Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast, number 481, Listening to Music.
This is English as a Second Language Podcast, episode 481.
Can you believe it?
My name is Dr. Jeff McQuillan.
I'm the host of ESL Podcast coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful and I do mean beautiful Los Angeles, California.
We have a website.
Yes, we do.
It's eslpod.com.
On it, you can find a learning guide for this episode that will help you improve your English even faster.
This episode is a dialogue between Victoria and JD.
It's going to talk about listening to music and uses a lot of vocabulary we use to describe music.
Let's get started.
I see that you have a really extensive music collection.
Yeah, I like a lot of different genres of music.
Do you have the new Jay McHugh album?
He's my favorite artist.
I just got it, and I like all of the tracks on it.
No, I haven't heard it yet.
Do you have it on your MP3 player?
Yeah, here.
I've queued up the first track.
Hmm.
I like the beat of the first song, but I'm not blown away by the rest of it.
It's also a really bad mix.
The bass is up too high.
You can hardly hear the treble.
Is the whole album like that?
Yeah, I guess so.
I didn't notice.
Maybe the volume wasn't up high enough.
No, it was up high enough.
Maybe he's just not that good a vocalist and the sound engineers are trying to cover it up in the mixing.
Are you kidding?
He's an amazing singer.
Come on, listen to another track.
I'm sure you'll change your mind.
No thanks.
I'd rather listen to a bunch of fighting cats than listen to any more of J. McHugh.
Our dialogue begins with Victoria saying I see that you have a really extensive music collection.
Extensive means large thorough and complete with many different kinds of something.
You might say to someone, he has an extensive library.
It has lots of different books about lots of different topics.
A collection is just a group of things.
So when Victoria says to J.D., you have a really extensive music collection...
She means he has a lot of albums, CDs, other recordings of music.
JD says, A genre of music is a type or a style of music...
It can also be used to describe a type or a style of book or of a movie, different genres of movies.
Notice that the person's name here is J.D.
Those are actually initials.
Usually they would stand for something.
The J could be John or James or even Jeff.
Sometimes people use their initials as, effectively, their name.
And that's what JD is using here.
I actually have a friend whose first and last initials are J and D.
Sometimes people would call him JD.
Anyway, JD has a lot of different types of music.
Victoria asks him, do you have the new Jay McHugh album?
He's my favorite artist.
An album is a group of songs on a single CD or compact disc or on vinyl.
What we used to call records, well, they're still called records.
They're not as popular anymore, although some people still like them.
These were large black discs made out of vinyl.
An album is a collection of 8, 10, maybe more songs from the same singer or the same band.
The word artist here just means musician.
It can be used to refer to someone who is a painter or a sculptor.
But in talking about music, it simply means the musicians.
Victoria says that Jay McHugh is her favorite artist, and I can understand why.
He's got a great voice.
She says, I just got it, meaning I just bought it.
I just was able to obtain it, and I liked all of the tracks on it.
A track is one song on an album or one song in a collection of music, in this case.
Track actually has a couple of different meanings.
Take a look at the learning guide for some additional explanations.
JD says, no, I haven't heard it yet.
Do you have it on your MP3 player, your iPod, for example?
Victoria says yeah, here I've queued up the first track.
To queue up something means to make something ready to play, especially if you are talking about music or videos.
For example, if you have a DVD player and you rent a movie a DVD Your husband or wife might say To queue up means to get it ready to play.
Because, of course, when you buy a DVD with a movie on it, there's usually a bunch of other commercials and other things before the movie actually starts.
J.D. says...
After listening to this song by Jay McHugh, he says Hmm, I like the beat of the first song, but I'm not blown away by the rest of it.
The beat B-E-A-T here refers to the rhythm, the repeating regular song, when you have one note stronger or louder than the other.
There are a lot of very famous beats in popular music.
Sometimes you even hear the same beat in different types of music, or different songs, I should say.
Well, J.D. likes the beat of the first song, but he was not blown away by the rest of it.
By the way, beat has a couple of different meanings in English, so definitely take a look at our learning guide for some more explanations.
To be blown away means to have a very favorable impression of something, to like something very much, much more than you expected it.
I went to see the movie Slumdog Millionaire, and I was blown away by it.
I thought it was very good, much better than I expected it.
Well, J.D. is not blown away by J. McHugh's first song.
He says it's also a really bad mix.
A mix is the combination of voices, instruments, music, as well as other sounds in a recorded song.
So it's the mixture of these different elements in the song.
JD says, low like this.
That's bass.
You can also use the word to describe a bass guitar, which is a guitar that plays these very low notes.
The opposite of bass is treble.
Treble refers to the high notes, like you might hear in a woman's voice.
JD asks, is the whole album like that?
Meaning, are all of the songs that way?
Victoria says, yeah, I guess so.
I didn't notice.
Maybe the volume wasn't up high enough.
The volume refers to the loudness of music or sound.
She's saying that she didn't notice these problems because perhaps the volume wasn't up high enough.
We talk about the volume being high when it's loud and low when it's soft.
JD says, no, it was up high enough.
Maybe he's not that good a vocalist.
And the sound engineers are trying to cover it up in the mixing.
A vocalist is someone who sings.
It's a singer.
The sound engineers are the people who try to improve the recorded music before it is sold.
So they record a singer, and then they do things to the recording to try to make it sound better.
Sometimes they do things that make the voice sound a lot better than the person can actually sing.
That way they cover up the problems.
To cover something up is a phrasal verb meaning to do something so that no one else can see it or hear it.
So they cover up the bad singing by doing these other things.
Victoria is somewhat angry at JD.
She says, are you kidding me?
Are you joking?
J. McHugh is an amazing singer, a great singer.
Come on, listen to another track.
I'm sure you'll change your mind.
You'll have a different opinion of J. McHugh.
J.D. says no thanks.
I'd rather listen to a bunch of fighting cats than listen to any more of Jay McHugh.
Of course, fighting cats don't sound very nice.
But I'm guessing here that JD is a musician and he is a little jealous of Jay McHugh because Victoria likes Jay McHugh's music.
And JD is jealous.
He wants to have all of the attention for himself.
I'm pretty sure that's what's happening in this dialogue.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I see that you have a really extensive music collection.
Yeah, I like a lot of different genres of music.
Do you have the new Jay McHugh album?
He's my favorite artist.
I just got it, and I like all of the tracks on it.
No, I haven't heard it yet.
Do you have it on your MP3 player?
Yeah, here.
I've queued up the first track.
Hmm.
I like the beat of the first song, but I'm not blown away by the rest of it.
It's also a really bad mix.
The bass is up too high.
You can hardly hear the treble.
Is the whole album like that?
Yeah, I guess so.
I didn't notice.
Maybe the volume wasn't up high enough.
No, it was up high enough.
Maybe he's just not that good a vocalist and the sound engineers are trying to cover it up in the mixing.
Are you kidding?
He's an amazing singer.
Come on, listen to another track.
I'm sure you'll change your mind.
No thanks.
I'd rather listen to a bunch of fighting cats than listen to any more of J. McHugh.
The script for this episode was written by someone with an extensive knowledge of English, our very own Dr Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2009 by the Center for Educational Development.
