Hi LarryH, Hi All,
Wow, that’s a really cool synchronous event, LarryH. Thanks for sharing.
In the past I’ve heard (I don’t actually know if this is true or not) that the song “Amazing Grace” was written by a man while on board a ship. It seems to me that I may have been told that this came about as a result of this man’s ship being involved in a terrible storm. Beyond that, I don’t know much about its history.
I do however, know more about the group “The Pentatonix”.
Between 2009 and 2014, NBC has a show call the “The Sing Off” which featured a sing off competition of a cappella groups. This was kind of like “American Idol” or “The Voice”, only for a cappella groups.
In 2011, Scott, Kirsten and Mitch, three people who had all known each other for some time, and who have sang together in the past decided to try out for the “Sing-Off” show that season. However, they were told that they needed 5 members to participate. As a result of this, they then quickly added Avi (the bass singer) to their group first and then, just 2 days before the competition added Kevin as well (the Beatbox guy).
As I understand it, they very intentionally chose the name “The Pentatonix”, for themselves. Again as I understand it, partly because the pentatonic music scale is a 5 note (“penta” = five) scale, partly because the pentatonic scale is used a lot in rock and pop music and partly because there are 5 members of their group. I personally think that their decision to name themselves “The Pentatonix” was pure genius.
Now, it turns out that they were a really good a cappella group. So good, in fact that they actually “won” the NBC’s Sing-Off competition that year.
In 2017, their bass singer, Avi, sadly decided to leave the group under amicable conditions and so they then hired a new bass signer named Matt. If you watch any of their videos, some of them contain Avi and some of the newer ones contain Matt instead.
The major pentatonic scale consists of the first, the second, the third, the fifth and the sixth notes of the major scale.
While it is true that the black keys on a piano (G-flat, A-flat, B-flat, D-flat, and E-flat) make up a pentatonic scale, (specifically they make up the G-flat pentatonic scale) not all pentatonic scales, are necessarily this G-flat pentatonic scale. This is kind of like saying that all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs.
As I previously mentioned, the pentatonic scale is used in a lot of rock music. Back in the 1950’s, at the birth of rock music, it consisted of a merging of many different kinds of music including, “the blues”. Since the blues has always been largely based upon the pentatonic scale, it is for this reason that a lot of rock music is also largely based upon the pentatonic scale.
After writing all of this, I finally watched the video that you (LarryH) attached.
Wow. Talk about goosebumps. That man, Wintley Phipps has an awesome voice.
Thank you, thank you, LarryH, for sharing this video with us. I loved it.
-jbseth
