Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 915, Learning to Read Music.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 915.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in In beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
Download a learning guide for this episode by becoming a member of ESL Podcast.
This episode is a dialogue between Mike and Grace about learning to read music, learning to look at a piece of paper that has notes on it and be able to understand what it means.
Let's get started.
You have a great voice.
You should join our choir.
It's not that hard.
I could teach you.
Look, this is a piece we're working on right now.
What's that weird thing at the beginning?
That's the clef.
It tells you which note each line and space on the staff represents.
Okay.
What about these numbers?
That's the time signature.
It tells you how many beats are in each measure and what kind of note gets one beat.
This little number above there gives you the temple.
Hmm, that's kind of complicated.
Why are all these notes stacked on top of each other?
That's to indicate a chord with two or more notes played together at the same time.
See?
Musical notation is really very simple.
I don't think I got all that.
I'm happy to help you until you get the hang of it.
We could even work on some duets.
We could sing harmony, or I could accompany you on the piano.
I think you're overestimating my singing ability, but I'm willing to give it a try.
At least I think I can stay on pitch.
I just don't want to embarrass myself too much.
I think you're overestimating the quality of our community choir.
This dialogue introduces us to a lot of music-related vocabulary.
We begin by Mike saying to Grace, You have a great voice.
You should join our choir.
A choir, C-H-O-I-R, is a group of people who sing together.
You can have a choir of 10 people.
You could have a choir of 100 people.
Grace says, I don't know anything about music.
I can't even read music.
To read music means to be able to understand written music, music on a piece of paper, and Convert that, if you will, into actual sound, either by singing or by playing an instrument.
Or you can just read music to figure out what something might sound like.
Mike says it's not that hard.
It's not very difficult.
I could teach you.
Look, this is a piece we're working on right now.
A piece, P-I-E-C-E, of music is one song, one composition, one thing that you are going to sing.
A piece of music could be something you also play with a musical instrument, or both singing and musical instruments.
The word piece is used in a lot of different areas of art.
We can talk about a piece of art, meaning a painting or a sculpture or anything that you would classify as art.
Mike says he can teach Grace how to read music.
He gives her a piece of paper and Grace says, what's that weird thing at the beginning?
Mike says that's the clef.
A clef C-L-E-F is a musical term, as are most of the terms we're going to be using in this dialogue.
A clef is a written symbol that indicates the meaning of other symbols on the page of written music.
There is normally either a treble clef, as it's called, or a bass clef.
The treble, T-R-E-B-L-E clef, is sometimes also called the G clef, I guess.
And the bass clef is sometimes called the F clef.
However, I'm not a musician.
I'm just reading this from a piece of paper because I don't know that much about music, but our wonderful script writer does, so she's helping me with this.
Mike says that's the clef, the little symbol at the beginning of the piece of music as it's written down on a piece of paper.
Mike says, the clef tells you which note each line and the space on the staff represents.
In written music, there are lines and then there are spaces in between the lines.
I believe there are typically five lines, five black lines.
And then you have spaces in between the lines.
The clef tells you which notes go on which lines or which spaces.
Mike talks about the spaces on the staff, S-T-A-F-F.
The staff is what we call those five lines horizontal parallel lines that we write the musical notes on or that we use to indicate which musical notes you're supposed to sing or play.
A note, N-O-T-E, is a musical sound.
Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do.
I don't know if that was actually the correct musical notes.
In English, I'm not sure about other languages, but I believe it is probably the same.
We have words that we use to represent each note.
Notes when written on a staff usually consist of round circles.
Sometimes the circles are empty, sometimes they're blackened in.
The circles often have a line attached to them going up or down.
And the lines themselves often have other small lines that go off of the larger line.
That's how we write notes and, depending on what the circle looks like and how many lines you have, you indicate different kinds of notes.
However, the sound of the note is indicated by where it is on the staff.
If it's on the top of the staff, it's higher than it is if it were on the bottom of the staff.
Grace says, OK, what about these numbers?
Mike says that's the time signature.
The time signature are two numbers, one on top of the other, on a musical staff, that are used to show how many beats are in each group of notes.
That's the top number.
And which note gets the beat.
That's the bottom number.
For example, if you see a 4 and then another 4 underneath it, that would be a 4 over 4 time signature.
There are four beats per section of music.
That little section is usually called a measure.
