Free English Class! Topic: Music! 🎹🎺🎵🎸 (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about music.

Music is a fun thing that all of us enjoy in life. Maybe you

enjoy listening to music. Maybe you enjoy singing. Maybe you

play a musical instrument. And I'm sure there's a certain type

of music. There's a certain genre that you really really

like. For me it would be rock music. But I thought it would

be a good idea today to do a lesson about music to teach you

some of the words and phrases that we use in English when we

talk about the music that we listen to. Uh the music that we

enjoy. The music that is all around us. The thing that is

central to music is something called a song. Songs are

ancient things. They are like poems but when you say them

your voice goes up and down using different musical notes.

So it's really cool when you are able to sing a song many of

you probably have sung your national anthem. So when you

sing a song. You use the verb to sing. The past tense is

sung. You could say last week I sang a song. Oh wait I just

changed it didn't I? He will sing I sing. I sung a song. I

sang a song. Interesting. I better research that verb. But

anyways a song is something that someone has written.

Something that someone has invented that all of us can use

to sing and enjoy. Some words sometime you can just whistle a

song as well if you don't know the words. Or you can hum

along. A song is usually composed if it has lyrics if it

has words. It usually has a section called a verse. And it

has a section called a chorus. The verse is part of the song

that tells a little bit of the story. And then the chorus is

usually a part that's repeated sometimes between each verse.

So you might say verse one of the song and then you will sing

the chorus and then you might sing verse two and then the

chorus. There's also something called a bridge. Sometimes a

song will have a bridge between the chorus and the verse or

between the verse and the chorus. But generally a basic

song usually has about three or four verses and then a chorus

that people sing in between. Um yes I could see the internet

has acted wonky. Hopefully things come back to normal in

just a bit for you. So when you sing a song when the lead

singer in a band sings a song. They sing the melody. The

melody is the part of the song where you sing the words to.

There are probably many other notes being played during the

song. But when you sing a song you usually sing the melody.

There might be also a drum or a piano or some other instrument

playing other parts to the song that might be in harmony to the

melody. Um but generally when you sing a song you are singing

the melody. We also have the English word tune. And we use

the word tune in a funny way. You could say I listen to some

tunes in my car the other day. Or I'm going to put in my ear

earbuds and listen to some tunes while I go for a run. We

also use it to talk about when you make an instrument play the

correct notes. You can tune a guitar before you play it. So

that when you play each string it plays the proper frequency.

The proper note. So tune has a number of different uses. The

informal kind of slang use of it is just another word for

song. You know he sang a lovely tune the other day while I was

working with him. Or I'm going to listen to some tunes. We

also call them tracks. Sometimes you'll a track list

or a playlist. Uh you might hear on the radio that Adele

has a has a new track out right now. Um so that just means

song. I think track has been used for a very long time since

the days of when people had records when there were grooves

in the record and that was the track. So a track is just

another word for song. So music is composed of notes. So all

music is composed of notes. There are quarter notes, whole

notes, eighth notes and those determine the length of the

note and where it appears on the staff is the frequency or

the note that gets played. Someone who writes a song is

called a composer or a songwriter. So you might know

someone who likes to sit down occasionally and put notes on a

page. They maybe might win to themselves or sit at a piano

playing some notes and then they'll put them on the page.

We would call that person a composer or a songwriter. Um if

someone is a songwriter and they also sing we might call

them a singer songwriter. So a composer or a songwriter is

someone who writes songs. Notice we use the verb to write

when we talk about songs. So when you create a song the verb

we use most often is the verb to Right. Um he likes to write

songs. She likes to write songs. Someone who plays an

instrument is called a musician. This person is

playing a guitar. So we could also call him a guitarist. But

generally when you talk about someone who can play one or two

or more instruments we refer to them as musicians. Okay so you

might be a musician. You might play one or two instruments.

You might be in a band with some other musicians. So

musician is the general term for anyone who can play a

musical instrument. Singer is the general term for someone

who sings. Not everyone can sing. I am not a very good

singer. I have trouble singing the correct notes. I'm always

out of tune. So there's the word tune again. When I sing

what should be a C note it probably sounds a little bit

too high or low. I have trouble singing in tune. But a person

who sings is called a singer. We sometimes call singers

artists as well. Usually if someone writes songs is able to

play instruments and is able to sing. If they can do all of

those things we will often refer to them as an artist

because they've mastered so many parts of the music making

process. So someone like Ed Sheeran you might hear him

refer to as an artist. That doesn't mean he paints. That

doesn't mean that he gets out paint and he makes paintings.

