Unit 9

Part Two: Listening 1

(Bill, Howard, and Lisa are talking about the background music.)

Part I

Bill: What are you working on now?

H: I’ve just finished a piece of background music.

Lisa: Background music? Oh, like the music they’re playing here now.

H: Yes. You hear it everywhere, in restaurants, airports, supermarkets, department stores...

B: In banks, too. I noticed it while we were at the bank today.

L: Did you? I didn’t.

H: You are not supposed to notice it. It’s just there, in the background. It’s supposed to influence your attitudes, and put you in the right mood.

L: I’m not sure I like the idea.

H: Well, it seems to work. Companies pay millions of dollars every year for background music. It’s supposed to give a better feeling about yourself and the people around you. Factories use it a lot. It makes the workers happy, and they work better that way. In one factory, music increased production by 4.5 percent.

Bill: I should think they’d get tired of hearing music all day.

H: They don’t though. One fellow in San Francisco told me, “If the music stops, somebody always runs to the telephone to complain.”

L: Now that I think about it, I can’t remember when there wasn’t background music in restaurants and stores.

H: That shows how young you are. Actually, it all started during World War II when some factories had their own orchestras to keep worker happy and calm. Now, of course, the music is piped in by a machine, and different kinds of music are played at different times during the day. They play faster music at 10 in the morning than at 8, for instance, because workers tend to be slower then.

 

Part II.

B: What about restaurants? Do they play the same music for dinner and lunch?

H: I don’t know about that, but I do know that hamburger places play fast music. When they started playing faster music, they found that a customer spent only seventeen minutes eating. The time was 22 minutes before that.

L: So they have more people coming in and out to by hamburgers.

H: Exactly. And that’s good for business. You can see why music has become so popular. In Los Angels, for instance, 30 different companies are selling background music services.

L: I still think there’s something about it that I don’t quite like.

H: I know what you mean, but lots of people wouldn’t agree with you. The Xerox Corporation in Rochester, N.Y., spends more than $80,000 a year for background music. Prisons use it, and farmers use it to keep their cattle calm. It’s even supposed to have an effect on plants.

Listening II

More and more doctors are operating to music. They way it eases their minds.

One doctor in Chicago says classical music is the only kind that does not interfere while he is operating. But in another Chicago operating room, the British rock group Pink Floyd can be heard. And in Washington, at least one doctor operates to the sound the Beatles.

Researchers from the State University of New York at Buffalo did a study that seems to confirm that music helps reduce tension in doctors. They gave 50 male doctors difficult mathematical kinds of tests.

The doctors did the test while listening to music they themselves had chosen. They did a similar test while listening to music that was chosen for them. They were tested a third time with no music at all. Each time, a machine measured their heart rate and blood pressure.

The doctors worked most quickly and calmly when listening to the music they themselves had chosen. They did the worst with no music at all.

What kinds of music did the doctors choose? Mostly classical. But some chose instrumental jazz pieces or Irish folk music.

There probably is one piece of music that should never be played during an operation: Brahm’s “lullaby”. You do not want your doctor to go to sleep while operating, do you?

 

Part Three

Practice One

The Beatles were probably the most important pop and rock group of all time. They were together for only eight years, but their influence has lasted much longer.

The Beatles came from Liverpool, England. They started playing together in 1962, although Paul McCartney and John Lennon played together in another group. They started by playing rock ‘n’ roll songs, but they quickly developed their own style. By 1963, they had become Britain’s top rock groups. A year later they toured the United States, where they had attracted millions of fans.

By the time the Beatles broke up in 1970, they had changed the culture of rock and pop music. They introduced new sounds and rhythms, and they experimented with different types of musical instruments. They recorded hundreds of songs and they sold millions and millions of records. They made money, films and won many awards for their music.

Today, the Beatles’ songs are still very famous all over the world.

 

Practice Two

(Denis is interviewing Stephanie, a music teacher.)

D: Which do you think is the easiest instrument for people to learn to play?

S: It is difficult to answer that question because learning to play an instrument is one thing, and learning to play it well is another. But I think the guitar is the easiest to learn. It’s one of the easiest to carry, and that’s important for a musician.

D: And the second?

S: My second choice is probably the most popular instrument, and I think it’s the most satisfying, too, because you can make more progress at the beginning. That’s the piano.

D: So you think playing the piano’s more difficult than playing the guitar.

S: yes, because, well, your left hand has to work as hard as your right and both hands have to make notes. With the guitar, you make the notes with the left hand, and the right just picks the strings.

D: Is playing a woodwind or brass instrument very difficult? It looks quite easy.

S: I think the clarinet and the trumpet are the easiest to learn. Finding the notes is quite easy and breathing isn’t a serious problem. But I find all the wind instruments less satisfying for people to play, because you can’t do much alone. You have to play with others.

D: And which do you think is the most difficult instrument to play?

