“I’ll never go back to 440Hz”: How Ziggy Marley found his new frequencyAfter nearly five decades making music, Ziggy Marley could be forgiven for resting on his laurels. With nine Grammy wins, an Emmy, countless high-profile collaborations—not to mention being the son of one of the most famous musicians in history, Bob Marley—he’s reggae royalty through and through.
Yet with his ninth solo album, Brightside, Marley not only set out to build a new studio and adopt new songwriting techniques, but he also challenged himself to sing, play, and record tuned to 432Hz, instead of the standard 440Hz.
“I’m a musical explorer, you know?” he offers by way of explanation. “To do something new is always refreshing to me, as an artist.”
Artwork for Ziggy Marley’s 2026 album, Brightside
440Hz, commonly referred to as A440, is the standard reference pitch across Western music; it’s the A above middle C on the piano, which most other instruments are tuned in relation to. In recent decades, an increasing number of musicians have instead used 432Hz as their reference pitch, with many claiming that the tuning can aid meditation and help mental well-being.
The science is far from settled on the matter, but to Marley, the benefits are clear. “It’s just a different vibe,” he puts simply. “I tried it for my live shows, I liked it, and I saw the audience responding to it. It felt more comfortable to me, and I felt like I could express myself, vocally, much better in that frequency. So, 432Hz is like getting a new toy – it inspires me to sing different, play different. I’ll never go back to 440Hz.”
Recording at a new frequency was no small commitment. As Mike Schuppan, who mixed and engineered Brightside, points out, not only did the strings, brass, and pianos all need re-tuning, but all the electronic instruments as well. “There are no virtual instruments on this record,” Schuppan emphasises. “We couldn’t just pull up the computer and change the tuning. So, the Rhodes, the clavinet, the analogue synths, they were all tuned to 432Hz. There was no cheating.”

“For the Hammond B-3 organ, we didn’t know if it could be done,” Marley adds. “We had specialists come in, and the guy said it’s just the amount of electricity that goes to the organ. He fine-tuned it so that we could click a switch and have it go to 432Hz, which was mind-blowing to me because I didn’t even know that was possible.”
For Schuppan, the album also presented a unique challenge to mix. “It’s a bit of a learning curve to get your ear to 432Hz,” he reflects. “For me, being in the pop world and tuning vocals for years in 440Hz, I know that tuning really well. So, I’d hear something and it would feel a little bit flat, but then I’m like, ‘oh, wait, it’s in 432Hz.”
Despite the tricky logistics, Marley and Schuppan believe that the end result was worth the effort. “There were a couple of times during rehearsals and pre-production where we went back and forth between 440Hz and 432Hz,” recalls Schuppan. “We all preferred 432Hz. It’s funny because it’s sort of unexplainable – the science doesn’t necessarily make sense, it just feels good, it feels right, and I think that’s what’s so cool about this record.”

At the same time, Marley was also experimenting as a songwriter. “On previous records, I was excited to get into the studio and start making music, figuring it out as I went along,” he concedes. “But on this record, I wanted to focus on the songs, the lyrics, the arrangements. I really wanted them to feel good, to be what they are, before going into the studio.
“That was a different approach for me,” continues Marley. “But I felt like I needed to do that as an artist, as a musician. I needed to redirect that energy into the songwriting.
All of this new creative ground was being broken in Marley’s newly completed Rebel Lion Studio. “It’s been years that I’ve been dreaming about it,” Marley says of the desire to build his own recording space. “I’ve had little studios in my house, but I always had to go to other studios if I wanted to record a bigger setup like live drums or horns. I was always shuffling around.
“I think I’m following the example of my father, because he did the same thing too,” Marley continues. “It’s just that independent spirit that I grew up with. Having my own space, I create my own energy, my own vibes. It’s really great to work in that way where you’re not under any kind of constraints or limitations.”
Together with Schuppan, who has worked on numerous releases with Marley, the pair set about designing the ideal recording setup – with a custom-fitted Rupert Neve Designs 5088 console as its centrepiece.“It’s a great console,” Marley offers without reservation. “Over my years, I’ve had different consoles in my home studios but I was not satisfied. I wanted a different feel, a different sound. I was always looking up this Rupert Neve stuff, and so finally we pulled the trigger on it.”
Image: Wonder Knack (courtesy of Tuff Gong Worldwide)
“It was my first time installing and working on it, and I absolutely love it,” interjects Schuppan. “They really simplified it: it has the classic analogue console that we all know and love from tape, but then they’ve stripped out the things that we don’t use anymore. Most of us are on Pro Tools, and we don’t really need a big matrix or DIs on the back of everything. They simplified it without making it useless.
“Being able to mix and match whatever preamp and EQ you want to is also really cool,” continues Schuppan. “We were able to load the first half of the console with 16 BAE 1084 preamps, and then the rest of the console has the Shelford 5053s in it. So you’re not limited to one thing; you kind of have a bunch of different flavours.”
Helping guide the studio build-out also meant that, when it came time to start work on the new album, Schuppan was already an expert on the spaces’ workflow and on what the new gear could offer. “Mike knows all the crevices, he knows every little secret,” laughs Marley. “He put the studio together, then he recorded Brightside, he mixed it. He was there from birth to the delivery, so it was just great.”
“It was amazing,” agrees Schuppan. “I was there pulling wire through the walls, soldering everything up, getting it all worked out with a console, and then recording the album and mixing it in-house. I’ve built a bunch of studios, but to be able to take things full circle was a first for me.”
From tuning to songwriting to workflow, Brightside has precipitated many new turns for Marley, but perhaps the most striking change is who the artist had in mind while he was writing it – himself. “I wasn’t thinking about what the people want,” he says thoughtfully. “I think that was one of the things I did on this record that was different: I wasn’t writing this album for the people, I was just writing it for me.”
Image: Wonder Knack (courtesy of Tuff Gong Worldwide)
As a lifelong activist and humanitarian, Marley has penned many anthems that shine a light on the injustices of this world and encourage positive action to affect change. The artist sees recent world events, including the devastating Hurricane Melissa, which hit Jamaica in late 2025, as moments that “call us to action.”
But while the album’s lead single, Racism is a Killa, and tracks such as Hey People Now, certainly still rouse a sense of activism, by Marley’s own admission, these new songs are unabashedly personal.“I think people get tricked sometimes by the idea of what reggae is, or who I am,” he says. “But there’s a lot of inward, introspective thinking going on for the music and for the lyrics. When I sing these songs, I have a deep emotional connection to them because of what they mean to me personally. Really, a lot of these songs are about me.”
Brightside is Marley’s most emotionally charged album, and it’s also his most therapeutic. In that context, the artist’s decision to work at 432Hz was less about giving audiences a soothing or meditative experience and was instead something that Marley himself needed. “I wrote a lot of songs for my own mental and emotional health,” he emphasises. “Tuning to that frequency just worked out well for me personally. In dealing with my issues, in dealing with how I was feeling, to be in that frequency was healing for me.”
Ziggy Marley’s Brightside is available now. 
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