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Topic: Bobby McFerrin: The Power of the Pentatonic Scale |
Jim Cohen
From:
Philadelphia, PA
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Guy Cundell
From:
More idle ramblings from South Australia
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Posted 4 Aug 2009 4:37 am |
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Pretty amazing. He only gives the audience four notes but they get the 5th and the pattern beyond. It is a fascinating structure cropping up in cultures all over the world. The scale seems like a kind of aural crystal. Take 5 notes within an octave and spread them out as far from one another as possible and you get the scale. It isn't symmetrical but if you move one of the notes by a semitone you derive a different scale of the same dimensions. Almost like some magnetic force. The structure is primitive when compared to major scale etc but very strong.
You can voice the notes as a string of fourth intervals or as a C69 chord. Use it for cooking, cleaning.. it chops.... it dices...
I should get back to work. I am obviously losing it. |
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Richard Damron
From:
Gallatin, Tennessee, USA (deceased)
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Posted 4 Aug 2009 6:56 am
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Mid-way through the sequence I placed a mental bet with myself against that happening. I lost.
Thanks for another gem, Jimbeaux.
Richard |
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David Doggett
From:
Bawl'mer, MD (formerly of MS, Nawluns, Gnashville, Knocksville, Lost Angeles, Bahsten. and Philly)
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Posted 4 Aug 2009 11:02 am
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The lengths to which he will go to keep from having to sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" one more time.  |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 4 Aug 2009 1:35 pm
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Idle ramblings...
I don't really see this as enlightening as some apparently do. Western civilization is simply ear-trained to a 12-tone scale, and simplifying it essentially creates larger (but still roughly proportional) divisions. All the music we hear is based on it, but I think that if the same audience exercise were done in India, for example, the microtonality they're accustomed to might yeild a somewhat different result. Very little in music is really original, and people seem far more disposed to mimicry than to originality. |
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Guy Cundell
From:
More idle ramblings from South Australia
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Posted 4 Aug 2009 2:12 pm
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| Donny Hinson wrote: |
Idle ramblings...
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Well the idle bit is right but I am not so sure about ramblings... well, actually, yes. Ramblings. OK, you got me.
But Africa, China, Japan, Native American... on and on...
You have to wonder. |
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Charlie McDonald
From:
out of the blue
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Posted 17 Mar 2017 5:21 am
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I have unearthed this gem from Leonard Bernstein, Bernstein, The greatest 5 min. in music education
I think it includes the possibility of cultural differences, and may have influenced, if not created, tonality.
It is interesting to me that when he reaches the end of the circle of fifths on hi C, the note heard is C#,
demonstrating the lengths to which the subject has been stretched over time. |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 17 Mar 2017 5:09 pm
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| As it turned out, the seven, or eight, or nine planets of the solar system didn't take too kindly to being shoved into EXACT SPECIFIC ORBITS corresponding EXACTLY to a PENTATONIC SCALE (did I say seven?). There are some baffling, mysterious whack-a-doodle-doo mathematical commonalities - pinecones and seashells? REALLY? Yes, really! And the pentatonic IS a building block for the earliest scale works including Indian (East Asian) and Chinese (West Asian). Knowledge and use of the whole-tone and symmetric diminished scale goes way back, beyond Bach in the West at least, but only and always as a way to postpone an inevitable resolution to some pentatonic end game. This stuff is fascinating to a point, but that point always peters out the same way as other mystical "questions", that being: human beings are highly imperfect tools for studying the tools of human beings. The "smarter" you are, the more exposure you've had to more deeply imprinted systems; and the more imprinting, the less able you become to generate and entertain genuinely new ideas (if there is such a thing). |
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Charlie McDonald
From:
out of the blue
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Posted 18 Mar 2017 5:03 am
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| David Mason wrote: |
| As it turned out, the seven, or eight, or nine planets of the solar system didn't take too kindly to being shoved into EXACT SPECIFIC ORBITS corresponding EXACTLY to a PENTATONIC SCALE (did I say seven?). |
I haven't heard about that one, gives me hope that I'm not too smart.
I mean, everybody knows that it is the position of the planets that created the notes rather than vice versa.  |
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