We use the word artist sometimes to refer to people

who also create music perform music, write music, and are

able to sing and play instruments. If you go to a

club or if you go to a bar or if you go to a disco tech I

don't know if those exist anymore. There will most likely

be a DJ. This is a short version for disc jockey. A disc

jockey is someone who plays music so that people can dance.

So you'll see here this disc jockey. This DJ is playing some

tunes. He's playing some tracks for people. Those tracks or

tunes probably have a really good beat so that people can

really start to move. So if you play something that thing is

called a musical instrument. There are musical instruments

of all different shapes and sizes. Um anything that humans

have been able to use to make sounds with they've usually

created a musical instrument. So if they could make sounds by

blowing through a stick they made musical instruments. If

you could make a sound by plucking a string we've made

that into a musical instrument. Um if you are really good at

playing music. If you are a good singer we say that you

have talent. Or we say that you are talented. So I have friends

who are very talented. They not only know how to play guitar.

They're really good guitarists. They are really good at playing

guitar. They are talented. I know at school sometimes I will

have a student in my class who's very talented. Who's

someone who's a good singer. They are very talented. They

have a lot of talent. If you are starting out playing an

instrument you usually take lessons just like you're taking

English lessons if you wanted to learn to play the guitar.

You would take guitar lessons. The way we talk about lessons

in English is we just put the instrument name in front. So

you can take drum lessons. You can take guitar lessons. You

can take flute lessons. You can take try to think of another

musical instrument. trumpet lessons. So you simply say the

name of the instrument and then the Word lesson. And if you are

taking lessons you need to practice a lot. Practice speaks

perfect. In fact learning English and learning to play an

instrument are very similar. If you want to be really good at

playing an instrument you need to practice a lot. If you want

to be really good at speaking English you need to practice a

lot. So practice is something you do everyday in order to get

better at playing that musical instrument. Usually after go to

a lesson your teacher will tell you please do this for practice

between now and next week's lesson. So practice is

something that you do in order to get better and better at

playing an instrument. A few of the more common instruments in

North America. I'll go through these somewhat quickly. We have

the acoustic guitar that is a guitar that does not plug into

an amplifier. It's simply a hollow piece of wood or other

material with strings and you can play it no matter where you

are. An electric guitar is a guitar that you plug into an

amplifier. It has definitely a different sound than an

acoustic guitar. Um and I think it's a little different to play

it as well. I think the neck is a little narrower on an

electric guitar. There's the piano which has keys. It has

white keys and black keys. Uh and when you learn play the

piano. Uh you learn to play with your right hand and then

you learn to play with your left hand and there's pedals on

the bottom too that do various things. There are drums which

some people find to be too loud. Sometimes when people

have children who are taking drum lessons they make them

practice in the garage or they make them practice in the

basement far away from other people because drums can be

quite loud. But drums are used to add so that the song a beat.

Um there's usually symbols on a drum set as well as a bass drum

and a a snare drum and people use that to basically create

the rhythm or the beat when the song is being played. If you

play any instrument you probably can be in a band. A

band doesn't have to be a rock band. If a band plays rock

music we call it a rock band. But when a group of people get

together and each person Plays a different instrument. Um and

if one of the people or a couple of the people sing we

call it a band. So here you see these people have formed a

band. That's the English word that we use will say oh my

nephew is forming a band. My nephew and some of his friends

have formed a band. Um and then usually a band will pick a

name. Sometimes it's a cool name. Sometimes it's a little

bit strange but a band is a group of people who play

different instruments together. And they form songs or they

record songs. You might play in an orchestra or you might go

see an orchestra when you go to an orchestra you'll notice that

people play older styles of instruments. They play things

like the violin. They play things like the cello. They

play things like the Tim Penny which is a kind of drum. The

orchestra usually plays classical music but sometimes

plays modern music as well. But you can see this orchestra the

people look a Little bit older than the people in the band.

There's a little bit more grey hair but that's not always true

with an orchestra but definitely young people tend to

form rock bands and I think older people play in things

like jazz quartets or orchestras. You might sing in a

choir or you might know someone who sings in a choir. A choir

is a group of people that get together and sing. They might

be accompanied by a piano or an organ or another instrument but

generally a choirs is a group of 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 or 50

or 100 people who all get together and learn songs and

sing songs so that they can perform them. So you'll see

here a choir is getting ready to perform. It's quite common

to go and see choirs perform around Christmas. There are

usually a lot of choirs that perform outdoors and at other

events during the Christmas season in North America. You

might go and see a musical. So a musical is a play where they

don't just act and have speaking parts. They also break

out into song during the play. And that's how we describe it.

So this is a play called Mamma Mia based on the songs of the

band Abba. So I called it a play but it's really a musical.

