Remixes

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

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• blow someone's mind
• lyrics
• recycle
• from whole cloth

• new spin
• DJ
• beat
• short cut

• generic
• commercial

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

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Remixes take old songs and put a new spin on them. DJs have been experimenting with remixing techniques since the late 1960s, when they started taking songs apart and put them back together in a new way that made them more fun to dance to. Sometimes faster beats are put behind slower songs to make them more upbeat, or bits of familiar songs are mixed in with new songs to make them more popular and catchy. Find out whether Mason and Dale think remixing is a cheap shortcut or a true art.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Dale

Mason

Dale:  Are you familiar with remixes?

Mason:  I am currently fascinated with remixes. My favorite new song is a remix.

Dale:  Really?

Mason:  Yeah. It’s actually…it’s a remix of a commercial though. It’s this Slap Chop rap. So it takes remixing to a new level, it’s like you’re not even taking a song, you took a commercial with no music to it and turned that into a song. That’s where things are going, blowing my mind. But I know you were a DJ, still are, right?

Dale:  Yeah. The remixing part to it though is changing and evolved from remixing now to mash up. Mash up takes the beat of one song and uses the lyrics from another song, and you put those together and it creates this new weird brand new song.

Mason:  Do you think…I mean we’re not creating anything new, we’re just recycling old stuff to create new. I mean the end result is something new, but there’s…It’s kind of like well there’s so much stuff out there, why would I create something new from whole cloth when I can use these existing materials.

Dale:  A long time ago, and I forgot the name of the artist, an artist actually said that in the 80s or 90s that we’d been taking a lot of beats that were done from the 60s and 70s, we’re reusing them, that we’re not creating another original sound. He said eventually within time, all it is is going to be one generic sound. Now I don’t know if that’s gonna be true, but it’s starting to lean in that direction, because it just seems to be whatever the next hit, you bounce it off, and if it worked last time, you do it again.

Grammar Point

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Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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