Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale 

lololololol!!!!

People

He's been playing "people" for 30 years.

XD

ROFL

twiinapocalyp2e2 underrated comment 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

Everything changed when the flower nation attacked. With pollen

Right next to Freddie Mercury

lmao

I agree! I'd add... notes imprinted in our minds after being tuned out there

Amazing

I completely disagree. The audience was singing in C# Major. It was Bobby who indicated an A#. Had he not done so, the crowd would have sang a B# as the leading tone.

@@mattrobertson1974 Thanks for highlighting that. Incredible that combination of frequencies that when tuned in a group are synchronized as closely as possible to given physical measurements, that collective auditory memory, that ability to coordinate dozens of parts of our body that concatenated produce melodious sounds, that appreciation for an artistic action without immediate benefits related to survival, that psychological delight of attuning to a purpose that rises above differences, among other things.

@@mattrobertson1974 That's definitely part of it, a lot of the audience would have gone to the 7th of the scale but since he gave them the 6th they went to the 6th. The thing is the audience knew instinctively to skip the 4th and make a pentatonic scale, which was never given to them. They just did it.

thank you

Bravo

Got a poster in my class that says, “Music is what feelings sound like”. It comes with the territory.

Jeff Baxter, the guitar player for the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan is a missile defense contractor for the CIA and has 9 top secret clearance levels. He studied rocketry as a hobby and mailed his dissertation into the pentagon, got a call from them and they flew him to Langley. No college education. Look up "Jeff Baxter non linear thinking Ted talk".

Brilliant.

Me too! It's amazing. I'll always listen to this when I'm having a bad day

I love how music is the great equalizer: regardless of age, color, religion, culture; anything that can divide human beings; is trumped by music.

Rubén Medellín And Bobby McFerrin is amazing too

Not Islam unfortunately. Music is haram (forbidden) Only singing is allowed and only if it's about Allah or Mohammed. Sad.

Not in all the Islam. There are many musicians in the Arab tradition and outside. The great drummer Art Blakey converted to Islam under the name of Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, and he kept playing like a beast.

Planning to do this!

My band teacher showed us this today and I was so impressed I came to find the video myself. I even downloaded it!

Dude, you just spread the joy and knowledge. It was the least you could do=)))

I want to be a music teacher, all I do is give ppl private guitar lessons

You should get the science teachers at your school involved - the subject is really interesting, and students would find themselves very engaged in the science of it after being involved in such a demonstration.

music is one of the most fundamental parts of us

You are one word smith I can tell you that 😎

Yes! The reason this is so significant is that it has traditionally been believed that music is an outgrowth of language. People point to the radically different musical scales and tastes in different cultures and connect them to the language structures This wasn’t supposed to happen!

For me, it's magical.

@@tomryan9827 I would posit that music predates language. I suspect our almost monkey-like ancestors were beating on rocks and trees to make rhythms long before they developed the words to sing along to them. I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that such "traditional" beliefs are probably biased in the direction of language. heh

He's playing left handed

you mean he just envisioned a giant keyboard laying in front of him facing the audience instead of facing him? I could never do that /s

Maybe he's like me we with left and right 😂

Oh wow; I didn’t think of that -even more amazing!

@@billyclub56 It's not like with the guitar, hey don't sell reverse keyboards for left-handed people

Good one 😂

Lol

Did they come

You win the internet! Lol

I see what you did there😂

Who wouldn’t be proud of themselves after that

Being human, and musical, should be applauded, as automatically as this was performed.

egotistical bastards

they're applauding the conductor

They earned it. They and the conductor.

👍🏾

Tell it

i used to watch&sing it with my mom when I was a child and now that I came back to it after years it hits me even stronger, because as I child I didn't really understand what the video is about, and now my newfound understanding mixes with warm memories from my childhood and nostalgia haha

🙄 would be so nice

We are one. Everything is, afterall, just one.

Linguists searching for universal grammar have paid attention.

He gave them the rule with the two first notes. One direction is lower, the other one higher.

@@kristiankarhunen7624 true but its not quite a simple as that - they are singing a Bb minor pentatonic scale, which means 1 jump left or right is not always higher or lower by the same amount

@@mikeblow3781 my ear is not that good. this is not a tampered scale?

Mine too. One of my favorite videos ever. Bobby is brilliant and is such a deep and wise soul.

This video gives me hope 😌

"He's ready"

& IN 2020 IM NOMINATING THIS FOR BEST COMMENT ON RU-vid AWARD

Try 2021 recommendations ha

A good material for teaching

@@semp224 Better than just teaching it by rote.

Good teacher alert

hold my beer

Bobby: Hold my humans

the world is a mere piano where all humanity is the keys and bobby mcferrin is the pianist. i am okay with this.

every choir director plays people

Me: is mayonnaise an instrument?