S: No doubt at all, the violin. And I think it’s the most difficult because both hands have to work, but they have to do different jobs. I mean, the left had makes the notes on the strings, and it’s harder to find the notes the on the guitar because the strings are shorter. The right had has to manage the bow, and bowing well is an art. Finally, the most difficult thing about it, I find, is holding the instrument under your chin. It’s not a natural position to adopt.

Practice Three

(Four people, Steve, Connie, Diane and Martin, are giving their opinions about their favorite musicians before attending an international concert.)

Steve: Oh, no doubt about it. My favorite’s Bruce Springsteen. He’s the best there is. I think he’s more direct, he communicates better than the others. It’s not that the others are bad, but he’s better. In a way his kind of rock music’s more old-fashioned than, er, Sting’s, say, but for me it’s more exciting. And the messages in his songs are simpler. They’re easier to understand than Sting’s or Peter Gabriel’s, so I can relate to them better.

Connie: The singer I want to hear most is Peter Gabriel. He’s not really one of my favorite singers—I meant I don’t think he’s as exciting as Bruce Springsteen, for instance—but his latest songs, these African songs with African rhythms, well, they’re more musical than pop songs usually are. And I think al these singers are sincere about the human rights movement, but he feels more deeply about it than the others.

Diane: Oh, I think Sting and his band are the best. Sting’s better now with is new band than during his time with the Police. He seems more natural and I think he enjoys playing more. And he’s a much better songwriter now. The one I like most in the band is the sax-player, Branford Marsalis. He plays brilliantly, but the best thing about him is his sense of humor. He really makes me laugh.

Martin: To tell you the truth. I’m looking forward to hearing Youssou N’dour. I like Peter Gabriel’s African songs, but he’s an Englishman, not an African, so it’s not the same as the real thing. I mean, real African music is different from reggae and rock, because it’s more rhythmic than reggae, but not as heave as rock. The rhythms are very unusual, too, and more sophisticated than people think.

Practice Four

It has long been known that Cellist Yo-Yo Ma possesses astonishing musical talent. By age seven he had already played Stern and Pablo Casals. Later he went to Juilliard and on to Harvard, where he studies international cultures. Soon he tasted stardom, giving concerts around the world.

But he tells of a humbling experience while in Nambia, where he went to observe trance dances and musical rituals of the people. At the end of his stay he produced a cello and offered them a performance of his own. “They said, “Stop. Don’t play. We went to play for you.’” Ma remembers with a laugh. “I think I was too self-important to bring my cello. They didn’t give a damn.”

His story is one of a star realizing that not everyone knows or cares who he is. “To be a good performer, you have to have a very strong ego,” he says, “But to be a really good performer, you have to make sure that your ego is not the center. To play Beethoven, you have to figure out who he was, and how that’s encoded in the music. And then you have to realize you are not Beethoven.”

 

Part Four

Section 1

Some people called John Lennon the “thinking man’s Beatle”. He was serious and creative, and many young people of the 1960s and 1970s thought he spoke for them.

Lennon was born on October 9,1940, in Liverpool, England. During his childhood he listened to the music of rock ‘n’ roll singer like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard. At 15, when he was in an art school, Lennon started his first band, the Quarrymen. The band included Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Pete Best, a drummer.

The Quarrymen later changed their name to the Silver Beatles and then the Beatles. Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as drummer. Between 1958 and 1962 the group played in nightclubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, West Germany. Then the Beatles made a record called “I wanna Hold Your Hand” can changed the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

Many people think that Lennon was the most important singer and songwriter of the Beatles. In general, his songs are sensitive and intelligent, and they still influence today’s popular musicians.

On December 8,1980, a confused young man shot John Lennon outside his apartment building in New York city. A few days later, thousands of people gathered in New York’s Central Park to remember him. For them, and for many other people in the world, he was someone very special.

Section II

Rock began in the U.S. a. in the early 1950s. At that time, “rhythm and blues” music was very popular with black Americans. “R&B” was a mixture of black religious music and jazz. It had strong rhythms that you could dance to and simple, fast lyrics.

Noticing the success of R&B music, white musicians started to copy the same style. By the mid 1950s, this new white R&B music, called “rock ‘n’ roll’, had become very popular. Singers like Elvis Presley and Bill Haley attracted millions of teenage fans. Their music was fast and loud. Many older people thought that rock ‘n’ roll was very dangerous.

Rock music has continued to change and develop. It has combined with music from different parts of the world. Today, there are hundreds of different types of rock music, and almost every country has its own form of rock. There are “heave metal” which is extremely loud with hard rhythms, ‘raggae’ from Jamaica that combines rock with jazz and Latin rhythms, ‘rap’ that has developed on the streets of New York, “disco”, a type of soft rock music for dancing, “Afro-rock” that combines rock with African rhythms, “Mex-rock”, which combines rock with traditional Mexican melodies…. and many, many more.