Pinched/appropriated/borrowed/stolen from and/or inspired by AC Douglas at Sounds & Fury.
World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.
If we can all naturally do it, maybe it all is just really a case of who practices more. On the one hand, that result is utterly depressing. On the other hand, greatly liberating.
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Proms from the arena, London
Proms from the arena, London
Finished pointe shoes at Freed, London
Drums at Innuksuit, Park Avenue Armory, New York
Church of our Lady, Guelph
Royal Albert Hall, London
Hyde Park at dusk, London
All over rural Ontario
Ostbahnhoff, Berlin
Waterloo Bridge, London
V&A London
Toy Soldiers at the V&A, London
Lost
The Eye & The Sky, London
Southern Cemetery, Manchester
Glyndebourne Picnic
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The Deansgate, Manchester
The Fourth Plinth
When he says everywhere, does he mean everywhere? Or does he just mean places in the Western musical tradition? If he went to places in Africa/Asia that divide the octave differently than we do, would he have the same result?
I’m not sure where exactly he has visited although I do believe him when he says it work everywhere. He is using the pentatonic scale rather than the heptatonic one that forms the basis of Western art music.
If you listen again, you might find the line sounds vaguely Chinese/Asian or at the very least folky. I’m not an expert by any stretch but folk music in rather a lot of cultures (Western and non) is based on this scale.
A pentatonic scale based on C is CDEGAC.
Wikipedia is a good place to start for more detail.
Sorry that I wasn’t particularly clear. I am aware of the pentatonic scale, and I know that at points in history, it was the predominant scale used in China. (China also has used something similar to, though tuned differently, our chromatic scale.)
However, there are plenty of parts of the world, especially in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia that don’t subscribe to that mode at all, and use 9-, 13-, and 17-note scales and whatnot. I remain skeptical that people who were raised in that tradition (without previous exposure to a scale that incorporates the pentatonic scale) that you’d have an automatic facility for it. I suppose at this point it’d be next to impossible to test that theory out. (There aren’t too many 8th-century Persians or pre-colonial Indians running about these days).
Your premise just rubbed me the wrong way. The only reason our particular notes sound natural is because we grew up in that world. With all the ethnomusicological work that’s been done, there’s no reason to ignore the rest of the world that uses a different set of notes, which may not even include the intervals in the pentatonic scale.
Ah, so we’ve got colonialism via music going on then? Actually, now that I think of it, we probably do but that’s for some up and coming PhD student to explore more fully.
I think the point of the exercise was that if you take a room full of people who are not formally trained as musicians and not consciously aware of scales and theory etc, as a group, they can sing along and infer the next note in the pattern.
To me, this has a lot to do with how he jumped because he left spaces where there would normally be notes in our heptatonic scale. I’ve always been curious about talent and even if there is such a thing or if it is all down to opportunity and practice. This video leans me a little bit more to the latter opinion.
What nobody seems to have noticed – or at least I have seen no comment reflecting this – is that the audience only sang the notes they were given. He never gave them the fourth or the seventh. Doesn’t that kinda undermine the entire premise?