Episode 0242

That's right, we're gonna talk about music, but specifically, we're gonna talk about the piano and learning how to play the piano, so we're gonna talk about very specific vocab related to this instrument.

Right, so piano and playing music, not listening to music.

So we're going to hear a lot of interesting words and phrases here. Some of them actually come from foreign languages, like Italian. So, listen up, we'll be back in a moment and when we come back, we'll be talking about what these words and phrases mean.

Hi Cody, how did practicing go this week?

Well, I had several tests and an oral presentation this week, so I didn't get a chance to memorize the second page, but I think I mastered the tricky section.

Good, good. This week, work on keeping the rhythm steady when you play the last part with the 16th notes.

Now, let's take a look at this tricky section.

Charlene, before I start, I was wondering if it was okay if I put a small crescendo in here and then a decrescendo back to pianissimo again over here.

Hmm, it might work. I'll have to hear it. Show me what you've done.

Not bad.

Oh, it's just nerves.

Just play the right hand for now.

One, two, three, four, five, six, ta, ti, triply E T.

Good, good. Don't forget the accidentals.

The key signature says that note should be a G sharp, but now it's a G natural.

Now, add the bass clef.

Oh, you're, you're, you're, you're going too fast.

Remember the tempo for this piece is Andante.

Is that better?

Watch where you lift your foot off the pedal.

What was that?

Watch your dynamics.

Keep your elbows lifted.

Remember to stroke the keys, don't pound.

Remember that as a pianist or any other musician, your technique will be what separates you from the pack just as much or as more so as your musicianship.

All right, we're back. So you probably noticed that there are a lot of ways to describe certain aspects of playing the piano. They they talked about scales and all that stuff. So, why don't we take a deeper look at this vocab in language takeaway part one.

Language Takeaway.

Okay, so the first part of the lesson is the warm-up. That's when we, you know, start to get our fingers moving and really stretch out.

This is an important part of any musician's routine because it's also a way to practice um some very basic, very fundamental things. For the first, the first of which is a scale.

Okay, so actually Cody started warming up with some scales. So what exactly are scales?

Well, basically, there are different musical notes. Some people know them as do re mi fa so la ti do, some people call them C D E F G A B C. Um, but each of those and many others have scales, so that's eight notes together.

Okay. So basically when you're playing scales, you're just playing a a sequence of these eight notes.

Right, going up or down.

Okay, to warm up. And what about an Arpeggio? I think this is Italian, right?

Definitely.

Arpeggio is another kind of warm-up where you're not playing every single note, you're playing some notes in a scale.

da da da da da da da da

That's an arpeggio.

Okay, very good. So, uh and as you said, these are usually for warm-ups, right?

Yeah, they're also very important because they come into play later when you're talking about the key that a song or piece of music is in. So this helps you memorize the key that some music is in.

Okay, very good.

So, I think related to to this is the rhythm of the piece that you're playing.

That's right, so rhythm is really important. Some people can even say, you know, he's got rhythm or they have rhythm. It's a way to describe the beat of a kind of music.

So sometimes it has to do with how fast or how slow something is. Other times it has to do with the way that the notes work together.

Um, for example, a steady beat would be one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

This is a complicated beat, it goes ta ti triply ta ti triply. So this is a very difficult kind of rhythm.

Okay. Okay. So, the rhythm is just it gives you the how fast, how slow it is and I guess if you can take a look at notes and you can play it in many different rhythms but not necessarily they're gonna sound correct.

Right.

And actually, it's interesting, in English we also have a group of instruments that are called rhythm instruments.

So this would be like the drums.

Okay. So it gives the beat.

Yes.

Very good. And uh moving on, I think some other Italian words popped up in here when they talked about crescendo and decrescendo.

Right, so crescendo is when something becomes louder.

So I can make a crescendo, right?

But a decrescendo, day in Italian just like in English means it's the opposite. So it means it's getting really softer.

Okay. And what about pianissimo?

Pianissimo is basically an indication, it also comes from Italian, it's an indication that a player, a musician should play something very, very, very quietly. It's almost like a whisper.

Okay. So all all these these three words have to do with the volume of or how loud or or not so loud you play the instrument.

