Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale | World Science Festival

World Science Festival · demo · Watch on YouTube

What it is

Bobby McFerrin uses audience participation at a World Science Festival event to demonstrate how instinctively people follow the pentatonic scale.

HN shares it as a delightful demo of the pentatonic scale's near-universal appeal and of a crowd syncing without instruction.

“Have you seen the video where Bobby McFerrin leads a whole crowd to sync perfectly with each other”
McFerrin leads a crowd into sync via the pentatonic scale
mandmandam, 2023-05 · Strong recommendation · in “Neanderthal flute: The oldest musical instrument in the world”
“Bobby Mcferrin has a fun demo about this”
Fun demo of the pentatonic scale's universal appeal
rrmm, 2020-06 · Recommendation · in “What Did Bach Sound Like to Bach?”

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Topics: pentatonic scale, bobby mcferrin, music cognition, audience participation, music theory