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Hello English learners. Welcome back to EnglishPod. My name is Marco

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’s 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 going to be a fan of.

Right, so before we get started on the dialogue, we have a couple of words that we want to preview. So let’s take a look at them now in vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview

All right, so this word sounds a bit funny. It looks like it should be pronounced differently. We say genre

genre

or genre

this kinda sounds French. Is it French?

I think it comes from French, it’s a GE word, so genre. It’s a soft, soft sound.

and what’s a genre?

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

movies also have genre

yeah, they do. It’s like horror movies is a genre.

Okay, action or suspense, etc. So we’re going to be looking at music genres on this occasion

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

All right, so that’s an other 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.

All right, cool. So, there are some acronyms as well in music. So, that’s what we’re going to be looking at and many other things; I guess like DNA is an acronym.

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

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

Host: Welcome back, music lovers, to ”I Love That Song”! The game show where we test your musical knowledge to the extreme! Let’s get started! Team A. Guess this tune:

Team A: Carrying Your Love With Me by George Straight! The genre is country music!

Host: You are right! one hundred points to team A! Now, for our next cut.

Team B: Thong Song by Sisqo! I believe the genre is R&B?

Host: One hundred big points for team B! For all our viewers the acronym R&B stands for Rhythm and Blues. On that note, DJ, play our next song!

Team B: Superstar by The Carpenters!

Host: And the genre?

Team B: Um. Um. Adult Contemporary?

Host: That’s right! One hundred points! Uh oh! That sound means it’s double or nothing! The songs are more difficult and the points are doubled! Let’s hear our next song!

Team A: Too easy! That song is Kinslayer by the Finnish power metal group, Nightwish!

Host: You are correct! Very impressive team A!

And it seems we have a tie! It’s time now for the tie-breaker round! Each team will be played three songs and they must tell us the genre of each song in less than five seconds! Team A, are you ready?

Team A: Ready!

Host: Let’s hear it!

Team A: Hip Hop, Classical and Gothic metal!

Host: You are right! Team B, the pressure is on, if you get all of them right, we will move on to sudden death. If you miss one, you lose!

DJ, Let’s hear it!

Team B: Rap, Disco and– and–

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

Well, there were a lot of different types of genres in there and a lot of 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 like his music, I grew up hearing it everywhere.

But you don’t like it?

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.

All right, well, let’s take a look at more of these genres now in language take away.

Language take away

All right, so we talked about country music. Now this is mostly in the United States, right?

And 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 the—

Little bit twang maybe

Twang, what is twang?

It’s a way of saying a word, so I could say I’m from Texas or could say I’m from Texas.

that’s twang

that’s twang

so it’s kind of like an accent, a Southern accent.

Yeah, so Garth Brooks is a famous track. I got friends in– You know, that’s a very famous song his twanging.

very southern

yeah

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

Okay, this is a little bit more up my eye. That means this is more of an interest of mine.

and R&B is acronym for—

rhythm and blues.

All right, so the R&B that we know now. What would be some examples of those artists?

A really famous artist is John legend, who’s been touring the world because of new album and that kind of music is R&B. So we’re talking about a kind of music that mixes jazz, traditions with rhythm. So that means drums and bass.

Okay, right

That’s rhythm

so you have rhythm and blues, like the name says, R&B, very popular nowadays. And then we moved on to something heavier, something more 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 this song we saw that it was power metal

yeah

but you also have like heavy metal

because metal is such a broad category. It’s a big category. It’s hard to say what certain groups are unless you’re really a fan and you follow. But there are many different kinds of metal out there and so if you’re interested I would check it out on Wikipedia.

Yeah or let us know if you know what’s the difference between power metal and Gothic metal and electronic metal. So there are so many different types now. But 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 music grew out of a lot of people who are listening to jazz in the late 80s, especially in New York I think, Brooklyn. And it’s kind of interesting in the sense that you take these old records, these old vinyls and you slow everything down

right

right? So you change the speed so a normal song goes from—

yeah and then you have like some base in there

yeah, exactly

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

Yeah.

Or for example also Nelly, right? Another famous hip-hop artist.

Yeah.

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

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

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

Right, so interesting. Now we’ve seen a lot of these different genres, but of course there’s so many more that we can’t really look at all of them in one single podcast.

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

Exactly. So 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.

Host: Welcome back, music lovers, to ”I Love That Song”! The game show where we test your musical knowledge to the extreme! Let’s get started! Team A. Guess this tune:

Team A: Carrying Your Love With Me by George Straight! The genre is country music!

Host: You are right! one hundred points to team A! Now, for our next cut.

Team B: Thong Song by Sisqo! I believe the genre is R&B?

Host: One hundred big points for team B! For all our viewers the acronym R&B stands for Rhythm and Blues. On that note, DJ, play our next song!

Team B: Superstar by The Carpenters!

Host: And the genre?

Team B: Um. Um. Adult Contemporary?

Host: That’s right! One hundred points! Uh oh! That sound means it’s double or nothing! The songs are more difficult and the points are doubled! Let’s hear our next song!