I laughed even Lol

I know right!!! I watch this weekly!!!

Same for me, lol.

B A L D

Same Oh My god this was amazing!

Truly bs!!!!

Nahhhh Freddy Mercury at live aid is the best

Watch Jacob collier involving audience

@@samkingsly1636 Or vulfpeck playing back pocket at madison square garden :)

yes he is

He doesn't challenge your assumptions affrontingly: he makes YOU challenge your own through subtle guidance. Legitimately genius.

Right on time!

You're never too late when it comes to appreciating Bobby McFerrin. He is a musical genius.

You are God damn right Chiguau ;)

!

2021 says 12 years late this coming july.... based on upload date which means the actual stage event happened before that.

Well put Faith

Big deal, I've been playing my skin flute since I was 4.

***** As one of the very few men large enough to do it, I'm comfortable agreeing with this statement.

Actually, human voice was always an instrument. Just ask any composer ;)

the vocal cords is the best instrument. :)

Exactly! Like a choreographer. He's a freaking genius! Check out his Wizard of Oz.....Peace.

Hadn't even thought of that.

It's only hard if you played piano

@@hansdietrich83 Hm... fair.

@@hansdietrich83 For right handed (majority) string instrumentalists left means low

That's the beauty of life. Not all are fortunate enough to realise it.

Same

struck me in a way I can't really communicate as well.

The first ever uses of the pentatonic scale were in African tribal music. That may be a reason

It’s because humans are great actually and we get happy when we can come together this way

@@Udontkno7 I'm glad someone said it :)

@@Udontkno7 exactly. We are a race of love in our nature. What we have become. Been made to be, is not really us. We all. Want. Love. Thats what this is. We love, love. ❤ 🤍 💙

Jared Christensen interesting. ..

He wrote an excellent book called This is Your Brain on Music.

and many other excellent books :)

What?! Is that true?

What does he mean by the "correct key"?

+Boogieforme He is amazing! Search about Hermeto Pascoal live.

+Boogieforme I've seen Frank Zappa "play the audience" too. Some people are just born to teach and lead...

obbor4 Oh, cool! Do you know if there is any footage of that?

w

Ben Folds.

Every freakin time lol

So pure and beautiful. The true visualization of happiness, I think.

Same here it gets to me every time.

+David Hughes he had a lot of faith in the crowd, but found out he was asking too much

+nfinitiduck No, he was just adding a bit of humour.

lol

I think he was going for a major 3rd intervall.

nah i think he was just trying to be funny

Lololol you made me smile. Thanks

For sure man! Good point.

That’s literally “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

totally

I think that actually, sort of, happened. At least it happened in the fictional world called Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Which I think should've been called "Interstellar Jam Session".

What is the tune he is singing?

​@@nicolasarkinyou got it yet?

Absolutely agree. It incredibly simple and yet so not.

@@nicolasarkin he is playing around with notes that harmonise with the pentatonic scale. He is that good musically that he can simply blend music together in perfect harmony

excellent

Its an instrument to surpass metal flute!

Don't jump on your fiddles please.

Don't worry the Empire will once more rule the stars Londo.

Leave the first "like" out and you have it.

+Dan Wiberg same here the first time i watched i had a tear roll out no joke. humans are amazing. we take our connection for granted.

+Danielle Eder what are you talking about? what connection? the knowing of the pentatonic scale. read more, and forget the paranormal, frequency gaia thing.

+zodiacmx preach. hated how through the wormhole promoted that global consciousness crap

+zodiacmx Well, there is, empirically speaking, nothing that is not connected, or more accurately there is nothing that is not the same thing as every other thing in existence. We know for a fact that differentiation is a psychological trick that helps certain organisms survive. I feel you should read a bit more about quantum physics.

+Dan Wiberg and chills also bring tears...stunned into joyous silence.

That's what she said

@@BrandonAB you win the internet today

@@BrandonABlol

Jajajaja

Congratulations, you made me breathe hard out my nose. That was funny!

ahahah yes

😂😂

Best comment

The Post Modern Guy he would be a really good support

Too op, pls nerf

good cc^^

TIL bobby = brig

Well said. The Pentatonic scale is truly the resonance of the human soul.

I watched it for class but I still return and smile just as wide each time.

Amen

Beautiful

Sameeee

😂😂😂

CHILLS YESSS

I have read somewhere once before, that the reason that the number five, and by extension 10 are so ingrained in the human psyche, is because of the fact that humans have 5 digits per hand. Therefore 10 digits Think about how many important concepts or objects or constructs in human psychology are based upon the numbers 5 and 10 Normal numeric notation is in base 10 10 commandments 10 most wanted lists. The 5 pointed star in modern design (yes it is derived from the movement of Venus in the night sky) . Because of our 5 digits per hand and.10 digits in total, humans have developed a natural attraction and inclination to psychological concepts based on the numbers 5 and 10. I imagine that the pentatonic scale is one more concept that is based on the number 5 that we humans are just naturally "wired" (for lack of a better term) to understand.

