Comments on: Playing the Audience Like a Xylophone

By: Finding the Common Chorus « 156 Paradise

Finding the Common Chorus « 156 Paradise — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:15:21 +0000

[...] via Cosmic Variance [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » Quantum Roger and Zombie Ginger: Nota Bene for 17 August 2009

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 10:06:06 +0000

[...] him the fucking medal” … Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the pentatonic scale in a most involved way … Beefcake Putin … Stop the deportation of Herta Llusho! … Ginger Baker is amazed [...]

By: void()

void() — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 09:35:33 +0000

Weird, seems like the video was switched to another one somehow.

By: Doses Diárias: » Linguagem Universal do Canto

Doses Diárias: » Linguagem Universal do Canto — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:31:55 +0000

[...] Fonte: Discover Magazine [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:38:50 +0000

There was an interesting program , The Music Instinct, on PBS last week that featured Bobby McFerrin and other musicians. It examined the science of how our brains respond to music and questioned whether our response to music is hard-wired or learned. Bobby impressed me as being a very good musican and a very smart and articulate guy. It can be seen at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/ .

By: Stacy Horn

Stacy Horn — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:41:28 +0000

I was there and it was a lot of fun. I wasn’t a fan of Bobby McFerrin before (due to the Don’t Worry Be Happy song) but I am now.

By: Roby Abraham

Roby Abraham — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 23:03:28 +0000

A shortcut to Bethowan.

By: Sili

Sili — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:46:36 +0000

Of course there is, Ellipsis – he’ll have to be there to torture all those souls that don’t like Bobby McFerrin, after all.

By: Ellipsis

Ellipsis — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 04:48:47 +0000

There’s a special place in hell reserved for Bobby McFerrin and his annoying songs.

By: Gray Gaffer

Gray Gaffer — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:56:20 +0000

@20 continuing: in fact our piano tuning is a compromise across the board. And this infects all our other instruments to the extent that we – most all amateurs at least – tune our guitar or whatever to our piano. I was very surprised and impressed the first time I heard a properly tuned harmony. One which happened to be pentatonic, but there are others equally effective.

There is quite a large body of work on micro-tuning and ‘natural’ scales. One effect that I was shown by Charles Lucy was that you need different tuning when ascending the scale vs descending. He accommodated this on his own custom guitar which had five frets per intonation point to our traditional one fret.

Some names I know of proficient in the area:

Charles Lucy (Google “The Lucy Scale” will find musicians using it, also must visit his site lucytune.com for a good practical introduction and software tips)
John Gibbons
Laurie Spiegel
Jimmy Hotz

There is also some rather delightful woo skirting reality from, e.g., G. I Gurdjieff, notably from his autobiographical story of his travels across the Gobi desert.

To play with these things you need something like a Yamaha DX7. You could also probably use CSound on Linux. As I said above, Charles himself has a software review of relatively recent programs at lucytune.com