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[yipjumpmusic]

Got this idea for the thread from the "how young is too young" thread.  So, people's musical taste, do you think they are predisposed to a certain kind no matter what they are raised around or that if they grow up around a certain kinds of music they will pick one of those and adopt it as their favorite, especially if someone tries to influence their taste?  Obviously some people have varied tastes and also it's not that much a black and white thing...

I would have to say myself that people are simply exposed to certain kinds of music and then pick the best/what they feel most in touch with and listen to that until they discover (by another's action or their own) better (to them)music, unless that music they like best at the time happened to be the best of what they would like.  Also though what music someone would like probably would only be stable when they reach full maturity/self awareness.  I wonder about the people who simply don't like music though, thinking that maybe a few of them just never heard the music that was right for them but that would play a small factor in this issue so no matter.  While I feel like that covered it, I am curious what other people think and maybe someone can simply explain it more articulately and cover all the holes I missed in my hasty post.  Want to bring in the socio-economical factor?  Want to just pop in the thread and say, [spam]Who cares why people like what they like?[/spam], you can do that too.  Or maybe we can never know anyways and only think we understand the rationality of why we like what we like while others like what they like in music.  Why do people listen to music anyways?  It's just organized sounds, but that's for another thread.

[Robbo]

I don't know what causes some people's tastes. Some seems just to be what they grow up with and what they're exposed to.

But then I didn't like music at all, nothing of it, before I heard Metal. All the stuff my parents listens to, my friends etc, I didnt like. And none of it was opening stuff to Metal either.

There's various comments on people you can make. The fact that some people will just follow on with whats infront of them and never question. Other people just seem to have things formed in their mind about it I guess.

It may be that over activities influence musical taste. Eg, Metalheads starting out as Nerds and liking Metal when the find it. Or finding Metal through things like music vidoes from the net.

Also, from another thread, I noted something. That the Metalheads of then board tended to be self discovered music fans, while people that like Indie generally got into it through the influence of friends and parents.

I think the whole idea of people basically being musical brainwashed can happen, if things are forced onto them. Like, what does every "urban kid from the ghetto" like Rap music? crude example, but I hope you get the point.

[Addius]

Even though I believe that it's mostly based upon what one is used to listen to, there is always something in a persons personality that will sway him somewhat. If not all the way from one genre to another then from one end of the chosen genre to the other.

I'll take myself as an example. After going through a lot of different musical genres I've come to the conclussion that I myself have this affinity for classical music. This in turn have influenced the genre I listen to the most, namely metal. So instead of listening to most metal I tend to stray towards those bands that, erhm, well sounds a bit more like classical music, hehe.

[heretic]

i think we're all gonna start saying the same thing over and over again, but at risk of redundancy: here's my two cents,
i think a lot of people just listen to what thier friends, parents or sibilings listen to, at least until they develop a real preference. then they usually stray towards what they like better, assuming someone they know listens to it. this stray usually doesn't cut out old turns, just suppliments them. as people grow thier music taste varies as thier personality changes. i know i was introduced to modest mouse by a friend at band practice, and that was the start of my indie-tude. before that i was much more metal/punk/reggae because that was what i liked out of what i was exposed to. indie fits me better, but i couldn't really like it before i got a stepping stone from a friend and got self-motivated.
i think people have intrinsic music taste because their personality is uniqly their own, but, like your personality, the people and events in your life influence your musical tastes greatly. luckily, for me i've always had enough to keep me happy, and musical stagnation ended after sophmore year of highschool.

also, i think people develop thier musical tastes much more quickly when they happen upon the "right" genre for them. they care more about hearing more and broadening thier horizons. the people who have listened to the same 12 CDs for a year or two simply haven't discovered the genre that makes them care. either that or they hate music and i hate them

[KharBevNor]

I used to listen to a lot of classical music and rock, if I listened to anything before I 'got into metal'.

Interestingly, though I made the discovery myself, I did have a good friend who had just got in to proper metal himself to nurture me, suggests bands and whatnot. He's the thing that probably saved me from ever really having a major mallcore phase whilst I was dicking around trying to find the real stuff.

