I Love That Song!

Hello English learners! Welcome back to EnglishPod! My name isMarco.

And my name is Catherine and today we’ve got a great show for you. We’re talking all about music.

It’s a great topic. I think everyone loves music and, well, there’re so much type of music out there, so that’s what we’re gonna be talking about today.

Exactly, so there’s a little bit for everyone here. Even if you hate rock music, there might be something in it that you’re gonna be a fan of.

Hehe. Right, so before we get started on the… the dialogue, we have a couple of words that we wanna preview, so let’s take a look at them in “vocabulary preview”. Voice: Vocabulary preview.

Alright, so this word sounds a bit funny. It looks like it should be pronounced differently. We say genre [ganra].

Genre.

Or [djanra].

It kind of sounds French. Is it French?

I think it comes from French, uh, it’s a GE-word, so genre…

Uhu.

It’s a soft… soft sound.

Uhu, and what’s a genre?

Well, a genre is like a category, so you could say “genre of book” or “genre of music”.

Oh, movies also have genres, right?

Yeah, they do. It’s like horror movie…

Or…

Is a genre.

Okay, or action or suspense et cetera. So we’re gonna be looking at music genres on this occasion.

And some of these genre names actually have abbreviations. There… There’re long words that we say in short forms and this kind of abbreviation is called an acronym.

Alright, so that’s another word that we’re looking at – acronym. So an acronym is a short version of a long word?

Yeah, usually it’s just letters like USA is a very good acronym. It means United States of America.

Alright, cool. So there’re some acronyms as well in, uh, music, so that’s what we’re gonna be looking at. And many other things, I guess like DNA is an acronym.

Yeah, DNA is an acronym. UN is an acronym.

Alright, great, so we’re gonna be looking at different genres of music, so let’s listen to our dialogue for the first time. We’re gonna listen to a game show where people have to name the song and the genre.

Fun show, Marco. I kind of think I’d be good at this kind of game. I might win big.

Hehe. Well, um, there were a lot of different types of genres in there and a lot different music, I don’t know, maybe not very popular like, for example, country music. I don’t know if many people outside of the United States actually know about this.

Well, there might be different kinds of country music, but, you know, in America one of the most famous country music musicians is Garth Brooks and even if I didn’t li ke his music, I grew up hearing it everywhere.

But you don’t like it.

Um, you know, it’s one of those things that I like some kinds of country music, but it’s a huge genre that means there’s lots of different kinds of music within country.

Alright. Well, let’s take a look at more of these genres, ah, now in “language takeaway”. Voice: Language takeaway.

Alright, so we talked about country music…

Yeah.

Now, this is mostly in the United States, right?

Uhu. In the South especially, because there’s a long tradition of country music in the Southern United States.

So it’s very characteristic to have guitars and, um…

A little bit twang maybe.

Twang. What is twang?

Um, it’s a way of saying a word, so I could say “I’m from Texas” or I could say “I’m from Texas” [twang].

That’s twang.

That’s twang.

Hehe. So it’s kind like a… an accent, a Southern accent.

Yeah, so Garth Brooks has a famous twang “I got friends in low…” You know, that’s a very famous song of his… where he's twanging.

Very Southern.

Yeah.

Alright, so we have country music and then we saw another genre which is R&B.

Mm, okay, this is a little bit more up my alley. That means this is more of an interest…

Alright.

Of mine, yeah.

And R&B is an acronym for…

Rhythm and Blues.

Alright, so the R&B that we know now, what would be some examples of those artists?

Well, a really famous artist is John Legend. He’s been touring the world with his new album and that kind of music is R&B. So we’re talking about, uh, a kind of music that kind… mixes jazz traditions with rhythm, so that means drums and bass.

Okay.

Dum-dum-dum-dum.

Right.

That’s rhythm.

So you have rhythm and blues, so…

Uhu.

Like the name says R&B, very popular nowadays. Oh, and then… and then we moved on to something heavier, something more, uh, like rock style, which is metal.

