Listen Up!

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.

Season two was produced in partnership with Sacred Heart University.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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