考满分 toefl

1 .<-NARRATOR:->Listen to part of a lecture in a music history class.The professor has been discussing music of the twentieth century.

旁白：听一段音乐史课程。教授正在讲20世纪的音乐。

1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->And what instrument comes to mind when you think of rock and roll?

教授：当你们想到摇滚时，脑海中会想到什么乐器？

1 .<-FEMALE STUDENT:->The electric guitar?

学生：电吉他？

1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->Exactly. I think it's fair to say that the sound of the electric guitar typifies the rock-and-roll genre, which became popular in the 1950s.

教授：对。我认为电吉他的声音可以说是摇滚音乐流派的特征，在20世纪50年代变得很流行。

2 .But really, the instrument we know today was the result of a continuing development that started, for all practical purposes, in the 1920s.

但这其实是人们出于之后持续发展实用目的造出来的，在20世纪20年代。

3 .But long before that even, people were experimenting with ways to modify traditional acoustic guitars.

但在更久以前（20世纪20年代前），人们就不断实验以改造传统原声吉他了。

4 .The first guitars were wooden-this is the Spanish guitar-and the strings were made from animal products.

最初的吉他是木制的---这是西班牙吉他---弦是动物制品。

5 .Then came steel strings, and that led to the lap guitar-which is also called the steel guitar because the player slides a steel rod up and down the neck.

然后出现了钢丝弦，然后钢吉他产生了，也称钢丝吉他，因为演奏者会在琴颈上下滑动一个钢棒。

6 .And those are all acoustic guitars, OK?

这些都是原声吉他。

7 .But then, eventually, we have electric guitars.

接着，我们终于有了电吉他。

8 .Over the years, many inventors and musicians contributed to the design of these instruments, and each design was intended to alter the sound in some way-at first, at least with the electric guitar, to make it louder.

多年以来，很多发明家和音乐家都为这些乐器的设计做出了贡献，每一款设计都是为了在某种程度上改变声音，在最初（至少电吉他是这样）是为了让声音更大。

1 .[Slight pause to get back to chronology] Eh, so let's get back to when the steel guitar was first introduced in the United States.

我们回到钢丝吉他刚引入美国的时候吧。

2 .It was right after the Spanish-American War...in the late 1890s.

那是美西战争刚刚结束...19世纪90年代后期。

3 .U.S. sailors who were stationed in Hawaii,[brief aside] then a U.S. territory, were very enamored with the music they heard there; uh, Hawaiian music was based on the steel guitar I just described.

在夏威夷（那时候夏威夷是美国托管地）驻扎的美国士兵，非常喜欢他们在那儿听到的音乐，夏威夷音乐正是基于我刚刚描述的钢丝吉他。

4 .Some sailors learned how to play the steel guitar and brought it home to the States.

一些水手学会了弹钢丝吉他，并将其带回了美国。

5 .Before long, Hawaiian steel guitar music was all the rage in the mainland U.S.

不久，夏威夷钢丝吉他在美国大陆就火起来了。

6 .It actually had a strong influence on the development of several musical genres-rock and roll, most notably, but also jazz and blues.

事实上，钢丝吉他对很多音乐流派的发展都产生了重要的影响，最主要的是摇滚乐，但也包括爵士乐和布鲁斯音乐。

1 .Anyway... by the 1920s, with the advent of the public dance movement, people were gathering in large groups to listen to steel-guitar music.

不管怎样，直到20世纪20年代，随着大众舞蹈运动的出现，大批群众聚在一起听钢丝吉他乐。

2 .But they had trouble hearing it, especially in large, public settings.

但他们很难听到钢丝吉他乐，特别是在大型公众场所里。

3 .As I mentioned, the instrument was played horizontally, on the lap. Since the strings faced upward, the sound was projected toward the ceiling rather than outward toward the audience.

正如我提到的，这个乐器在演奏时是水平放的，放在大腿上。既然琴弦是朝上的，声音就向天花板传了，而不是向外传到观众那儿。

4 .Something had to be done because the music venues and the audiences kept getting larger and larger.