And in a 4-4 time signature, the quarter note gets the beat.
If it were 3 over 4, then there would only be three beats in the measure.
A beat is a evenly spaced rhythmic sound in music.
That's the technical definition, I guess.
The beat is usually indicated in a rock band, for example, by either the drum or the bass guitar.
In certain kinds of dances where people dance to the music, you will see people counting the beat.
For example, if you are dancing the waltz and it had a beat of 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3, people will actually count that to make sure that they are dancing correctly.
That 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 that you are hearing in the music is the beat.
Mike says that the time signature tells you how many beats are in each measure.
Measure, remember, is a small group of notes that has the same number of beats.
When you look at a musical staff, measures are separated by a vertical line, a line that goes up and down.
Mike says that the time signature tells you how many beats are in each measure and what kind of note gets one beat.
This little number above there gives you the tempo.
The tempo, T-E-M-P-O, is sort of like the speed of the song.
It's how many beats per minute are in the piece of music.
Something that has a very fast tempo goes very quickly.
What we call a fast song goes by quickly.
What we call a slow song goes or seems to go more slowly.
Grace says, hmm, that's kind of complicated.
Why are all these notes stacked on top of each other?
To stack, S-T-A-C-K, means to put one thing on top of another.
Grace wants to know why the musical notes on the staff are stacked one on top of the other.
Mike says that's to indicate a chord.
A chord, C-H-O-R-D, is a group of two or more notes that are played at the same time.
If you are singing, you can't sing a chord by yourself, technically.
There would have to be other people singing with you.
Some musical instruments, such as a piano, can play a chord, because you can play more than one note at a time.
Mike says, see, musical notation is very simple.
Musical notation is just another word for written music, the way that we typically write music down on a piece of paper.
Grace says I don't think I got all that meaning.
I don't think I understood everything you just explained to me.
Maybe Grace isn't too smart.
Maybe she shouldn't be singing.
Well, let's continue here.
Mike says, I'm happy to help you until you get the hang of it.
To get the hang of something is to get used to something.
We could even work on some duets.
A duet, D-U-E-T, is when two people sing together.
Due is Italian for two.
I'm not sure if that's where duet comes from, probably.
A lot of the words we use in music with our musical notation are in Italian.
Mike says we could sing harmony or I can accompany you on the piano.
To be in harmony means to have two or more notes played at the same time that sound good together.
Accompany means to play a musical instrument while another person sings.
So I'm playing the piano and you're singing.
I'm accompanying your singing.
Grace says, I think you're overestimating my singing ability.
To estimate means to guess.
To overestimate means to have a higher opinion of something than than it deserves, or to think that something is greater than it actually is.
The opposite of overestimate is underestimate.
To underestimate means to think something is less important or not as good as what it in fact is.
Grace says, I'm willing to give it a try.
I'm willing to try it.
At least I think I can stay on pitch.
To be on pitch, P-I-T-C-H, means the same as to be in tune.
When you sing a note the way it's supposed to be sung not too high, which is what we would call sharp, or too low, which is what we would call flat.
I am rarely...
Grace says, I just don't want to embarrass myself too much.
Mike says, I think you're overestimating the quality of our community choir.
Mike is saying that the choir really isn't very good, and so even if Grace isn't perfect, she'll be just fine.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
You have a great voice.
You should join our choir.
I don't know anything about music.
I can't even read music.
It's not that hard.
I could teach you.
Look, this is a piece we're working on right now.
What's that weird thing at the beginning?
That's the clef.
It tells you which note each line in space on the staff represents.
Okay.
What about these numbers?
That's the time signature.
It tells you how many beats are in each measure and what kind of note gets one beat.
This little number above there gives you the tempo.
Hmm.
That's kind of complicated.
Why are all of these notes stacked on top of each other?
That's to indicate a chord with two or more notes played together at the same time.
See?
Musical notation is really very simple.
I don't think I got all that.
I'm happy to help you until you get the hang of it.
We could even work on some duets.
We could sing harmony, or I can accompany you on the piano.
I think you're overestimating my singing ability, but I'm willing to give it a try.
At least I think I can stay on pitch.
I just don't want to embarrass myself too much.
I think you're overestimating the quality of our community choir.
I'm not overestimating our scriptwriter when I say she's the best podcast scriptwriter on the Internet.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2013 by the Center for Educational Development.