Now days though, I listen to huge amounts of folk and folk-influenced stuff, which I think in some way comes from my parents: at least my dad's habit of strumming folk songs on his old Gibson semi-acoustic and my mum's habit of playing me almost unwholesome amounts of Bob Dylan probably didn't hurt my current liking of folk.

But as for the nerd thing: yeah. I was, and am, a huge sci-fi and fantasy nerd. When I first heard 'The Battle of Evermore' and 'The Immigrant' song by Led Zeppelin I was like 'ZOMG! They're singing about ring-wraiths and vikings, this rules!'. Then I discovered metal, and it was 'ZOMG! EVERYONE'S singing about ring-wraiths and vikings!' It's like there was always some element, heaviness, darkness, vikings, whatever, that was missing from all the music, mainly my parents stuff, that I had listened to. Metal just felt so right. And on top of that, when I was about 15 I was of the opinion that vampires were probably the coolest thing ever. Probably contributed to why I liked Cradle of Filth so much.

[heretic]

yeah i was a goth kid when i was developing my first musical tastes. not so much because i was unhappy (usually i was pretty cheerful, especially when dressed goth) but because it facinated me. everything dark, occult or taboo facinates me to this day, but my musical taste has branched out. I'll still listen to a little otep or hatebreed when i want to run around wildly, but i don;t keep up with the metal scene as much as i'd like. i have a life outside of music that i really need to cut back on.

[muffy]

I was exposed to heaps of stuff when I was younger, from classical, to pop, to indie, rock and most genres of modern dance stuff, but I fell in love with Joy Division's 'love will tear us apart' when I was two, and when I hit my teens got heavily into indie...I still listen to a lot of stuff from different genres now, but I feel like when I was a teen, I kind of set myself into a pattern. At the time, it didn't fit in to what my friends or family listened to, but mysteriously, a few of my friends started liking EXACTLY the same bands as me, and I know I've been influenced by my mates, and, more embaarassingly, the music press, but when it started, it was intuitive. I think time has made it more self conscious as the scenes around music tend to evolve, and also, when I was younger, it started to become part of my identity, so for a few years I was reluctant to move away from that, but now I'm a lot less bothered and a lot less self conscious. I hope.

[Kelamin]

I think my taste in metal developed something like this

Prodigy -> Korn -> Rammstein -> Fear Factory

Kind of an odd start but it works for me

[IronOxide]

My music taste has developed in a very mixed way.

My big brother wshowed me to ska, which I still listen to. He also exposed me to emo, Sum41, and Good Charlotte for a while, which I never liked.

My friend Bob exposed me to metal (Mudvayne etc.) which I never really liked.

My twin brother and I discovered Jazz by ourselves. (With a little help from our grandparents)

I discovered classical through my music theory class this year, and now I want it to be my major.

Billy Joel was of my own doing, although my mother's CD.

I discovered showtunes through the fun of the musical this year.

Finally, the Shins and Jack Johnson were shown to me by my sister.

I think that it's a very personal thing, the music  you listen to, and the stuff you listen to reflects your veunerability to the man. For examples, if you are a weak-minded angsty teenager, you will fall into good charlotte. If you are me, you don't give a damn, and if people don't like what you listen to, it's okay, they're not bad people for it, my friends and I just prod each other and constantly make fun of each other for what we listen to.

Kelamin, I would like to compliment you on your avatar. Dark Archons are freakin' metal.

[La Creme]

I like that order thing, so I'ma do it

Indy wise: Weezer > Nirvana > Spoon > Eels > The Shins > The Sugarplastic > All else I listen to

Metal: Korn (comin' out of elementary) > SOAD > Slipknot > Static-X > Stone Sour > (suddenly started expanding my horizons along with all else.. might've been when I started playing jazz ) GWAR > ELP > Symphony-X > Assorted Prog

Jazz was just a complete jump from not liking it to liking it. Same with ska, etc. It's both nature and nurture, but our nature is built from the nurture, so essentially everything is all nurture.

[jeremy]

Interesting topic.

I grew up in a very musical family. Both my parents were in fairly successful local rock'n'roll bands in the 60's/70's, and my father has made a career in the major music industry for the past 25 years. So being interested and involved in music has always seemed like a very natural thing to me.

