http://www.ted.com/talks/bobby_mcferrin_...U8qbI4.facebook

I have been showing this to every single one of my students, I think it's so awesome!

I've seen this video before. It is well worth watching. Quite thought provoking. Watched it again.

This video is not primarily about the Pentatonic scale, but about an aspect of how people respond, which gives a very interesting side to learning. It is really well worth watching for teachers. Since there are no responses and maybe nobody is watching this:

The speaker gets up and steps on a certain spot of the floor while singing a tone, gesturing for the audience to do the same. He steps to the audience's right and sings a whole tone higher, and they follow. Ditto for another step to the right. When he steps to the left he doesn't sing anything, but the audience instinctively sings the lower note. He continues like this for a while, giving them new notes with them responding to where he jumps. Then as they continue he adds a melody to the resulting "countermelody" of the audience. At the end he even jumps to places that he has not introduced and the audience knows that if he jumps to the left of the previous lowest note, to sing one whole tone lower. It finishes as a beautiful duet where he has "played" the audience.

This is in a neuroscience conference. He is postulating that the pentatonic scale is hardwired into people. We also see a kind of teaching where there are no explanations, no words - it is a pure interaction. Can this kind of thing be used by teachers? Is it being used by any private piano teachers?

Very good! Just looking at pentatonic and other modes in my theory work today... :-)

very interesting. Bobby McFerrin is so unique and this sure gives me an idea for a 'song'.