Bobby McFerrin Hacks Your Brain with Music
In this Ted Talk, Bobby Mcferrin illustrates "expectation" with the pentatonic scale. His method of doing so though isn't through lecture. He shows it by making the scale visible. He pretends the floor is a keyboard, and expects the audience to sing the pitch that would be relative to where he stands. He doesn't tell the audience what every pitch is though. He gives 1 or 2 and then our brains figure out the rest of the pattern. It is similar to when your finding the blind spot by looking at a paper with 2 dots. One dot will eventually vanish because your brain fills in the blank with what would make most sense, the white of the paper. Bobby Mcferrin is a very talented musician, but he also presents himself in a very happy and kind way. He doesn't use his talents to distance himself from people, he engages them. (speaking of him not distancing himself from normal people, I saw him going to see a movie at the ambler theater a few months ago) The way he presents himself make you want to soak up every word he says. Come to think of it though, he didn't need to say much in this clip. He was able to "lecture" about the way we think, with only a few guiding words. His methods were purely based on letting the audience get involved. He was able to get across his point by letting the audience experience it for themselves. This was a highly successful method. It brings to mind that saying about how if you hear something you forget it, but if you do it or experience it, it will stick with you. I wish that teachers appealed to these methods more often, it would make learning an entirely different experience.
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