Apart from some 60's records and a few silly new wave albums that were given to me after my mother passed away when I was 14, I can't recall having ever dug too deeply into either of my parents' record collections, or finding much of anything interesting if I did. By 14, I had developed seemingly opposing tastes for 60's rock (thanks, mom!) and punk rock. I bought a copy of the first Clash LP on the same day as I bought a copy of Jimi Hendrix's "Band of Gypsies" LP. I don't know what happened to the Hendrix LP, but the Clash LP is still with me today.

But I think there are some additional cultural aspects that are at play, as well. For one, I grew up speaking two languages. That's important not only because I was exposed to a lot of music that most, uh, "normal" white people (hahaha) probably think is just a bunch of castaneta-driven gibberish, but because it's also helped to sorta relax my ears and brain so that it doesn't seem strange to me to listen to singing in languages other than English. I've noticed that a lot of people I play music around say things like "it's good, but what are they saying?", or "somebody needs to record this song in English!", implying that this music WOULD be good, if it were only recorded in English. This whole approach towards music (or anything, really) strikes me as bizzare, and I think that's a result of my upbringing.

Incidentally, I mostly listen to African and Slavic music. I don't speak any African language, and my knowledge of Russian is rudimentary at best (and generally doesn't help me actually enjoy the music, since I know just enough to sing along with most things, but in many cases not enough to explain what they're about when people ask). Hmmm.

So...nature or nuture? Well, I can't say anyone I grew up with or am currently accquainted with (including my family) has ever asked to borrow any CD from me. So I don't know. If this were a poll, my vote would be for neither, but only in my case.

Oh, and since I like those charts, too, here:

Cream > Clash > Grazhdanskaya Oborona > Hirut Beqele

It seems like I'm missing about a million steps there, but then I remember that it doesn't have to make sense in a linear way. Hahaha.

[normz]

I think it's a mixture of all. I mean I still like alot of the stuff my mum played for me as a kid (I have a weird affinity for showtunes, Jazz and 80' rock and pop) but I also got influences from my teen angst stage when i went all 'omg i totally relate to this music' (which was something like Korn or slipknot) but I also had classical training in Piano and voice so I sort of like a bit of the good ole classical works....... and now through my own discovering my taste leans more towards Rock/Punk/Indie ...... really any music with awesome drumming/ cool basslines/ lyrics that are just plain weird or really meaningful. So yeah I'm a bit eclectic combining all the best of nature and nuture in my musical tastes

[JLM]

It's hard to gauge something like that.  A lot of what I like is electronic based, and doesn't really have any precedence in any of my parents' musical tastes.  I think you eventually start gravitating towards certain patterns and rhythms, and at some point simply embrace multiple styles of music. Sometimes you never go back, though.  I used to be quite into metal years and years ago but eventually I just stopped listening to it altogether because what I was hearing wasn't really appealing to me.

as far as band patterns go it's a bit hard, being a child of the 80's, but it went something like this:

Culture Club>Twisted Sister>U2>Slayer>Soundgarden>Sonic Youth>Ministry>Orbital>Photek>what I currently listen to

[salada]

I think my taste in metal developed something like this

Prodigy -> Korn -> Rammstein -> Fear Factory

Kind of an odd start but it works for me

i more or less started on the prodigy. but instead of going all metal-ish, i got a copy of their first album after a while and turned into a junglehead.

other stuff's changed a bit -- indie stuff, hip-hop, jazz, i go through phases -- but jungle/drum and bass has been my constant musical, er, thing.

(is it just me, or does everyone who likes drum and bass just like it instantly (or conversely: you don't like it now, you didnt like it then)? kinda the wrong forum to be asking this, but i'm interested all the same)

[KharBevNor]

Incidentally, I mostly listen to African and Slavic music. I don't speak any African language, and my knowledge of Russian is rudimentary at best (and generally doesn't help me actually enjoy the music, since I know just enough to sing along with most things, but in many cases not enough to explain what they're about when people ask). Hmmm.

