1. What is the speaker mainly talking about?
| A．A disease. | B．A band. | C．A program. |
| A．It published an album. |
| B．It went on a radio show. |
| C．It had a performance. |
| A．Inspire people. | B．Raise money. | C．Promote music. |
2 . There’s no tune, no lyrics and you can’t dance to it. Don’t let that put you off white noise is the music industry’s next big thing. Streaming services have seen an explosion of tracks in the last year consisting entirely of recordings of rainfall, ocean waves and winds.
Some of the recordings have earned their creators millions of pounds. Record companies and tech firms have taken notice. Apple is including background noise in its next operating system, and TikTok has been promoting pink noise and brown noise — sounds with lower frequencies as an aid to concentration for students at the start of the school year.
Noise fans say that studying, sleeping and meditation(冥想)are all enhanced by listening to these sounds at proper levels. The economics of music-streaming mean noise-makers can cash in. Someone falling asleep to White Noise Baby Sleep’s 90-second track Clean White Noise on repeat for seven hours will win up 280 plays. So far it has been played 837 million times, worth an estimated $2.5 million in royalties(版税). The lead track on Spotify’s own Rain Sounds playlist, two minutes of rainfall, has more than 100 million plays. In contrast, Laura Mvula only has 541,000 Spotify streams for the title track of this year’s award-winning album, Pink Noise —not a slice of sleepiness but tuneful, lyrical dance-pop that took her three years to make.
Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming services pay royalties in roughly the same way. They set aside a sum of money for royalties, which is then divided up between distributions, record labels, recording artists and songwriters. That means that Mvula will get a smaller slice of the Spotify pie than will White Noise Baby Sleep, while most of it goes to the major record companies.
It’s hard to work out who is making such noise. Spotify lists White Noise Baby Sleep’s songwriting credits as belonging to an Erik Eriksson. It’s not obvious who Eriksson is or whether he is part of a larger organization, but the Medium website One Zero last year established that many of the artists’ names are pseudonyms(假名)used by companies.
1. Which of the following best describes white noise?| A．Harmonious. | B．Confusing. | C．High-priced. | D．Profitable. |
| A．By presenting some statistics. | B．By making classifications. |
| C．By using quotations. | D．By giving a definition. |
| A．To show white noise is more popular. |
| B．To demonstrate pink noise has gone out of date. |
| C．To indicate how Mvula gets paid. |
| D．To exhibit who makes huge profits. |
| A．Tips for attracting more white noise fans. |
| B．Challenges some companies are faced with. |
| C．Difficulty in identifying the copyright holders. |
| D．Ways to improve the qualities of credits. |
1. What instrument did the speaker play when she was young?
| A．The piano. | B．The guitar. | C．The violin. |
| A．In London. | B．In Sydney. | C．In New York. |
| A．They’ll meet famous performers. |
| B．They’ll have a brighter future. |
| C．They’ll get a chance to travel the world. |
| A．Three. | B．Four. | C．Seven. |
4 . Issues such as global warming and sustainability have become passionate concerns for many of the concert industry’s fans and increasingly for the musicians. Coldplay, a pop band whose members scored their first big hit in 2000 with a song called Yellow, announced in November that it wouldn’t go on tour to promote its latest album, Everyday Life, until it could find a way to make concerts more sustainable and greener to the environment.
It’s not always easy to walk the talk. A growing number of artists, including Peggy Gou, have environmental demands built into their contracts when they tour, such as bans on plastic tableware. But there’s almost no way of avoiding carbon emissions produced by a tour, which involves moving hundreds of people and tons of equipment across large distances.
Lisa Pomerantz, who books travel for acts says that real change will require action by venue owners, concert promoters, and the fans. Major acts like Coldplay can afford to stop touring while figuring out how to lessen their environmental impact. But lesser-known artists can’t stay off the road, since streaming earnings haven’t been able to compensate (弥补) for the collapse in CD and downloaded music sales. Even when concerts are aggressive about being more sustainable, the impact of audience travel can easily swamp (淹没) their efforts. For bigger acts, this can represent as much as 80% of the carbon footprint, according to a 2015 study. Another analysis showed that roughly a third of the tour’s carbon footprint came from a venue’s power consumption.
Still, even the most green-conscious bands must balance their desire to be more sustainable against the financial necessity of touring. “I absolutely think you can go on tour and have a concern about the environment. It’s a matter of just keeping our carbon footprint as low as possible,” says Flavian Graber, lead singer of We Invented Paris.
1. Why did Coldplay stop its promotion tour?| A．Because it had already released a hit. | B．Because it wanted a more environmentally friendly concert. |
| C．Because its latest album needed further improvement. | D．Because they could afford the money. |
| A．Make it. | B．Talk it. | C．See it. | D．Appreciate it. |
| A．Stopping bands’ promotion tours. |
| B．Downloading music on the Internet. |
| C．Cutting down venues’ water and electricity consumption. |
| D．Combining efforts of bands, audiences and venue owners. |
| A．Achievable. | B．Fruitless. | C．Challenging. | D．Controversial. |
1. What is the speaker mainly talking about?
| A．His feeling after receiving an award. |
| B．His experience about traveling around. |
| C．His preference for different music types. |
| A．Ireland. | B．Scotland. | C．England. |
| A．A single song. | B．A three-song collection. | C．A twelve-song collection. |
| A．A young musician. | B．One of the speaker’s fans. | C．The host of the ceremony. |
| A．Everything about it was excellent. |
| B．The dance music was better than last year’s. |
| C．Most of it was OK. |
1. How does the woman feel about the dance competition?
| A．Excited. | B．Nervous. | C．Confident. |
| A．Dancing in front of many people. |
| B．Watching good dancers on stage. |
| C．Making some good new friends. |
8 . Highly emotional music causes networks in the brain to release dopamine. This brain chemical plays a role in feelings of pleasure. It also turns on the brain’s motor network that makes us want to move. That physical response to a strong beat can be used to help people with brain-related disorders, research has shown. It aids their ability to time their body’s movements, which can help them with speech issues or trouble moving around.
