Daily Dose of English 184
Ragtime Music
Daily Dose of English 184
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 glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about ragtime music. which is something that I briefly mentioned a while ago as one of my favorite genres of music in general and specifically for the piano. Because it's, I think it's only a piano style of music. I guess you could do it on other ones, other instruments, but there are some specific things that make it really interesting and sort of only really applicable to the piano. So first, a quick, I guess, just definition. Actually, let me look up ragtime music. That's ragtime. I did not spell that right. Okay, ragtime music. So it is on Wikipedia. It says that it is a music style that is from sort of the early 1900s, so from 1890s to 1910s, that sort of thing. And it was popularized in the early 20th century, so the early 1900s, by some composers like Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb. who are some well-known artists of the genre. It is known mostly for what's called a syncopated or ragged rhythm. So syncopated is something that is... so it's not like all exactly, how do I explain this? So syncopation is when things are timed together, but they're different, right? So one, two, one, two, it's hard to explain. So there's like this offbeat nature to it. So I think the best thing to explain is through like an example. And one of the most famous ragtime pieces of all time is The Entertainer, which if especially if you've been to the US, you've probably heard, but it's the ice cream song. And it was also used in the film The Sting, which is a pretty old movie at this point. But it's this do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. That song, if you've heard it. If you haven't, look it up. It is a good song. It's a fun song. But you can hear clearly this syncopation because there is this bass line and the other sound that are not quite exactly the same, right? So it's not like one, two, three, four, two, two, three, four, right? There's this sort of back and forth, right? So I can play parts of that song and your left hand is sort of bouncing Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right, there's sort of this back and forth with a lower note, usually one or two notes, and then a chord on the left hand, which you have this sort of back and forth on your left hand. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom. Something like that. And then your right hand is usually doing something that's not exactly in time with the left, which makes it hard, but also gives it that interesting syncopated sound. Um, that is the best I can, I can explain it because there's, I think you just have to listen to it if you don't play music. Um, because it is not the easiest thing to explain. Um, but that, that syncopation is also called ragged, sometimes like a ragged rhythm, which is where that sort of term rag time comes from. The timing of the song, the time is often what it's called in music is ragged, right? So rag time. Um, And that is generally where you get the name and the feeling and the vibe, because there's not a strict definition necessarily. It's usually more like, okay, it's this vibe, these kinds of musicians, that sort of thing. I really like it because it has a very... I almost want to say like happy sound to it, but also like vibrant sound. So there's a lot of like movement to it, and there's this really interesting just sort of back and forth that I really like. But then it's all within one instrument, right? I think, I actually don't know this for sure, but I think that a a really important part of ragtime is that it is just a piano, one person, one musician playing a song. However, it does sort of sound like a bit more. Oh, I'm actually seeing here that you can also play ragtime on a banjo. Um, but it does look like it is played mostly by one person. Um, and so that, that also gives it another really, uh, or I just said that yet that sort of unique, like it sounds like almost like a band playing. However, it is just the one person. Um, and not only that, do I just like the sound of it, but also the old pianos is usually played on, have a specific sound that I really like as well. And so you get a nice mix of like, uh, uh, an instrument, a version of an instrument that I like, plus sort of a sound that I like, and then add into the fact that it's a very difficult and technical thing to play. It's hard to do, but it also requires, um. precision and flow in a lot of ways. You can't just study your way to being a good ragtime musician. I mean honestly for a lot of music you can't just study your way to doing it, but for some things you can be a little bit more precise. I think even with like classical music there is a bit more softness to it, right? There's a lot of technical skill in classical pianists that can I guess basically do more interesting things can do more impressive things that are that often take more skill than it does like good vibes if that makes any sense. I might be just completely pulling stuff out of my ass, but that's what it sort of sounds like and feels like to me. Um, I, I don't remember when I first heard and learned Ragtime, because The Entertainer is such a famous song in the US. But I remember that it was one of my early things that I learned to play on the piano. Because I was in piano lessons since I was... Starting when I was pretty young, I must have been... what, like seven or eight? I have no idea, quite young. And I started to learn to play the piano. And one of the first songs that I tried to learn on my own was The Entertainer, was that song. And I remember really trying to learn it and kind of, I wasn't very good because I was so young, right? And I remember that my parents wanted to really help me keep going, give me some external motivation. And I remember specifically being offered $10 if I could learn the introduction to the song. And it was because it was $1 for every finger. And $10 is not that much money, but to a child, like an eight-year-old, it was a lot. So let's see. But that must have been, I also like doing, totally aside, but inflation calculator, sorry. I like to look up inflation rates and see how much something might be worth. So almost whenever I'm watching a movie, And like they mentioned a dollar amount, I'll be like, Oh, okay. So this was set in the year 2007, let's say. And they said $10, right? So how much is that in today's money? Right? That's equivalent to like 15 US dollars today. So yeah, my parents didn't actually offer me that much money. It was like $15 today, which is... But for a kid, it's a decent chunk of change. I probably hadn't had that much money, maybe ever, but it stuck in my mind. Yeah, so I tried to learn it, I used that money, and I can still play it today. I do, it is one of the things that I wish that I would put more time into. At this point, I don't have a piano, or else I would, but I don't, I probably, I do wanna get like a keyboard of some kind, just to have more, to be able to practice, but they are relatively expensive, and yeah, anyways. because yeah, that is definitely a goal of mine is to be able to play more and complete ragtime songs and know them better and be able to either read music or, I don't know. I'm not exactly sure what my goals are there, but that is something that I've always wanted to do. Ending here, I also want to quickly mention one of my favorite pianists and ragtime musicians, whose name is Tom Breer, who is, he's technically alive still. He had a, I think he is, yeah, he's still alive, I think, but he had a very bad accident a couple of years ago and, I think is like completely in the hospital for since like eight years ago or something and which is terrible but he is a very very talented and gifted pianist and plays ragtime and lots of other things and Lots of his videos are on YouTube T-o-m-b-r-i-e-r and He's also done his own original things that are more modern than the 1910s that I also think are really good and so Uh, yeah, that is my episode here on rag time. I hope that you try out some of the, the, the music and just see if you like it or not. It's not for everybody. I'm not expecting you to go, Oh my God, this is the next thing that I'm going to listen to all the time because that would be ridiculous. Not very many people listen to just piano music, but if you need a little bit of piano music for when you're, you're, cooking or working or something and you want a little bit of a nice upbeat, a nice sounding sound, check it out. But yeah, that's everything that I have for today. Thank you all so much for watching and let me know down in the comments what you think and I will see you again in another episode tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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