Metal, okay, I’m not really sure why they call it metal, but metal is a very, very popular kind of music.

So it divides into different categories, right? In thins song we saw that it was power metal.

Yeah, uhu.

But you also have like heavy metal.

Well, because metal is such a broad category, it’s a big category…

Yeah.

It’s hard to say what certain groups are, unless you’re really a fan and you follow, but there’re many different kinds of metal out there and so, if you’re interested I would check it out on Wikipedea.

Yeah, or let us know if you know what’s the difference power metal and gothic metal and, uh, electronic metal, so…

Uhu.

There’re so many different types now. But, um, moving on to our next genre, we also saw something that everyone probably knows nowadays and that’s hip-hop.

Yeah, hip-hop is a great, great and very interesting kind of musicgrew out of, uh, a lot of people who’re listening to jazz in the late 80’s, especially in New York, I think, Brooklyn.

Uhu.

And, uh, it’s kind of interesting in the sense that you take these old records, these old vinyls…

Uhu.

And you slow everything down.

Right.

Right, so you change the speed, so a normal song goes from “tam-tam-tam-tam” to “tam… tam… tam… tam…”

Yeah.

And then…

And then you had like some bass in there.

Yeah, exactly.

And then some, uh, lyrics and you have yourself something like hip-hop. So a very famous hip-hop artist nowadays would be 50 cent?

Yeah, uhu.

Or, for example, also Nelly, right?

Yeah.

Another famous hip-hop artist.

Yeah.

So we have hip-hop and, well, it’s kind of similar, I don’t know, very similar to rap almost.

Yeah, but it’s different in the… the way the process for making this kind of music is quite different.

Mm.

Yeah, rap tends to be very lyric heavy, whereas hip-hop is very beat heavy I think.

Mm, right. So interesting, now, we’ve seen a lot of these different genres, but of course there’re so many more that we can’t really look at all of them in one single podcast.

That’s what a websites for. You can put your favorite music genres up on our website and practice your English.

Hehe. Exactly, so, well, why don’t we listen to this dialogue for the second time? Let’s slow it down just a little bit and then we’ll come back and look at some more phrases. DIALOGUE, SECOND TIME (slow)

So th… it isn’t a true EnglishPod lesson if we don’t give you a couple of phrases and words to make you sound more fluent, so that’s the purpose of this next portion of our show. Voice: Fluency builder.

Okay, so the phrases that we’re gonna look at now on fluency builder are the ones that we saw in the dialogue, but we can use, of course, outside of music or outside of a game show. Um, and there was an interesting one that he mentioned when he said double or nothing. [NOTE: in fact, SHE said in the dialogue]

Mm, double or nothing.

It’s double or nothing.

Well, this is an interesting phrase, because it… I think comes from gambling…

Right.

And betting.

Uhu.

Yeah, so it’s a way for us to say, well, you could double your money, but if you have a bad answer, if you lose this round…

You lose everything.

You don't have anything.

Right.

Yeah.

So I guess, yeah, you do see a lot of people say, maybe they’re betting or they’re playing a game, that person loses and they say “okay, let’s go double or nothing”, so give me one more shot to win back my money or…

Right, so if I say “okay, Marco, you need to tell me the capital of Brazil, you have fifty dollars, if you get the answer right, you get a hundred dollars, but if you get the answer wrong, you get zero”.

Right, that’s double or nothing. Alright, interesting phrase. Uh, what else do we have?

We’ve got a great one here called tie-breaker.

So, a tie-breaker.

Yeah, a tie-breaker, it’s a thing and sometimes in games some people have the same score…

Uhu.

They have the same amount of points.

So they’re tied.

They’re tied. A tie means you have the same number. And if you wanna win, you need one winner, you have to have a tie-breaker to decide.

So it could be a question or like we saw here a tie-breaker round.

Yeah, uhu.

So to decide on a winner.

And this is all or nothing, because if you get the answer right, you win; if you don’t, you lose, it doesn’t matter if you were tied before.

