Hundreds of years of unconscious musical training has led us to this. This pentatonic scale is so embedded in our musical expectations that with a little prompting, a “non-musical” audience will correctly and in unison sing an entire scale. They also seem so surprised that they could do it. If someone started saying the opening lines to the pledge of allegiance (Go USA!) and the audience joined in and finished it, would you be surprised? Why does it seem less likely to happen with a simple string of pitches? Probably because you have been taught that music is something you will never understand. Unfortunately, most people I talk to don’t realize that they actually do understand it. They were just told by some octegenarian piano teacher or band director that they never would. So they believed that teacher, probably because band was right after math class and their math teacher told them they would never understand trigonometry, which was true (what in the fuck is a cosine, anyway? I’m actually good at math and still don’t understand it).
If you listen to music you understand it. You always have.
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jetpants reblogged this from saucyjack and added:
who consider themselves non-musical despite 2 kick-ass years playing trumpet. Consider my interest piqued, and
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saucyjack posted this
