What Influences Musical Taste?

What influences an individual’s music tastes? Why does the music that is revelatory for one person sound unappealing to another? The answer is that musical taste is influenced by a variety of factors. Some of these factors are completely out of our control, and occur before we are even born. The auditory system of a fetus is functional in just twenty weeks after conception (Levitin). Alexandra Lamont from Keele University decided to uncover just how much a baby could recognize. After playing music to the fetus, she asked the mothers not to play music around the baby for 9 months.

 Then, using two speakers, she played music that was familiar from the womb, and music that was new to the infant. The baby quickly discovered that it could control which music played depending on the speaker it faced. The infants almost always spent more time listening to the music that they had heard before. Astoundingly, music can be encoded in memory even with the absence of language or explicit awareness (Levitin).
     So we know we prefer music we’ve heard in the safe confines of the womb, but what else about our upbringing influences our music tastes? Aside from infancy, the next most important place we pick up music taste is our early adolescence (Stern-Baczewska). At this age, social groups tend to use music as a way of acceptance, and being the tweens we are, we will change the music we listen to in in order to fit in with the group. Conveniently enough, this is the time of life when a person’s brain will mold and change the most (Levitin). People who developed Alzheimer’s disease at a later age were found to remember melodies they acquired in their early teenage years (Levitin). Consequently, music we learn to like during our teenage years has a profound effect on the music that will stay with us (Lafata).

               As we move into maturity, we become more concerned with an interesting equation when finding new music we like. This equation would look like a letter “U” on a graph (Levitin). One side of the “U” is complexity, and the other is simplicity. We want things that are complicated enough to be interesting but are simple enough that we feel comfortable with the chord progression and can anticipate what will come next. For example, most children consider tic-tac-toe to be a mentally instilling game (Levitin). It has defined rules, an element of surprise, and the variable of another player changing the playing field. For an adult however, it becomes less enthralling. If the player who goes first is competent, the second player can never win. The game becomes predictable and loses its appeal. Music is much the same. The human brain tends to subconsciously unravel the pattern of music and determine which note is next, and where the music is going. With the correct mix of surprise and predictability, music generally becomes more enjoyable.

               Going back to our roots, another factor that will determine our music preferences is the culture we grow up in. In the brilliant words of Dr. Robert Zatorre: “It is unlikely you are going to be a fan of Balinese gamelan music if you did not grow up in that part of Indonesia… (Zaltorre)” In American culture, we tend to surrender ourselves to the artists we like. We let them into our homes, our earbuds, and our emotions (Levitin). We let popular musicians like the Beetles, who are strangers to us, enter into our lives on an intimate level because they have opened themselves up to us. We let them comfort us and inspire us. Therefore, we listen to music that gives us feeling and emotions that we want to have. We want to open up to composers and artists that have felt the same way we do.

               Music taste is a rather complex issue, and despite having an abundance of contributing factors, it is rather hard to pin down (I’m sure Pandora and Spotify would be making bank if their algorithms were perfect). People are drawn to music, and what makes them like what they like is rather hard to say. I can say however that what influences a person’s musical taste can occur before they are even born. It can be what makes them fit in, or how they want to feel. It might even be the side of the bed they woke up on.

Bibliography

Borreli, Lizette. "The Way You Think Influences Your Musical Tastes." Medical Daily. Medical Daily, 27 July 2015. Web. 16 Sept. 2016.

LaFata, Alexia. "Is This Your Song? The Science Behind What Determines Your Taste In Music." Elite Daily. N.p., 21 July 2015. Web. 16 Sept. 2016.

Levitin, Daniel J. "My Favorite Things." This Is Your Brain On Music. New York: Penguin Group, 2006. 223-47. Print.
Stern-Baczewska, Magdalena. "What Determines People's Taste in Music?"Hopes&Fears. N.p., 21 Dec. 2015. Web. 25 Sept. 2016.

Zatorre, Robert. "What Determines People's Taste in Music?" Hopes&Fears. N.p., 21 Dec. 2015. Web. 16 Sept. 2016.