Given that some of my favourite genres are folk metal, black metal and industrial, I listen to HUGE amounts of stuff in unknown languages, everything from Irish gaelic to Ukrainian to French to Finnish. I love it, tbh. Industrial music actually helped boost my German vocabulary when I did the language in school, and I've developed a reasonable rudimentary Swedish vocabulary just listening to Finntroll (though mostly I can only say things like "My sword thirsts for christian blood") But then, one of my first musical loves was Rammstein, and I even went through a brief J-Rock phase back when I was a hardcore Otaku (though it was in a large part anime music videos that pointed me down the right path). Such things have never really been an issue for me.

I rememer a topic some time back where we did this progression thing in a slightly different form, but taking it from the first time I started listening to music (when I was about 4) it would be:

The Beatles > Johnny Cash > Bob Dylan > Meatloaf > Pink Floyd > Rammstein > Metallica (only the black album at first...then I heard  Master Of fuckin' Puppets) > Cradle of Filth > Edge of Sanity > Immortal > Finntroll > Burzum > Skyclad and everything else. That's the main progression, slightly odd I know. Plus, never really having a phase where I listened to anything totally dire, I still like pretty much all these bands: my 'nu-metal phase' was brief, and I never really liked the stuff much anyway.

[niatinari]

I suppose for me, my musical tastes are a combination of nurture and nature.  I have left behind a lot of my musical roots and almost never touch anything my parents introduced me to, although now and again, I get odd cravings for things I listened to back in the day.

When I was little I listened to a lot of classical music because I danced to it in ballet and I played the piano.  Then my sister picked up the violin and I played French horn, so it was MORE classical music (and marching band stuff).  On top of that was Christian music from my parents and Beatles from my dad, so my musical experience was not very broad.  My sister's friend was in jazz and shared some of her music, but other than that, no, I really didn't know ANYTHING that was popular when I was younger.  I am still fond of piano and string instrument pieces, and as I've said, give me the accoustic/instrumental/unplugged version of anything, and I'm pretty much guaranteed to melt.  Lute, harpsichord, hammered dulcimer, and harp are also weaknesses of mine.

In high school and college, friends introduced me to a lot of things at once (ska, punk, rock, filk, metal that didn't go over well for the most part) and I discovered Celtic music and Ceili, swing, and musicals.  Then I started liking Jpop and Jrock, which I am still very into, although I've noticed my preferences in other genres have carried over to what I'll enjoy in Japanese too.

[Titan]

I think my movement into metal came alot from my personality.

When I was young I loved ancient greek legends, etc, and I guess I still do. Like someone above, I also enjoy some classical music, which I think is at least slightly evident in my metal preferances.

Basically, you'll never find an inde/pop band singing (in any decent way) about things like Greek legends, Heaven and Hell (I'm talking about in depth), Horror stories, etc, etc - it just doesn't fit the style.

I think my interest in music was also sparked from my dad's things, but most prominently by The Doors. The flashes of lightning still stick in my mind from Riders On The Storm, and it's this sort of effect that my favourite metal satisfies.

However, I don't believe that I was all that influenced by that - I think I just knew that's what I wanted once I'd heard it. I'm not saying my dad didn't influence my personality though, and quite frankly I don't want to get into whether or not my personality was formed by my parents and the outside world - that's another discussion.

Metal is a mindset, pop is a mindset. That's my take on it.

[Hector Gilbert]

(is it just me, or does everyone who likes drum and bass just like it instantly (or conversely: you don't like it now, you didnt like it then)? kinda the wrong forum to be asking this, but i'm interested all the same)

Actually, in my case drum'n'bass is something that I used to always listen to but eventually got half-bored with.  Eight years ago when I was about ten my uncle was (he still is) an artist in the field, and he started sending me drum'n'bass mix CDs of his and of his friends.  I always loved rhythms, but I was intensely bored by most melodic songs until I was about thirteen or fourteen and until then drum'n'bass, hard house and video game soundtracks were all I listened to.  I had brief phases with a couple of bands but a lot of that was to please my peers, I wasn't passionate about any kind of rock music at all until I was fifteen.  However, after that I began to get tired of what I used to listen to and craved more variety...

