

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale - marcusbooster
http://vimeo.com/5732745

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maryrosecook
Gosh, I'm sorry to post a contentless comment, but watching this just made me
so happy.

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jacquesm
Don't worry, be happy ;)

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jbenz
I just heard this story yesterday: Several years ago, a friend of mine was
going to see a Bobby McFerrin show at Ohio University. The day of the show,
the student newspaper wrote an article warning everyone that if McFerrin heard
a lot of shout outs requesting Don't Worry Be Happy, that he was very likely
to storm off the stage and not return.

Which if you think about it, Don't Worry Be Happy would have to be the most
ironic possible song to cause a person to storm off.

I guess the audience kept mum on the requests, because my friend says it was
one of the best shows he's ever been to. And he's been to a lot.

Note: coming from me, this is just heresay. I can't actually testify to Bobby
McFerrin's hatred of Don't Worry Be Happy.

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jacquesm
Interesting anecdote.

He wrote it in an hour or so because of being frustrated. I can imagine if you
have 'great plans' and all people recognize you for is a thing that you
whipped out like that it could get a little frustrating.

The real compliment is in that his musical genius is such that he could even
do that.

There are other examples of that, I think that such huge popularity of a thing
you whipped out in a short time causes people to think of you as a 'one hit
wonder', and I'm sure that is not what Bobby McFerrin is all about.

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jacquesm
Absolutely amazing... thank you! Bobby McFerrin has some unique abilities, I
didn't know that 'crowdhacking' was one of them.

He turns a crowd of unrelated people into a musical instrument in less than 60
seconds, most impressive.

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dpnewman
Incredible pedagogical demonstration. Rapid learning via call-response, game-
like interaction. Beautiful thing... web apps could gain some inspiration from
this for UI teaching as well.

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autarch
I was really impressed with this, and sent it to my wife, who pointed out that
it's not all that impressive.

If you watch, McFerrin gives the crowd 4 out of 5 pitches _first_. Assuming he
starts on C, he gives them C-D-E, and then A. He also makes a point of making
a bigger leap from C to A (a minor third) from between C-D-E (each a major
second).

At that point, it's hard to see how the crowd could come up with anything
_but_ a pentatonic scale! He's given them four notes, and established that a
small jump is a major second and a big jump is a minor third. So when makes
the big jump from E to G and the crowd follows along it's not all that
magical.

If he'd just given them C-D-E and made a small step stage left, would they
have gone for B or Bb instead?

It's still a fun little performance to watch, but I don't think it proves
anything about the pentatonic scale being hardwired into the human brain.

~~~
extension
He gives them three notes, they figure out the other two and extend the scale
across two octaves. For a room full of laypeople watching a guy jump back and
forth, that's remarkable.

Now, in this day and age, anybody who hasn't been raised by wolves has had the
pentatonic scale drilled into them from the day they were born. Also, it's not
an arbitrary bunch of notes. It's derived from simple harmonic principles.

Still, I would not have guessed that this stunt would be possible.

~~~
autarch
Ah, you're right, he doesn't give them E. However, my point remains the same.
He gives them C and D. The audience comes up with E, which is totally natural
for a _major scale_! Then McFerrin gives them the A (with the big jump). At
that point the audience is either forced to go with A minor or a pentatonic
scale. Considering the fact that he has established two jump sizes (minor
third vs major second), it's pretty much impossible for them to choose A
minor.

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mixmax
It appears that music is a preinstalled program in humans.

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sp332
Before some Greek dudes put nice-sounding musical scales on a mathematical
basis (octaves and other music theory concepts), music was either re-creating
sounds from nature or stylized talking. It took a lot of experimentation and
observation to find a musical system that consistently "resonated" with human
emotion.

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chrismear
This makes about as much sense as claiming that before people figured out how
to write and before linguists started codifying systems of grammar, all
language was just unstructured simplistic animal utterances.

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dpnewman
Couldn't have said it better.

The irony of the pre-eminenct, western-only centered historical-musical view
surrounding a McFerrin melody is thick as molasses. It's West African in
rhythm, choral response, scale and spirit.

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r00k
If you enjoyed this video, check out this one:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1Bstv5z-Ow>

It's him doing the same thing, but longer, and with more interesting soloing
over it. This one's a proper piece.

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chrismear
Here's a good five-minute segment from Howard Goodall's 'How Music Works'
series, talking about the human universality of the pentatonic scale:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpvfSOP2slk>

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jamesk2
Here's a video about Pythagoras and the musical ratios developed on a single
string "guitar" - very interesting for math + music heads.

<http://bit.ly/tuAvW>

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sho
Downvoted for patently unnecessary use of a URL shortener.

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WilliamLP
I wonder if he's ever had an audience that hit the chord properly when he
spread his legs out on 1-3, and then what he would have done with that!

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tumult
that's not a full chord, it's a major 3rd interval.

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WilliamLP
That's a battle of pedantry that you lost a long time ago, and you will win it
sometime after "begging the question" gets used correctly most of the time.

It's a good example of a picky use of language that adds nothing whatsoever to
the understanding of the subject.

"Interval" has connotations I didn't want, namely that it's the same no matter
what degree of the scale you start on. I really did mean "I, III"
specifically. As far as I know, there's no term in music for that, but
"chord", namely a major I chord (only without the fifth) seems to fit what I
wanted to say better than "interval" to me.

~~~
tumult
why? that's the right term for it.

it's not anywhere close to a major I chord without the fifth!

never underestimate what other kinds of nerds you may encounter in the wild :]

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WilliamLP
A major I chord without the fifth is two pitches, the first and third degrees
of the major scale. That's what I meant. Why is that not anywhere close, or
even not precisely the same?

I did not mean a major third interval. They could have sung the correct
interval, but the wrong pitches. For what I did mean, I do insist that in the
limited terminology of music, chord is a better fit because it implies the
pitch where interval doesn't.

This necessitates terms like "Power Chord". Pedants are going to say this is
wrong. (And oh yeah a Koala Bear isn't really a Bear either.) But it does get
around a limitation of the language.

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arketyp
I happened to catch this video on Reddit yesterday and there was a thread with
some illuminating insights:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/962oj/bobby_mcferrin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/962oj/bobby_mcferrin_demonstrates_how_our_brains_are/c0bjmy6)

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zach
Much cheaper and more entertaining than the giant floor piano from "Big."

I don't want to say the word "crowdsourced," and yet, I just did.

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SwellJoe
Cheaper only if you have ready access to a couple hundred people. I'd hate to
try to fit that instrument in my home studio.

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hugothefrog
How timely! At lunch today a couple of colleagues were talking about the
ability to play a note just by feel and intuition, on whatever musical
instrument you are proficient in.

And here we have a man who can play a crowd!

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jcl
...which reminds me of the Dave Barry article about the professor who
discovered that basketball fans universally chant "air ball" in the key of F:

[http://archive.deseretnews.com/archive/print/430672/AIR-
BALL...](http://archive.deseretnews.com/archive/print/430672/AIR-BALL-CHANT-
SENDS-MESSAGE-FROM-THE-STARS.html)

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dphiffer
Radio Lab on music: <http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21>

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jamesbritt
But it sounded more like the heptatonic scale, no?

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fauigerzigerk
No, I think he just went over two octaves, so some notes were repeated.

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jamesbritt
Sounded to me that he started on C, bounced around C D E, then toggled over B
and C, then back to the dance over C D and E.

And then later dropped down the lower register.

(I'm guessing at the actual pitches; starting with C as a reference for the
intervals.)

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hc
Bah

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bitdiddle
cute!