Right. Alright, a tie-breaker. And we have one more phrase and this one is really interesting – the pressure is on.

Mmm.

So… if I say “the pressure is one”…

It almost sounds painful.

Yeah, it does. Well, is it… does it mean that I’m being pressured? Or what is this?

Well, so it’s a good question, um… the important thing to… to look at here is the word on.

Uhu.

Because pressure has this kind of companion word “to putpressure on something”…

Okay.

Or “to put pressure on someone” and so, it’s the way we say it in English and it means that, um, you’re going to really take things seriously from this point on.

Okay.

Right, so, for example, the Chicago Bulls were at the peak, the height of their fame and they were just a wonderful team and oftentimes you’d hear the announcer say “there’s five seconds left on the clock, the pressure is on Michael Jordan to win the game!”

Alright, so the opportunity for the team to win all depended on Michael Jordan.

Right, so the pressure, all of this stuff is on him, his shoulders, so he has to score the point to win the game.

Okay, this is a very interesting phrase. Why don’t we take a look at some other examples of how we could use the pressure is on?

Uhu. Voice: Example one.

Karl is really stressed out lately. The pressure of the entire project is on him since his promotion. Voice: Example two.

The pressure is on the president to guide his country out of the recession. Voice: Example three.

The pressure is on our entire team to successfully come up with a new product for the Asian market within a month.

Alright, great examples, great phrases. I think it’s a pretty clear now, right?

It is and to make sure that we understood the whole dialogue I think we should take another listen to it at a normal speed and when we come back, we’re talking a little bit more about one of my favorite topics – music.

Alright, so we have music, different music genres. Which one are you mostly into?

That’s a hard question. I have very dif… different interests. I like classical music, I also like jazz, but I also like rock and I also like…

Hehe.

R&B, so it really depends.

I guess it depends on your mood, huh?

Absolutely.

Now, they say that music does really influence people’s moods.

They did a study, some… some doctors in America did a study to see if heart patients – people who have heart problems – could be positively affected by music and the result said that yes, it can be helpful.

Oh, really?

Uhu.

So maybe it helps them relax or…

Yeah, it says if you… if you listen to the radio and you’re… a song that you like comes on a radio, you hear this song, your heart pumps more oxygen to your brain.

Wow.

So it means it actually makes you happier.

Wow.

Uhu.

What about when they play music for unborn babies like they put little headphones on the mother’s belly and they play like classical music…

Yeah.

Cause supposedly it’ll make the baby smart or ???

It’s like baby-Mozart or something.

Yeah, exactly, well, what do you think about that?

Uh, I don’t know.

Hehe.

I think talking to kids and giving them books when they’re little probably helps a little bit more, but I’m not a doctor, so that…

Uh.

I can’t say.

Well, many people do argue now that they don’t make music like they used to. I guess, um, they say that, you know, music that was made before, the lyrics were more profound, they were real musicians, they were composers and they wrote lyrics, um, but know you just get a lot of temporary music that doesn’t really transcend into the future. What do you think?

I totally disagree. I think the last ten years have seen a really amazing growth in the music industry, because more people are communicating, you know, the Internet allows us to hear all sorts of things from all over the world and so we have great musicians who can listen to music from Male and they can listen to music from India…

Yeah.

And they have all these different influences that were not there before.

Mm.

And so I think it’s the opposite. I think a lot of new pathways in music have opened up because of the technology evolution.

Wow, interesting. Well, what do you guys think, listeners? Come to our website englishpod.com, leave your questions and comments and tell us what you think. Do you think maybe music has become better in the last decade? Or do you think maybe it’s not so good? Well, you do have bad artists, right?

You always have bad artists, yeah.

So…

It’s… the bad ones, they fade into history.

Right.

You never hear from them again, so…

So come and let us know and also if you have any questions or doubts you can leave them on the site as well.

Yeah, we’re happy to answer any questions you’ve got, so let us know what you’re thinking.

Alright, we’ll see you guys later and until next time…

Bye everyone!

Bye! ***