Team A: Too easy! That song is Kinslayer by the Finnish power metal group, Nightwish!

Host: You are correct! Very impressive team A!

And it seems we have a tie! It’s time now for the tie-breaker round! Each team will be played three songs and they must tell us the genre of each song in less than five seconds! Team A, are you ready?

Team A: Ready!

Host: Let’s hear it!

Team A: Hip Hop, Classical and Gothic metal!

Host: You are right! Team B, the pressure is on, if you get all of them right, we will move on to sudden death. If you miss one, you lose!

DJ, Let’s hear it!

Team B: Rap, Disco and– and—

So 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.

Fluency builder

Okay, so there are phrases that we’re going to look at now on fluency builder. The ones that we saw in the dialogue but we can use, of course outside of music or outside of a game show. And there was an interesting one that he mentioned when he said, double or nothing

double or nothing

it’s double or nothing

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

right

and betting. 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 don’t have anything.

Right. 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 say, okay, let’s go double or nothing. So, give me one more shot to win back my money.

Right, so if I say okay, Marco, you need to tell me the capital of Brazil. You have $50. If you get the answer right you get 100, but if you get the answer wrong, you get zero.

Right, that’s double or nothing. All right. Interesting phrase. What else do we have?

We’ve got a great one here called tiebreaker

So, a tiebreaker

Yeah, a tiebreaker. It’s a thing. And sometimes in games some people have the same score. They have the same amount of points

So, they’re tied.

They’re tied. And tie means you have the same number. And if you want to win, you need one winner, you have to have a tiebreaker to decide.

So, it could be a question like we saw here, a tiebreaker round.

yeah

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 are tied before.

Right. All right, a tiebreaker. And we have one more phrase and this one is really interesting: the pressure is on. So if I say the pressure is on—

it almost sounds painful

yeah, it does. Does is it mean that I am being pressured or what is this?

It’s a good question. The important thing to look at here is the word on. Because pressure has this kind of companion word, to put pressure on something or to pressure on someone. And so it’s the way we say it in English and it means that 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 often times you’d hear the announcer say, there’s five seconds left on the clock. The pressure is on Michael Jordan to win the game.

All right, 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 shoulder. 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.

Example 1

Carl is really stressed out lately. The pressure of the entire project is on him since his promotion.

Example 2

The pressure is on the president to guide his country out of the recession.

Example 3

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

All right, great examples, great phrases. I think it’s 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 we come back we’re talking a little bit more about one of my favorite topics, music.

Host: Welcome back, music lovers, to ”I Love That Song”! The game show where we test your musical knowledge to the extreme! Let’s get started! Team A. Guess this tune:

Team A: Carrying Your Love With Me by George Straight! The genre is country music!

Host: You are right! one hundred points to team A! Now, for our next cut.

Team B: Thong Song by Sisqo! I believe the genre is R&B?

Host: One hundred big points for team B! For all our viewers the acronym R&B stands for Rhythm and Blues. On that note, DJ, play our next song!

Team B: Superstar by The Carpenters!

Host: And the genre?

Team B: Um. Um. Adult Contemporary?

Host: That’s right! One hundred points! Uh oh! That sound means it’s double or nothing! The songs are more difficult and the points are doubled! Let’s hear our next song!

Team A: Too easy! That song is Kinslayer by the Finnish power metal group, Nightwish!

Host: You are correct! Very impressive team A!

And it seems we have a tie! It’s time now for the tie-breaker round! Each team will be played three songs and they must tell us the genre of each song in less than five seconds! Team A, are you ready?

Team A: Ready!

Host: Let’s hear it!

Team A: Hip Hop, Classical and Gothic metal!

Host: You are right! Team B, the pressure is on, if you get all of them right, we will move on to sudden death. If you miss one, you lose!

DJ, Let’s hear it!

Team B: Rap, Disco and– and–

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

That’s a hard question. I have very different interests. I like classical music. I also like jazz but I also like rock and I also like R&B. so—

I guess it depends on your mood

absolutely

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

They did a study, 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.

Really? So maybe it helps them relax or—

Yes, if you listen to the radio and you’re a song that you like comes on the radio. You hear the song. Your heart pumps more oxygen to your brain. So it means, it actually makes you happier.

What about when they play music for unborn babies? Like they put little headphones on the mother’s belly and will play like classical music. Cause supposedly, it will make the baby smart or—

It’s like baby Mozart or something?

Yeah, exactly. What do you think about that?

I don’t know. I think talking to kids and giving them books, probably helps a little more, but I’m not a doctor, so that I can’t say.

Many people do argue now that they don’t make music like they used to. I guess 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. But now 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 10 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 Molly and they can listen to music from India and they have all these different influences that were not there before. 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.

Interesting. Well, what do you guys think listeners? Come to our website Englishpud.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 you think maybe it’s not so good. Well, you do have bad artists, right?

You always have bad artists. The bad ones, they fade into history and we never hear from them again.

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.

All right, we’ll see you guys there and until next time, bye.