So when you go they act and then after a few minutes of

acting one of the characters in the play will break out into

song. And then they will do a song and then it will become a

play again and then they'll do a song and we would call that a

musical. Musicals are a lot of fun. Uh I've actually seen

Mamma Mia. I saw it in Toronto many many years ago with Jen.

It was pretty cool to go and see it.

So we also have what's called a soundtrack. So a soundtrack is

Um the music that you heard when you went to see a movie.

So if you went to see Guardians of the Galaxy which was a movie

that came out a few years ago it had a really cool soundtrack

the songs that you kind of heard in the background or

during big scenes in the movie you can buy all of those songs

either you know on iTunes or you could actually go to the

store and buy a CD still and we would call that a soundtrack.

You can't quite See it. Let's make this a bit bigger. But

here it says Guardians of the Galaxy original motion picture

soundtrack says that down there. I know it's a little

hard to read. Uh so a soundtrack is all of the songs

that you heard from a movie. So different movies have different

soundtracks. Sometimes movies have very popular soundtracks

and everyone likes the songs. Sometimes noone even remembers

the songs from the soundtrack.

Where am I here? Concert. So a concert is any kind of live

performance of music. There have not been very many

concerts lately in the world. Uh concerts were one of the

first things that got shut down. But now there are

concerts scheduled in Canada for the spring. So if you want

to go see a certain band you can go to a concert. I think

starting in April or May we will once again have concerts

in Canada. But concerts are fun. It's where a whole bunch

of people buy tickets. You buy a ticket for the concert and

you go and you sit or stand usually you stand if it's a

really good concert and you listen to music that is

performed live by a band. Concerts are super super fun to

go to. So I mentioned live performances. When you see a a

band played live. If someone says I'm going to see Ed

Sheeran live. It means you're going to a concert And they're

going to be up on a stage and you're going to see them.

You're going to be in a stadium or an arena. And you're going

to see a live performance. Sometimes restaurants or bars

will hire a band. And then they'll have a sign out front

that says live music Friday and Saturday or live music Saturday

night. And people enjoy live music. I don't have a slide for

karaoke. But people also enjoy singing karaoke. Sometimes

people will go to a restaurant or bar and they will sing

karaoke. That's where the song is played but there's no words

and you sing the words as you read them off the screen. When

you go to a live performance there is a stage. The stage is

the area at the front where the band will be. Uh so sometimes

people like to be close to the stage sometimes people like to

be very far away from the stage. If you're right in front

of the stage you have front row seats. If you are really far

back and really high up at the back we call it the nosebleed

section. I don't know why we call it that in English. But if

you are at the very very of a concert and really high up at

the back we call it the nosebleed section like oh you

saw Ed Sheeran yeah did you have seats close to the front

no we're in the nosebleed section. If you go to a park in

Canada some of our parks have what's called a bandshell or a

bandstand. This is a small outdoor building or it can be

kind of large that is built for the purpose of people

performing outside for people to perform live. So a band

shell bandstand is basically a stage. It's a raised platform

with a partial roof over top. So that if there's bad weather

the the band or the performers don't get wet. Uh there are

quite a few parks I was going to say near us the bigger

cities tend to have a bandshell or a bandstand. Um but yeah

there is definitely one in the town close to me to the south.

They have a bandshell bandstand. There's something

called the charts. So a song can be on the charts. Um the

most common chart is called the Billboard 100. That's a chart

in the United States where the company decides what songs are

the most popular. So right now you could say oh Adele has a

new song on the charts. Or Adele's song is number one on

the charts. So the charts simply refer to what song

people have listened to and downloaded and requested which

songs are the Most popular. Ranked in order from one to 10

or one to 100. So I do think right now on the charts I think

Adele has a hit song Easy On Me and I think right now Adele has

the number one song on the charts. She has a hit song. So

again the charts are the ranking of the songs that are

the most pop from most popular and then as you go down they're

a little bit less popular. And right now Adele has a number

one song. She has a hit song and it is number one on the

charts. We also have something called a greatest hits album or

just greatest hits. If you like the band Abba you can buy Abba

Gold which is a collection of their greatest hits. So as Abba

was releasing songs through the 70s and 80s. Many of those

songs were really high on the charts. Some probably even hit

number one. And so you would say that Abba had a lot of

hits. They had a lot of songs that were very very popular.

