Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Pentatonic Scale

Spotted this over on BoingBoing, and thought it was suitably geeky to post. A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with 5 pitches per octave in contrast to a heptatonic (7 note) scale such as the standard major scale. What’s interesting about the pentatonic scale is it seems to be pretty much universally ingrained on the  brain, and is common across many many forms of music throughout the world. And Bobby McFerrin has an rather interesting way of demonstrating this to an audience.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival.