Daily Dose of English 173
The Piano
Daily Dose of English 173
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm really glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about the piano, which is one of my favorite instruments in the world. The piano has become a very well-known and famous instrument in the world. It has absolutely spread. It's probably recognizable to most people, either as a keyboard or a piano, or I guess whatever the local term for the instrument is, but it's one of those instruments that has had very, very wide spread adoption. because of the influence of a lot of Western music. It's also similar to a lot of other kinds of instruments. It looks a lot like a marimba and other piano-like instruments. I want to talk a little bit about it today because I really like the piano. I grew up learning how to play the piano. It's fairly common in the US for, I guess like middle-class kids, so kids sort of like grew up like I did, to go to music lessons. Sometimes it's for like a year or two, but sometimes it's a lot longer depending on their interests and their talent, that sort of thing. I have friends that never went to music lessons. I have friends that went to music lessons way longer than I did. There's a pretty big range, but it's a relatively common thing for people to have taken at least a year or so of lessons in some instrument. And I took primarily the piano. I played lots of different instruments growing up, but the one that I did the most time at and was most interested in was the piano, I think, overall, because I think it's a really cool instrument. I really like how, yes, they're very big and large, but that's, I think, why I like them. They not only have an interesting sound, but they have a very, a cool layout, I think, where they essentially dedicate one string per sound. And so that's why you get this very large instrument where every single key on the keyboard or on the piano is a different, is sort of a different single individual instrument. And if you've ever looked inside of a piano, you'll see that there's these little hammers that hit strings inside the piano. They're literally just hitting these strings and making the sound on one single string. And I think that's really cool because with something like a guitar or a ukulele or even like a trombone or a trumpet, you can only create a certain number of sounds based on your number of strings that you have to manipulate them. Sometimes you have to make decisions about what you can and can't play. Right, some instruments cannot play two specific sounds at the same time because they physically can't, right? So like a trumpet, I think you can only play one sound at a time. I think, I'm pretty sure. Yes, trumpets sound really cool in their own respect, but there's a limit to what you can do with a trumpet. But with a piano, you can play up to 10 different sounds at once. You have 10 fingers and you can play 10 different sounds. Usually it's more like six, like five or six is a lot more common than 10, but you could. And you can even play with two people on the same instrument, which I think is also really cool. There's lots of duet pianists who play together on one instrument and it sounds really good. And I think that's really cool because not a lot of instruments are like that. Yes, it comes at the size thing, right? They're huge. Having a piano in your house is a decision, right? You can't just hang an instrument, even like a trumpet or a saxophone, those fit in a case that you can fit in a closet, right? Somebody could just not know that you own a saxophone, even if you've known them for 10 years, right? You could always have your saxophone in the closet and they could just never know. But with a piano, you can't really hide it unless you make a spot to hide it in that's very large. I totally understand that. They're also quite expensive. Keyboards are a lot more affordable, but they sound not as interesting. We'll get to that in a second. But I think that's part of the reason they're really interesting to me is the fact that they're such a big, instrument that is difficult to move into. Yeah, I don't know. It's just cool. Sort of like a drum set, right? A drum set is also another big instrument that takes a good amount of setup. They're pretty obvious. They look really cool. They have a lot of parts going on. Drum sets are sort of similar. They're even more customizable, which is nice, but I never really was a big drummer. I was always more of a pianist, which is the word for a person who plays the piano, is a pianist. It does sound like a funny word, it is goofy, but that's the word. I grew up playing the piano, like I said, I learned relatively simple stuff, but I didn't really follow through with it because at that point I wasn't disciplined enough or interested enough in a formal music study. And I think a part of that was actually because I was pretty good without practicing, just relying on my ear, my memory, muscle memory, that sort of thing. And I never really got good at reading music. I'm very, very slow at reading music. Um, which is something that I'm a little sad about. I wish that I was better at it. I've met people that, that can read music. Um, and from what I've and like are really very talented musicians or sorry, they're very good musicians, but a lot of the times is something that I've. That that I've learned is that a lot of the, the best musicians are not the most talented inherently, but have, but we're really interested in it. They practice a ton and they wanted to be good. Right. The people that are just naturally talented generally will be like, Oh yeah, it's already easy. Uh, just do it for fun. Right. And they don't really, really dedicate themselves to it. That's not always true. Uh, but I, from people that I've met in real life, it's a lot more common for somebody to be really dedicated than talented. So if you want to learn an instrument, even if you're an adult and you don't think you're very good at it, you can do it. It just takes a little bit of practice. Um, and they are hard. Learning an instrument is hard. I will say that. Going into types of pianos, there's lots of different kinds of pianos out there. The big ones that you might see of like traditional pianos are grand pianos and stand-up pianos or upright pianos. Grand pianos are the ones that are very large. They lay flat. So all of the strings go away from you Those are the ones that you'll see in big concert halls. They're usually very expensive right ten or twenty or thirty thousand dollars is Relatively normal for a grand piano They are beautiful usually they're very large made of wood they often they're very heavy I would I would love a grand piano in the future But I've never owned one. I've played them. They're often in auditoriums or schools or whatever, often end up with a grand piano. But upright pianos are a lot more common because they're smaller, they're cheaper, they're more portable, lots of reasons. And those are called upright because the strings are upright in the piano. They're actually a lot more complicated because you have to fit a lot more stuff in a smaller space, which makes them really cool to look inside. They're really compact. And they have a slightly more muted tone, like a grand piano sounds big and open and grand, but an upright piano is a lot more contained, I guess, because it's a smaller physical object. But I really like that. I especially like these sort of old, what you might hear of like honky-tonk pianos that have like a pretty different sound. It's a different string type. I love that sound. The sort of ragtime, ding-dong-dong sound, which is different from like another grand piano. I'm not going to sing it because I can't, but look up like old-timey piano or something like that and you'll hear something. This episode is going really fast. I haven't talked about what I want to talk about. Piano, grand pianos, upright pianos. Oh yeah, my family has an upright piano. And I don't know if I've mentioned on this podcast, but that is one of the few things that I want. I told my parents, hey, there's two things in your house that I want to have when you're done with them. One of them is the piano that I learned how to play piano on. I would love to fix it up a little bit. It's a little bit broken. It's a little bit old, but it's great. It's a totally functional piano. It's really nice. That's thing number one. And thing number two is this giant map of Oregon State that they have. It's beautiful, it's huge. I think I've talked about this, but it's just, it's so beautiful and I really want it. But those are the only two things. Yeah, that's all that I really have gotten to. I'm actually going to put on the list here. I wanna talk about, um, my favorite style of piano music, which is called ragtime. So we'll talk about that in like a week or two, because I really want to talk about that and I didn't get to it today, but that is going to be it for today. That is a 10 minute episode of a daily dose of English. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something. And if you know how to play an instrument or played the piano in the past, let me know, let me know down in the comments below. I'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.