人们必须做些什么，因为这些音乐集会和观众的规模都越来越大了。

5 .So, what would you do?

你会怎么办？

1 .<-MALE STUDENT:->Find a way to amplify the sound?

学生：想办法放大声音？

1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->Yes. And to do that, inventors started attaching electronic devices-electrical coils-to acoustic guitars. And the electronics worked!

教授：对。为了放大声音，发明家们开始给原声吉他接上电子设备和电子线圈。电子设备起作用了！

2 .But attaching electronics didn't just affect how loudly you could play; it also changed the quality of the sound.

但接上电子设备不仅仅影响了演奏时的音量，还改变了音质。

3 .These early electric guitars were hollow, and these early amplifiers caused vibrations in the bodies of the instruments.

早期的电吉他是空心的，而且早期的扩音器会造成乐器器身产生振动。

4 .So, as the sound got louder, it became more distorted.

随着声音变大，声音也扭曲得更厉害了。

5 .Fuzzy sounding.

变得更模糊了。

6 .And what musicians at the time wanted was a pure, clean sound.

当时的音乐家希望得到的是纯净的声音。

1 .<-MALE STUDENT:->So, where does Les Paul fit in? Wasn't he the first to electrify acoustic guitars?

学生：这和莱斯·保罗有什么关系呢？他不是第一个将原声吉他电子化的人吗？

1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->Uh, no. Electrified guitars already existed by the time Les Paul came into the picture, around 1940.

教授：不。电吉他早在1940年莱斯·保罗进入人们视线以前就存在了。

1 .What Paul did was experiment with ways of removing the distortions. And he succeeded! [lowly]

保罗所做的是不断实验，找出消除失真音色的方法，他成功了。

2 .He designed a guitar with a solid body that relied solely on electronics.

他设计出一款吉他，有坚固的器身，仅靠电子设备发音。

3 .Paul's solid body eliminated the vibrations, and thus, the distortions.

保罗发明的坚固的器身消除了振动，也就消除了失真音色。

1 .<-FEMALE STUDENT:->Excuse me, but when I think of electric guitar music, I think of Jimi Hendrix.

学生：抱歉，在我想到电吉他乐时，我会想到吉米·亨德里克斯。

1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->Jimi Hendrix, one of my favorites!

教授：吉米·亨德里克斯，我最爱的音乐家之一。

1 .<-FEMALE STUDENT:->But Hendrix's style really was all about distortion. That's what's so great about his music-all those special effects.

学生：但亨德里克斯的风格都是和失真音色相关的，这就是他的音乐为什么这么棒，因为有很多特殊音效。

2 .I think a lot of rock-and-roll fans preferred that to a pure sound.

我想大部分摇滚乐迷更喜欢扭曲的声音，而不是纯净的乐声。

1 .<-MALE PROFESSOR:->Yeah, you're getting ahead of me here...

教授：对。你赶在我前面了。

2 .but good! Because the point I was gonna make is that the sound of rock and roll changed over the years, and the designs and technology of electric guitars made those changes possible.

但这很好，因为我将要提到的正是摇滚乐这么多年来声音的演变，而电吉他的设计和科技正使这些改变变为可能。

1 .So whereas Les Paul's goal was to remove the distortion, later musicians wanted to produce it.

尽管莱斯·保罗的目标是为了消除声音扭曲，后来的音乐家们又想制造失真音色。

2 .And by the time Jimi Hendrix came around...

直到吉米·亨德里克斯出现......

3 .Well, essentially, Hendrix reinvented the electric guitar-in the sense that he created amazing effects and vibrations that changed the sound of rock and roll completely.

本质上，亨德里克斯重新发明了电吉他，他创造出惊人的声音效果和振动，彻底改变摇滚乐的声音。

4 .So, eventually, people tried to improve on Les Paul's model, [to be diplomatic] well, to modify it, I should say.

最终，人们就在莱斯·保罗的吉他模型上进行改良，或者，我该称之为“修改”。