Episode 0127

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 going to 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 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.

It's kind of sounds French. Is it French?

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

Mm-hm. 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.

Like horror movies, is a genre.

Okay, or 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're they're long words that we say in short forms. And this kind of abbreviation is called an acronym.

All right, 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.

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.

I'm carrying your love with me.

Superstar by The Carpenters.

And the genre?

Um, um, Adult Contemporary?

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.

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?

Let's hear it.

You're 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.

Rap, disco, and and

Well, um, 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?

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.

All right. Well, let's take a look at more of these genres and now in language takeaway.

Language takeaway.

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, um,

A little bit of 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.

That's twang.

That's twang.

So it's kind of like an an accent, a Southern accent.

Very southern. Yeah.

All right. So we have country music. And then we saw another genre, which is R&B.

And R&B is an acronym for...

Rhythm and Blues.

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

Well, a really famous artist is John Legend, who's been touring the world with his new album and that kind of music is R&B. So we're talking about a 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, so 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 this song, we saw that it was power metal.

Yeah.

But you also have like heavy metal.

Well, 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 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 music. It grew out of a lot of people who were listening to jazz in the late 80s, especially in New York, I think Brooklyn. And uh, 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 to and then you add like some bass in there. Yeah, exactly. And then some lyrics and you have yourself something like hip-hop.

So a very famous hip-hop artist nowadays would be 50 Cent.

Yeah. Mm-hm.

Or for example, also Nelly, right? 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 that the way that 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.

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

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.

Superstar by The Carpenters.

And the genre?

Um, um, Adult Contemporary?

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.

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?

Let's hear it.

You're 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.

Rap, disco, and and

So it isn't a true English Pod 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 the phrases that we're going to 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.

Mm, double or nothing. It's double or nothing.

Well, this is an interesting phrase because it I think comes from gambling and betting. Yeah. So it's a way for us to say, well, you could double your money, but if if you have a bad answer, if you lose this round, you don't get anything. 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 says, 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 $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. 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. 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 want to 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. 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. All right, a tie-breaker. And we have one more phrase, and this one is really interesting, the pressure is on.

Mm.

So if I say the pressure is on.

It almost sounds painful.

Yeah, it does. Well, is it does it mean that I am being pressured or what is this?

Well, it's a it's a good question. Um, the important thing to to look at here is the word on, because pressure has this kind of companion word to put pressure on something 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 often times, you'd hear the announcers 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 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?

Mm-hm.

Example one.

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

Example two.

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

Example three.

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

All right, 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'll be talking a little bit more about one of my favorite topics, music.

I'm carrying your love with me.

Superstar by The Carpenters.

And the genre?

Um, um, Adult Contemporary?

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.

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?

Let's hear it.

You're 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.

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 it's fine.

I guess it depends on your mood, huh?

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? So maybe it helps them relax or.

Wow. What about when they play music for unborn babies? Like they'll put little headphones on a mother's belly and they'll play like classical music cuz supposedly it'll make the baby smart or.

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 when they're little probably helps a little bit more, but I'm not a doctor, so that 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 now you just get a lot of temporary music that doesn't really transcend into the future. What do you think?

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. It's the bad ones, they fade into history. 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 this side as well.

The English Pod Audio Review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

A kind of literary or artistic work.

Genre.

When a person pretends to play the guitar when listening to music.

Air guitar.

Abbreviations.

Acronym.

To sing without any instruments or music.

Acapella.

Extra time to determine a winner after a tie.

Sudden death.

A demand by an audience for an additional performance at the end of a concert.

Encore.

The outcome or result depends on you.

The pressure is on.

A part of a song repeated after each verse.

Chorus.

A person or thing that gains wide appeal or fame.

Hit.

Used when you want to bet twice as much.

Double or nothing.

Let's try that faster.

To sing without any instruments or music.

Acapella.

A part of a song repeated after each verse.

Chorus.

Extra time to determine a winner after a tie.

Sudden death.

A kind of literary or artistic work.

Genre.

When a person pretends to play the guitar when listening to music.

Air guitar.

A demand by an audience for an additional performance at the end of a concert.

Encore.

A person or thing that gains wide appeal or fame.

Hit.

The outcome or result depends on you.

The pressure is on.

Abbreviations.

Acronym.

Used when you want to bet twice as much.

Double or nothing.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Genre.

I think mystery is one of the most fascinating literary genres.

Genre.

I was reading in the newspaper that there are over 200 music genres in the world.

Genre.

My family doesn't like to watch certain movie genres such as horror, musicals, and action.

Acronym.

Did you know that laser is the acronym for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation?

Acronym.

The most well-known acronym in the world is 'okay', although people still aren't sure what it stands for.

Acronym.

ATM is a well-known acronym for Automated Teller Machine.

The pressure is on.

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

The pressure is on.

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

The pressure is on.

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

Sudden death.

The soccer game is in sudden death now. The first player to score wins the game.

Sudden death.

We went out to a bar last night to watch the football game. The winner was decided by sudden death.

Sudden death.

Double or nothing.

Double or nothing.

Double or nothing.