That's right.

Okay, very good.

And uh well, moving on now, we talk about uh accidentals.

Okay, this is important, remember earlier we were talking about scales. Well, for example, the G scale has one sharp. So that's an F sharp. So if I'm playing it on the on the the piano, there are seven white keys and one black key.

Uh so you have the accidentals and G sharp and you're describing something about sharpness with accidentals.

That's right. So basically if you look at a piano, you have white keys. Those are those are naturals, they don't have a a sharp or a flat. The sharps and flats are actually played on the black keys.

Um usually it's a half step from a normal note. So G, it's a half step.

Um we're talking about um different keys. So if if something is in the key of G, all music people know know what this is. Key of G, there's one accidental. What's the accidental? It's always F sharp. And so an accidental means a sharp or a flat in that key.

Okay, and when we talk about sharps on the piano, they're basically the black keys.

Yes, well, sharps and flats can both be black keys.

Okay, very good.

And uh well, apart from accidentals and G sharp, G natural, the teacher also talked about a bass clef.

Okay, this is important for people who play lower instruments like the bass, you know, the upright bass that big one, or people who play the piano, obviously. This represents a way of writing the lower notes.

Okay. So you see the lines, those five lines on paper and people write the notes. Well, sometimes they're for higher instruments, you know, the flute or the trumpet. But sometimes when they're for lower instruments like the the left hand of a piano or for the upright bass. You have to write it in a special register, a special part of the sound kind of continuum and that's the treble, that's the bass clef.

Okay. So basically, uh if everyone has ever seen piano notes, it tells you what to play with your left hand and your right hand. So I I imagine the bass clef will will be everything that's on your left hand because that sounds uh like deeper, graver.

Yeah, it's lower. So it's lower on the scale. Instead of like, up high, up here where it's on the treble clef.

All right. So, oh, so the opposite would be the treble clef.

That's right. The treble clef is up higher. It's most other instruments like the trumpet. Uh the bass clef is for lower instruments and it just means that the way that you read the music on the page is a little bit different.

Okay, very good.

And uh well, we also got into things like tempo and the the piece was described as Andante.

Andante, this is a very Italian word. Okay, so Andante means that something is played slowly.

Okay. So uh apart from Andante if oh, so it's a style or or a or a tempo. I guess tempo is the speed of which it's played, right?

That's right. But in you're right to say that it's also a style because in many symphonies for example, there's a a movement, a part of the symphony that's called the Andante. And that's when everything starts to get slow and serious or pretty and.

I've heard, I don't know, in piano I've heard of something called Staccato and I think this is also related to tempo, right?

Staccato is the way that you play something. So instead of having these long, pretty notes, you're playing them like this, ta ta ta ta ta ta ta. Right, like a machine gun.

Okay. So but it's not related to the tempo. It's kind of more just like a the way that you press the keys.

Exactly, it's a style for playing.

All right, well, the teacher also told the the student to be careful where they lift the foot off the pedal and uh the the student said, 'Oh, I'm just so sorry, the stretch for that octave is always hard to make.'

Okay, so an octave is really, really important in music, like we were talking about earlier with the scale, a scale is eight notes. Well, the the root, the the place the word octave comes from is the number eight. Like an octagon. Uh so octave means eight notes together or like low C, high C, that's an octave.

Um so think about the piano when you're putting your fingers on the keys, covering eight keys means you have to stretch your thumb and your pinky out really, really far. And so he's saying, 'Ah, sorry, it's hard for me to do this because the octave, those that that stretch is really hard for my hand.'

Right. Okay. So, this is different from an eighth, right?

Well, it depends, are you talking about eighth note?

I don't know because I just came into because an octave is eight and an eighth note, is it different, I imagine?

Yeah, well, you you heard in the dialogue, 16th note, eighth note. That's actually talking about the length of a note, how long you hold it.

Uh okay. Um so basically you're saying it's the way you measure the music. It can have um four count or three count, but you divide that into pieces. It's like a pie in math where you divide it into pieces. So if it's a 16th note or an eighth note, that's the the length based on the kind of music you're playing.

