On our latest episode, we’re taking a road trip! Where are we going, you ask? We’ll be traveling through music! How will we get around? By following our musical roadmap, which we call musical form! As you travel through a song or piece of music, your brain is constantly checking in with itself, asking where this music is going and checking to see if it has heard these notes before or if they are new. We’ve got our snacks and GPS at the ready, and we’re bringing our friends Freddie Mercury, The Backstreet Boys, and Taylor Swift.

Listen Up!

Form

In our season two finale episode, we explore syncopation, one of the most playful elements of rhythm. There are specific syncopation patterns that link music across a remarkable variety of cultures and genres – almost like a shared heartbeat or fingerprint. We’ll find the “off” beat in everything from marching band to Broadway musicals, Ragtime, pop, Son, samba, and more.

Syncopation

Music has been used as tool of resistance efforts across the history, from the American Revolution to the anti-communist movement to #MeToo. In this episode, we examine the musical connections of these varying causes across multiple genres, including classical, hip-hop, folk, indie, and pop. We also speak with a leader in contemporary resistance music, Stephen Brackett, aka "Brer Rabbit," aka the front-man for the hit band Flobots.

Resistance

Jazz might be the musical genre that people think of the most when they hear the word improvisation, but it’s not just jazz musicians that make up things on the spot. In this episode, we unpack various styles of improvisation, from rap to Baroque opera to jazz. Plus, we interview jazz composer and instrumentalist Kyle Saulnier, who explains what goes on inside his head when he’s improvising and gives tips on how beginners can approach musical improvisation.

Improvisation

Even though heavy metal and classical music might look different on the outside, they are made of very similar stuff on the inside. In this episode we unpack the elements that define heavy metal and show you how easily they crossover into Classical music. Take a listen… and don’t be afraid to bang your head the next time you listen to a violinist shredding a cadenza!

Heavy Metal

What makes Dave Brubeck's "Unsquare Dance" so "un"-square? In this episode we dive into music that uses uneven meter. The effect can be unsettling, groovy, enlightening... or all of the above! Plus we are joined by Chris Brubeck, part of the legendary Brubeck family, and expert on funky meter in music.

Meter

Just like visual art, music is often described as having certain colors, but unlike visual arts, we don’t have an agreed upon vocabulary to describe them. In music we call those colors timbre [TAM-BER]. Timbre is one of the more elusive and intangible elements of music to describe, but we are feeling fearless, so join us for an episode that includes opera, tuvan throat-singing, bluegrass, classical, Kanye West, Cher and T-Pain.

Timbre

Transcendence is sometimes defined as “collapsing the boundaries between the spiritual world and the human world through some sort of experience.” Listen to music that is used by people of different cultures and faiths around the world to connect with their spiritual practices, from Pink Floyd to Tromba to John Coltrane to the "mystic chord."

Spirituality

Cognitive neuroscientists have argued that the most common scales used around the world are actually so similar to human speech patterns that our ears are drawn to them naturally and can recognize different scale patterns as easily as we recognize words. Scales connect everything from Michael Jackson to Gregorian Chant... and link music from India to Indonesia to Indiana.

Scales

This season, we not only show you how to get more out of the music you love, but help you discover more music to love based on the music you already know.

Introducing Listen Up! Season Two

Are you drawn to a song’s music or lyrics first? On this episode we’re looking at the relationship between text and music, and why they’re so powerful together. Musicians have been combining music and text for a long time...find out why and how different songwriters approach combining the two.

Text and Music

On this episode, we’ll solve the greatest mystery of ALL time... What’s the true difference between pop and classical music? To do this, we’re going to look further into the biggest breakup of all time – that of Adele and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Maybe we guess should be more specific. We're talking about the big breakup between classical and pop music. How did one style, pop music (aka Adele) started out intertwined in a relationship with classical music (aka Mozart), and where did their differences became so great that they decided to call it quits and go their separate ways?

Thematic Development

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine polled its readers about what they considered the best rock cover of all time. Without question, the leader in the poll was Jimi Hendrix’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” This variation on the original song was so well received that Bob Dylan ended up changing the way he played it to be more like Hendrix. On our latest episode we’re looking at all kinds of variations in music and how composers and performers play with musical ideas to keep us tuned in and interested.

Variation

On this episode of Listen Up! we pull apart the threads that make up the texture of music and learn how musical texture can indicate what kind of culture you live in. We pay tribute to musical legend Leonard Cohen by taking a deeper look at a recent cover of "Hallelujah" and listen to some of our other favorites by Flogging Molly, Sting, Foo Fighters, and Thomas Tallis.

Texture

On our latest episode we’re taking a trip to Italy and talking about Tempo, Allegro, Andante, Adagio, Vivace, Piano, Forte, and Gravicembalo col Piano e Forte… all of the most delicious Italian parts of music! Plus we’re listening to a few of our favorite hits by Michael Jackson, Journey, Lady Gaga and Whitney Houston.

Tempo & Dynamics

A podcast series where we show you how to get more out of the music you love. Listen Up! is presented by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.