WolfCoder it means that we all have music inside of us, music is everything, and everything is music

@Tyler Colby wut

Lol i see you. We just need the hand motions 😁

@@AltairCreedZ i couldnt agree more

Tyler Colby I’ll sell you one if you can sing me a song☺️

AC/DC has based their entire career on it :-)

apply cold watern on the burned area ;)

Because that's totally the point of this video.

+NuclearGrizzly and Pentatonix is literally named after it!

you clever fuck

Our minds? I don't know - I think it's primal, an embodied thing that has an effect on our mind, just as our mind has an effect on our physicality

It's sublime the world we live in. So perfectly in-tune with itself. Everything is always balanced from the same fundamental principles everywhere, all the time.

why am i crying

Music and unity are very powerful!

It blows my mind every time

No it didn't

+KunamaElgar pretty much yeah

Mine too!!!!!!!!!

Mine too. And it’s not even close.

Top 5 easy

Think of a random number between 1 and 10. 95% chance you thought of 7. Things like this are literally hard-wired into us; and not just us, many mammalian species. We can't ask what scale an elephant prefers, but they do seem to enjoy piano compositions! (There's a channel dedicated to this, from Thailand, on RU-vid. Highly recommend. It's absolutely awe-inspiring to see another intelligent animal moved by music.)

Had this reaction too, about the magic of the crowd. When it went from “okay this is weird but let’s humor this guy” to (when he started a solo line) “wait, we’re a huge choir singing backup to Bobby McFerrin”-so cool!

no

+DeadlyDanDaMan actually music is more or less a mathematical construction

+Andrea Roll noo just because you can explain it with math doesn't make math the constructor. By what you're saying everything is a mathematical construction. Everything can be explained with math because math is based on the fundamental consistencies that govern our reality. Even new discovery's will be converted to math or even found through math but math constructs nothing, only documents it.

+MrChaluliss Nothing is constructed by math at a fundamental level. Everything that is is a result of physics. Math is our tool to describe physics.

Meh. Physics is just applied mathematics. ESPECIALLY in modern physics, the mathematical constructions are actually the basis of our physics.

Music is mathematics

Neuroscientist here speaking: Me 2009, yeah cool do it. me 2019, oh hells no, don't do it.

he gave them three notes, actually. the lower A.

He actually very cleverly gave them the fourth without them realizing it. At around 1:30, while he's doing a harmony on top of the audience, he has them move up to a Re (2nd degree) while his melody drops down to a Sol (5th degree below them) and he holds it for quite a long time. In this way, he primes the audience with that note, so when he jumps down there for them to sing it (at 1:55) they've already heard it in his melody, and instinctively know what to do.

Which came first: nature, or the scale?

I believe it maybe part of the equation of nature....but I don't know what I'm talking about sometimes..

If you do a 0, 1 Fibonnacci sequence starting on Do, you will get all the notes in the pentatonic scale by the time you reach the 8th number in the sequence. The numbers here would refer to the intervals from Do. (We exclude zero here.) So my theory is that the pentatonic scale is based on the Golden ratio. We see the Golden ratio in nature all the time, so it makes sense that it would appear in music too.

Then I'm really glad they didn't. Let his demonstration be what gets the attention.

You can see the whole discussion....the video tells you the title of it.

Brandon Pack I hate scientists. They act like they are smarter than anyone but it was always musicians that truly know it all from the start, most of scientists are mentally blind with circumcised heart. They are really dumb fuck

+GUN hee Kim Better stop availing yourself of every device and advantage conferred upon you by science, then. Complaining about scientists on your phone or computer or whatever you used is the height of fucking idiocy.

Are you trolling or just dont know that youre talking just like those scientists that you speak of?

Wow I would also love to see him live

@@amenamumanahafangideh8502 He was the ONLY performer I've ever seen in my entire life that when the audience was leaving, I saw everyone smiling, laughing, and singing, "Be happy..." I've never witnessed anything like that before, before or since. Also, I'd never heard of McFerrin before, so when I only saw a single microphone on the stage the Wiltern Theater in LA, I wondered to my friend, "Where's the band??" and he said, "He doesn't need one." His entire body was the band, and what a band it was.

Wow great Can we get to talk more on Gmail if you don't mind?

There is a collective intelligence that we tap into when we act together. It's rather elemental and instinctive, and easy to manipulate, but when it really gets going it can take an act of God to stop it.

Hats off to your physics teacher! Now, how she/he presented it to you? Sound waves? Frecuencies?

@@AlejandroIrausquin it was almost a year ago so my memory is hazy but I'm pretty sure we were learning about frequencies and he came with this vid to show us :))

so you're saying you don't worry