. Writers online often tie it to the so-called solfeggio frequencies, and that tie does not hold. Whoever assembled the solfeggio set did so in the 1970s, working from a numerological reading of the Book of Numbers rather than documented Gregorian practice. Measuring pitch in hertz also postdates the chant by centuries: ISO 16:1975 is what fixes A4 at 440 Hz, and nobody could have assigned a medieval frequency before such a standard existed. The chant carries real music and a real history; the frequency story attached to it belongs to neither.

For other single-line material, Mystic Flute is instrumental and Singing Bowl holds one pitch throughout. The full catalogue is on the sound library index. To place the voices in a larger space, try the Gregorian chant and dungeon air blend in the free sound mixer.