So I imagine 16th note is shorter than eighth.

Yes.

And 32nd note is shorter than a 16th note. 64th note is shorter.

Okay. It gets very complicated, very mathy.

All right. And towards the end, the teacher recommended for Cody to watch his dynamics. What what does she mean with watch your dynamics?

I used to get this all the time in music. So you're concentrating on your music, you're playing, you're getting the notes and Cody is stretching his hands, the octaves are so far away and he forgets to play it loud or soft.

Because on the page it says like we heard earlier, decrescendo. So get much, much softer. So Cody completely forgot. He's not listening, he's not reading the page and seeing what it says about the volume of the music.

So basically the dynamics are like the instructions of how loud to play it or not or not so loud.

Exactly. So does it say pianissimo or the opposite, does it say forte?

Oh, so and it'll actually say this on on the notes, forte, it'll say that.

F O R T E or sometimes just F.

Oh, okay.

So P is piano, that means like we said earlier, quiet. Pianissimo is PPP, it's very, very quiet. F is forte, loud.

Okay, so I think uh well, if anyone out there plays an instrument, you can relate and you can maybe know about these uh these things that you may know it in your original language. I know I know many people who who play musical instruments and don't really know the technical words in their original language.

I mean, things like Andante and Pianissimo, things like this, I think are universal, right? They're they're used in whatever language.

Exactly, very very widely used.

But uh things like uh the accidentals or bass clef or scales and stuff like that, I think uh it it's obviously in different languages in uh for example, you you know Italian, like scales or accidentals, are they you think They're different.

They're different.

They're different. All of the other words. So the instructions on the page because music is shared all over the world. The instructions on the page are almost always in Italian, so piano, Andante, or they're in German, some music. Um but everything else, scales, octaves, these are all in your native native language.

And so they're very, very important to study if you want to play and I think very, very useful if you want to study an instrument.

Yeah, of course. I think uh it's also very a good idea to just have a general knowledge about these things because, you know, sometimes it's uh it's nice to know a little bit about it and maybe if a friend is talking about music, you can maybe understand a little bit more about what it's like or if you see music, a sheet of music, you can now more or less know what's going on with all those drawings and little scribbles there.

The English Pod audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

Requiring skill or caution.

Tricky.

A series of musical notes.

Scale.

The speed at which a musical piece is played.

Tempo.

Very quickly.

By leaps and bounds.

The skill of performing music.

Musicianship.

A specific musical tone.

Note.

Changes in how loudly a piece of music is played.

Dynamics.

A button to press with fingers to produce sounds.

Key.

Let's try that faster.

Changes in how loudly a piece of music is played.

Dynamics.

Requiring skill or caution.

Tricky.

The speed at which a musical piece is played.

Tempo.

Very quickly.

By leaps and bounds.

A series of musical notes.

Scale.

A button to press with fingers to produce sounds.

Key.

The skill of performing music.

Musicianship.

A specific musical tone.

Note.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Note.

The crowd cheered wildly when she hit the high note at the end of the song.

Note.

This tune represents a fluttering butterfly, so the notes should be played lightly and fluidly.

Note.

The two 16th note were followed by a quarter note and an eighth note.

Tempo.

As soon as the band picked up the tempo, several groups of people began dancing on the dance floor.

Tempo.

This week, I want you to practice this section at a slow tempo, hand separately.

Tempo.

There are no markings indicating the tempo in this piece, but I think it sounds best when played Adante.

By leaps and bounds.

Your musicianship has been improving by leaps and bounds recently.

By leaps and bounds.

The value of his investments kept increasing by leaps and bounds.

By leaps and bounds.

The construction work on the new apartment complex was advancing by leaps and bounds.

Dynamics.

The dynamics in this piece are few, but there are many changes in time signature.

Dynamics.

Watch out for the dynamics and remember to get softer here and louder in this section.

Dynamics.

Sometimes when I play a piece of music, I ignore the mark dynamics and play it the way I feel it should be played instead.

Key.

The piano has black keys and white keys.

Key.

He stroked the keys beautifully as he played.

Key.

The child giggled at the sound that was made when he pressed down on the piano keys.