[Johnny C]

Am I like an isolated case here? I discovered indie music by accident, neither nature nor nurture, really; I just double clicked on something in KaZaA that sounded vaguely interesting ("Interpol? I wonder if that's some kind of techno or something!") and wound up as an Interpol fan. I went to the library and grabbed some random CDs two years ago in December to do a school project, and one of them happened to be Wilco. I researched these myself and wound up with a bunch of bands connected to them, some of whom I checked out, some of whom I didn't. Only about a year ago did I begin to actually pay attention to music press, forum recommendations, etc.

I think sometimes it might be a deeper thing, psychologically, than just what your parents listened to. It might have something to do with openess to new ideas in general.



But I may just be blowing smoke out my ass on that last bit.

[zekterellium]

i think that, naturaly, human beings like all music and it's psychological short comings that stop us. like, when i play my friends white noise they say it's hideous and unlistenable, but it's scientifically proven to be relaxing and to make you feel safe. i think what get's them is they're too busy thinking "what the fuck? i'm listening to whitenoise." instead of concentrating on what they are listening to. i don't know, if you play a kid angry music they don't think anything of it, but when you play it to someone older they don't know what the fuck is going on, at least that's what i found. but yeah, this is a pretty good topic, i reckon it'll get dead interesting before too long.

[Merkava]

Am I like an isolated case here? I discovered indie music by accident, neither nature nor nurture, really; I just double clicked on something in KaZaA that sounded vaguely interesting ("Interpol? I wonder if that's some kind of techno or something!") and wound up as an Interpol fan. I went to the library and grabbed some random CDs two years ago in December to do a school project, and one of them happened to be Wilco. I researched these myself and wound up with a bunch of bands connected to them, some of whom I checked out, some of whom I didn't. Only about a year ago did I begin to actually pay attention to music press, forum recommendations, etc.

I think sometimes it might be a deeper thing, psychologically, than just what your parents listened to. It might have something to do with openess to new ideas in general.



But I may just be blowing smoke out my ass on that last bit.

That's pretty much how I got into it, except subsitute KaZaa for older sister and replace Interpol for Death Cab for Cutie.

Yeah, wierd. I do like guitar heroics, though, as my Dad most likely helped with.

[yipjumpmusic]

i think that, naturaly, human beings like all music and it's psychological short comings that stop us. like, when i play my friends white noise they say it's hideous and unlistenable, but it's scientifically proven to be relaxing and to make you feel safe. i think what get's them is they're too busy thinking "what the fuck? i'm listening to whitenoise." instead of concentrating on what they are listening to. i don't know, if you play a kid angry music they don't think anything of it, but when you play it to someone older they don't know what the fuck is going on, at least that's what i found. but yeah, this is a pretty good topic, i reckon it'll get dead interesting before too long.

I don't know about your main theory...following that, any band formed is good or at least worthy of being listened to, unless you meant any genre.

[Kai]

That's pretty much how I got into it, except subsitute KaZaa for older sister and replace Interpol for Death Cab for Cutie.

You double-clicked on your sister?

[zekterellium]

I don't know about your main theory...following that, any band formed is good or at least worthy of being listened to, unless you meant any genre.

i think so. i can basically enjoy any song i hear if i make myself. the only things i can't stand are gabba and that akon song. i can even enjoy the darkness. but maybe i'm just being an idiot or reading too much into it? i don't know.

[Merkava]

That's pretty much how I got into it, except subsitute KaZaa for older sister and replace Interpol for Death Cab for Cutie.

You double-clicked on your sister?

.......well played. XP

[yipjumpmusic]

Well I think of it more like, I can hear in a song why it is a song or how it attempts to be a song...but still I would say in the way you put it, I would not see having any limits as a bad thing, or maybe even as limits.  Not taking away choices but rather using the knowledge I have gained by listening to a range of songs and being able to compare automatically in my head to choose if it is good enough to be worth hearing again, to buy, so on, cause I can see how I could listen to any song, but you can't identify with every song made and I doubt each is as desirable to hear as any other...because if they were that would be scary.  Very scary.  It'd be the end of humanity where music is concerned...ug I just woke up and I feel like I have lots of holes, ah well.