Bobby Mcferrin messes with your mind

Very cool!!!

He probably receives the same response from every website that posts this video

PENTATONIC SCALE lol

Thanks for posting this. I find it interesting that music is so universally familiar that audiences all over the world will have the same response to that routine. Does this mean music is universal, or that we are all wire the same (a rather Kantian notion), or that we have all learned music in the same way?

@Brijesh
Yeap?
Attend to the spell check on your browser or don’t come back!

Is that the scat man??? lol bop bwee bop bop ba da ba

Saw him with Chick and Jack DeJohnette in Santa Barbara… the entire show was improvised and experimental, and the entire crowd was a bunch of 50 year old wealthy white people who probably expected to hear “Don’t Worry Be Happy” 12 times. When he busted out the audience participation everyone was initially frazzled. “We can’t make sounds at a concert! What on earth? Rabble rabble rabble!” But then everyone got it and it was AWESOME!

What I find interesting is that everyone was able to follow, yet, I doubt every audience member was musically talented. But I guess despite the ranges of musical talent, the human mind has rhythm embedded in it pretty deep. Enough for a bunch of strangers to be able to pick up notes by instinct.

I must have missed it – as he progressed stage left the notes got higher, and lower notes going to stage right. So a new place further left should be higher, I see no other choice.

As I write this, I wonder if the point was that the audience seemed harmonious when challenged with a new note.

Any help??
Thanks.

@Puzzled

The point was that everyone in the audience subconsiously chose to sing the pentatonic scale instead of another scale (major, minor, whole tone, octatonic, etc) after hearing only two notes. Bobby gave the audience the first note, and then the second note, but when he jumped to the third note without giving the pitch, the audience knew to sing another whole step up instead of a half step or a third which also would have been a reasonable choice.

The pentatonic scale is the only really universal scale because because of the natural overtone series i.e. when you drag a heavy desk across a wooden floor the pitches you hear constitute a pentatonic scale. Every other scale (including our beloved major scale) either has pitches added in or was entirely made up by musicians/composers.