The Art of Listening to and Appreciating Different Styles of Music

[Music]

today i’m going to share with you some

of my insight into appreciating music

maybe you’ll hear things that you didn’t

before

you’ll also understand better the

creative process of the composer or the

arranger

music is the most accessible form of art

because music is sound and sound is

all around us the basic elements rhythm

beat pitch maybe you’ve heard of them

maybe you haven’t

i’ll explain a little bit so you

understand as we go along

uh take for example the way you walk

right when you walk you walk at a steady

pace

you don’t take three quick steps and two

slow steps

so that steadiness that becomes the beat

you don’t really hear it in music

but that’s a steady pulse

the rhythm is like speaking it’s the

words that you say

it’s the sounds of the words the space

between those sounds

like the word rainbow or the word

chocolate or the word rain they all have

their own rhythm to it

let’s try that together let’s put beat

and rhythm together

this is the beat and the rhythm is going

to fall over the beat

peanuts and walnuts and hazel

nuts almonds and all other kinds

of nuts so there we go we have beat

and rhythm music really

expresses our emotions right so we use

music for celebrating when we’re happy

when we’re joyous

sometimes we use music to unwind perhaps

you could be driving home from work

completely tired and you

turn on the radio we can even use music

when we’re sad just to unwind and listen

to something that connects with us

and that’s because the lyrics and the

melody they come together

to express that emotion and all the

other things around that lyric and

melody

like the instruments or the genre of

music

enhance this experience

some of you might have heard this famous

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song

right this is the famous song favorite

things from the sound of music

most of you remember maria von trapp

singing it to those little kids

here the rhythm and the lyrics are very

straightforward

raindrops and roses and whiskers

on kittens it’s quite straightforward

it’s set in a classical musical theater

genre

let’s change the instrument a little bit

we have shown ramos

who’s going to play this on the trombone

[Music]

and off we can hear that the rhythm of

the notes has changed

he’s changed it from a straightforward

pattern where we have tattata

he’s changed it to

so it’s syncopated it’s off the beat

this brand new setting changes the way

we hear the music changes the

the genre of the music and now the

instruments that

are with are playing with the trombone

are gonna enhance this experience

and here we have a jazz setting of a

classical musical theater song

so one of the reasons why i love jazz

music

you know i was teaching a class a couple

of years ago and i asked i asked the

kids

what what makes jazz music different

from other genres of music

and this one kid says i know i know and

i asked him what and he says

jazz music has swag so there we go

that’s why i love jazz music

[Music]

wow

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i listen to all kinds of music mostly

pop and jazz but also choral music i was

part of a choir

now when you hear the word choral music

a lot of you only associate choral music

with

church music or classical music

but choral music can be a lot of

different things it can be

a choral arrangement of a pop song or it

can be an

avant-garde jazz arrangement so we’re

going to talk about choral music for a

minute

but before i do that i want to explain

to you the next

piece that we’re going to discuss in

2004

our group was invited to sing at a at an

international festival in cologne

germany

where we had to feature sacred choral

music from our country

now indian music is not coral in nature

it it’s not harmonic in nature and what

i mean by that

is the instruments that are used in

indian music

are primarily melodic you have the sitar

that plays a beautiful melody or you

have a singer

or you have

a tanpura right and then you have

percussion

that supports that so you have the dhol

or you have the tabla and

together they don’t form any harmonic

structure they form a melodic and a

rhythmic structure so

taking an indian melody and setting it

to choral music was a very new

experience for us

so we have this beautiful indian melody

the sufi style we’re just gonna have a

listen to it right now

right off the bat we can hear the

striking melody

that the boys are singing

your cry to god and that’s so

beautifully expressed

through the sufi melody as we

as we go through the piece we hear how

the melody

along with the harmony of the other

voices come together

now what are the other voices in a choir

we have the boys

that they and they sing the tenor and

bass voice and then we have the ladies

who make up the soprano and alto voices

so the the men that were singing were

the tenors

and now we hear how the the choir

supports the movement of this piece

so when we go to the next line terry

marziho

okay we hear how it sort of sounds like

the majestic

sound of the brass instruments the brass

instruments like the trumpet

or the trombone and they are announcing

the kingdom

so we hear this beautiful harmony

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right and you can almost imagine the

brass going

right the harmony is also

western influenced so that’s that

doesn’t exist in indian music

once we reach the top the the high point

of this melody

we come back to earth just as the lyrics

bring us back to earth

with the the lyrics bring us back down

to earth

on earth may it arrive and now the

melody also comes back down to earth

with the harmony let’s have a listen to

these two phrases

so here we have two very different ideas

a sufi melody which is the traditional

islamic devotional music and you have

the western harmonies coming together

to create a new genre

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now

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we changed the instrument to maybe a

piano

and we think about arranging a song just

for piano

right it changes our perspective a

little bit

so now we don’t have the other

instruments supporting the melody

but you’ve got to do that within the

melody itself so let’s

take this beautiful melody

[Music]

i’m sure most of you recognize it this

is somewhere over the rainbow

and you have this beautiful open sound

in the melody

in between that we can color it with

some chords or the harmony

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now the beauty about playing a piano is

that it kind of condenses what the other

instruments can do so it condenses what

you’d hear

in a band or in an orchestra even the

choir

and you have these beautiful moving

lines what do i mean by moving lines you

hear the moving lines

in between so let’s hear that once

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can you hear that

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and now we have some other moving lines

now we keep the we try to keep the the

harmony

really basic here and then we repeat it

the second time when we play the melody

again repetition is important

because it creates a familiar pattern we

don’t want to

overwhelm the listener right off the bat

now we come to the middle of the song

where we have these repeated notes

right and now we can color it in with

some cords

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now the chords not only add color but

they add

movement because the notes are staying

where they are

and the harmony moves up

and further up

and when we come back to the melody a

third time

we can slightly change it because we’ve

established a strong melody

in the beginning so we can change it

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and there you have it you have three

different ways of appreciating music

i hope the things that i’ve shared with

you really inspire you

to listen to music in a different way

maybe appreciate something that you

didn’t before

perhaps you’ll appreciate a genre of

music that you overlooked

music doesn’t have to be just one thing

it doesn’t have to have just one answer

uh when you maybe if you want to compose

or arrange

and when you approach a project perhaps

you think of

the instruments differently or the

genres of music differently

and always remember art takes time it

cannot be rushed

thank you