Olivia Brancatisano, a researcher at Bond University in Robina, Australia, studies music and aging. She found that music can offer a number of benefits, from movement and emotion to communication and thinking. That led her to find music-based therapies (治疗) that might aid people who struggle in these areas.
Older people who have dementia (痴呆) may struggle to remember things. But they did better on mental (精神的) tasks while listening to music they knew and enjoyed. The selected music had to be highly emotional and personal, Brancatisano notes, Listening brought back memories and improved their attention. Since then, she has developed the Music Mind and Movement program for people with dementia.
Music helps young people, too. International students in Australia took part in a recent study at the University of Queensland in St, Lucia. Students may often feel lonely while far from home. Those in the Tuned In program, however, learned to better manage their anxiety using music. They also got better at identifying their emotions. That helped them take action when they were struggling.
The benefits of music seem to cover people of all ages. “We use it to meet basic human needs and to improve our emotional states,” says Brancatisano, “Now, more than ever, we have the ability to engage in music in a variety of ways. We can use it as a tool in everyday life to energize and comfort us.”
1. What is the purpose of the Music Mind and Movement program?| A．To help students keep their spirits up. |
| B．To remind us to run as often as possible. |
| C．To benefit old people with a mental illness. |
| D．To show patients how to forget bad memories. |
| A．They felt more anxious in class. | B．They tended to be less homesick. |
| C．They worked together to write music. | D．They developed a popular music app. |
| A．It’s a good practice to listen to music. |
| B．We struggle to meet our basic needs. |
| C．Music enables us to remain young. |
| D．There are plentiful free songs online. |
| A．Classical Music Is People’s Top Choice |
| B．Happiness Is the Medicine of Daily Life |
| C．Both Physical and Mental Health Matters |
| D．Music Can Improve Our Overall Health |
9 . Nick Rose-Stamey is a lot like Jack Black’s character in School of Rock- a guitarist who discovers a passion for making music accessible to children. Working in the nonprofit arts education sector over the last 10 years raised his awareness of the lack of music programs in public schools, and later inspired his nonprofit, Band in a Bus. “The original idea was to take an old school bus and turn it into the best band class on wheels,” he says.
In fact, activities of Band in a Bus don’t actually happen on a bus. It provides instruments, courses, and staffing to students. Kids 18 and under can also participate in enriching summer programs through Band in a Bus, such as Bucket Brigade, five weekly classes where grades K-4 learn rhythm (节奏) and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) principles through contemporary music. There are also teen bands for grades 7-12 where kids learn to play pop music and develop social and team work skills.
When schools went virtual during the COVID-19 period, Rose-Stamey thought it was a shame that instruments were left sitting on shelves instead of in the hands of kids. So he created and distributed more than 1,000 “Band in a Box” DIY kits. Each kit contains small noise makers like kazoos, drumsticks, and shakers, with the intention of introducing a modernized music class experience that meets kids where they are.
“It is reported that if a kid has 30 minutes of a performing arts or creative elective every singleday, then that’ll help them develop their social, emotional and leadership skills, because there’s a lot of team work when it comes to making music. You have to learn how to work well with others,” Rose-Stamey says.
In the last year, Band in a Bus has worked directly with more than 500 students. “Music is a win-win for everybody,” Rose-Stamey says. “I just hope that someday we can stop making it the first kid out in the dodge ball (躲避球) game.”
1. What motivated Rose-Stamey to establish Band in a Bus?| A．The movie School of Rock. | B．The band classes in public schools. |
| C．His music learning experiences. | D．Insufficient music education. |
| A．They mainly focus on pop music. | B．They are usually organized on a bus. |
| C．They encourage team-building activities. | D．They combine music with other subjects. |
| A．To promote noise making instrumental kits. |
| B．To help students gain access to music at home. |
| C．To lift students’ mood during the COVID-19 period. |
| D．To enable students to take creative electives every day. |
| A．We should treat every student equally. |
| B．We should give music enough importance. |
| C．We should reconsider the rules of the dodge ball game. |
| D．We should encourage fair competition in various activities. |
Beethov-hen’s first symphony
On a grey Friday morning at a Hawke’s Bay farm, members of New Zealand’s symphony orchestra dressed in black to perform their latest composition in front of a large crowd.
The music contained many marks of traditional classical music, but as it began, the instruments started to make loud, rough sounds more commonly
However, no feathers were angered by this departure from tradition,
The piece of music – Chook Symphony No.1 –
“We’ve been playing classical music for the chickens for some years now because
Research has shown animals can respond positively to classical music, and chickens are particularly responsive to baroque (巴洛克风格), according to some studies.
The composer, Hamish Oliver,
The early stages of composition were spent
“They didn’t like any big banging,” Bostock said, adding that when the birds respond positively to the music, they tend
For Oliver, having input from the farmers about
The symphony has searched exhaustively