And they put them all together on one album and it's called

Abba Gold. So if you are an Abba fan if you really really

like Abba you most likely have this album somewhere. Abba

Gold. I'm going to ignore the phone. Okay. Um it's nothing

important and if it is I'm sure Jen will answer it. There are a

number of different genres. I used the word genre when I

started this lesson. There are a lot of different musical

genres. One genre is country music. Another genre is rock

music. We also call this rock and roll. Rock and roll. But

usually we just call it rock now. Rock music. So rock music

is probably one of the most popular genres in North

America. We also have classical which was mentioned earlier.

Classical music is usually played on instruments like

violins or flutes or obos. Um violins and obos and flutes

produce a really nice sound and orchestras usually play

classical music using those instruments. We have jazz. Jazz

is a type of music where the song has structure but as

people play the song they play around within the structure of

the song. Okay. So a jazz song will not I'm going to say a

jazz song is rarely the same every time it is played because

people take time to improvise and they play whatever they

feel like playing at certain points in the song. Jazz is a

very very cool type of music. I don't listen to a lot of jazz

but it is a cool type of music. A cool genre. We have rap of

course which is usually a beat with some sort of melody in the

background and then the person instead of singing usually

speaks the words they might actually sing a little bit as

they speak the words but generally a rap song is

characterized. A rap song generally has someone just

speaking the words to a beat. Rap is a very very popular type

of music. Very very popular genre. We have pop music. I

know Abba is an older band but right now pop music refers to

popular music. It's the music that you're most likely to hear

when you're at the mall or when you turn on the radio. It is

the most popular kind of music for that day. So we shorten it

of course to pop music. Uh Abba was a very very famous band in

the 70s and 80s and they are putting on a new show in London

starting later I think in 2022 where you can go and see Abba

but they're holograms that should be very very interesting

I think. So lyrics or words. I've mentioned this a few times

when a song has words that can be sung then we call those

lyrics or we call those words. Uh in French I think you call

them yes so the lyrics are written by a lyrics or the

words are written by a lyrics sometimes someone writes a song

and someone else writes the lyrics so maybe in a band one

person writes the music and another person writes the

lyrics and we would call them a lyrics a song often has a

rhythm or beat and it might change throughout the song

there might be a different tempo during the chorus or the

verse but Usually the rhythm or beat is played in a rock band

the drummer and bass guitarist usually keep the beat and the

bass guitarist and the rhythm guitarist keep the rhythm. What

beat and rhythm are somewhat simpler. It's how the notes are

organized. Um the tempo and speed at which they're played

together. Um sometimes I think about the days when I had

albums. So when I was very very young. My uncle gave my brother

and I all his rock albums. Albums by Bob Seager and Deep

Purple. We had a whole stack of albums and then we would take

them out of their sleeve and put them on my dad's record

player. And we would read the album cover. All of those words

and phrases I just used don't really exist in common English

too much anymore because everyone just listens to songs

on their iPhone or on their phone. But way back when album

covers used to be beautifully designed. And you would have

this big album that you could open up. We also call it a

record. So inside the be a vinyl record. I actually think

that was a really fun era. Sometimes the album cover or

the jacket as it was sometimes called would have all the

lyrics to the songs inside of it. So it was really fun to

play a record on a record player to drop the needle onto

the record and to kind of read the lyrics in the album cover

while you listen to it. Then we moved on to CDs or compact

discs. Many people still listen to music off of CDs. We still

have many many CDs in our house but we don't listen to the very

often because as I mentioned we have Amazon Music which is a

streaming music service and we use that to listen to music

most people though listen to music off of iTunes so they

will buy songs on iTunes they will have playlists on iTunes

of their favorite songs. They might have a playlist on their

phone on iTunes for when they work out. They might have a

playlist for when they do homework if they're a student.

They might have a playlist for when they go for a walk. But

definitely I would say the most common way to listen to music

right now is probably to use your phone and to listen to it

with something like iTunes. When someone sings by

themselves it's a solo. Okay. So you might have a band that

has more than one singer. And when the person starts to sing

by themselves and the instruments stop we say they're

singing a solo. Sometimes we would say a cappella that means

without instruments. But we Also have it where sometimes

during a performance the guitarist will play a guitar

solo. So the rest of the band will stop or they'll play a

little more quietly and the guitarist will have the light

on them and they will play really really a really really

cool part of the song and we call that a guitar solo.

Sometimes you'll have a drum solo as well. A drum solo would

be the same. It's when the rest of the band stops playing and

singing or play a little bit. And the featured musician for

that time is the drummer. So we would call that a drum song.

And when two people sing together we call it a duet.

There are some very very common or very famous duets in the

world that people have sung in the past. Um for some reason I

can't think of one right now. But I think Kenny Rogers and

Dolly Parton sing a duet. Um I think there is a very popular

duet Now I'm losing track. Sorry. Um but a duet is when

two people sing a song together.