Can you trace where your music tastes come from?

[TheNewbiestONewbs]

So as a kid I played so many games that had great music imo. Games like ssx tricky, ssx on tour, guitar hero, and others. So how much influence do you think early music and exposure to music has on kids? Does it influence how much you like certain types of music today?

[PlayStation 2]

I guess it'd all depend. My music taste is basically a copypaste of what my mom likes in terms of rap and R&B mixed with what my dad likes too.

[Syntaxvgm]

getting music from friends when I was young. We passed around CDs. Myspace was good for that too.

And I shit you not back when I was like in high school, most poor ass kids in my area didn't have an ipod, but rather some kind of MP3 player that was usually terribly made with bad firmware and some shitty video function that no one knew who to use or cared to use. Anyway these fuckin things would break and I was always good at fixing them cause hey, school without music was terrible I wasn't gonna let people suffer if they couldn't afford a new one. So I ripped music from people's mp3 players and often found stuff I liked. Then shared that around further, and eventually we'd just dump each other's mp3 players regularly. We all ended up with a little of everyone's music, was like a music library orgy. 

Sneakernet limewire basically 

[Volbet]

This is actually a rather intersting study. While studies have been done on how an individuals form their musical taste, those studies usually take their start in sociology rather than psychology. 

Then then results in the various aspects of musical taste and music consumption to be divided into economic class, race, gender, age, etc. rather than be focused on the individual. 

While you can think of this what you will, it does serve as intersting material. Here are a couple of studies

• Musical taste as social capital
• A sociological exploration of music taste, cultural consumption and social class

This is not to say that there haven't been psychological studies of musical taste and how it relates to the individual. 

However, a lot of those studies tend to focus on how your musical taste reflects on you rather than how it reflects you. Here's one example:

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/you-are-what-you-listen-to

One of the bigger psychological studies, however, did find a correlation between certain personality traits and your taste in music.

There was also a "study" that floated around some years ago that showed a correlation between your IQ and your music taste.

Although, as admitted by the author it is pretty unscientific and the conclusion that can be drawn is not certain, but it's still an intersting read.

 

But I guess this thread should be more about my personal opinions and musical journey.

My family is kinda weird when it comes to music. My mother couldn't care less about music and have pretty much never activly listened to music (from what I know, anyway).

My dad on the other hand is really into music. While his main interst has alway been in hardcore punk, D-beat, grindcore, etc. he also do enjoy a lot of other stuff. 

He has also been a drummer for almost 50 years, so he also taught me to see music as a piece of work rather than just a piece of art. 

 

I guess my musical taste does closely resemble that of my dad. I do have tendency to seek out extremes (be they musical, lyrical or both) in whatever genre I'm looking (listning?) through. 

However, as a counter to this, my sister has absolutly non of that. While she does listen to music she pretty much just a top 40 listener, and she doesn't really care about music apart from it being an entertainment medium.  

[Zodiark1593]

My dad likes metal and rap, not sure what Mom listens to. My sister has the same musical tastes as Dad. So long as it's not Rap or anything overly loud, I'm comparatively indifferent to genre. Soft rock, ppiano, trance, jazz, Japanese vocaloid music, etc. Whatever I feel like, really. 

 

Some games had some particularly great soundtracks I regularly use. Croc:Legend of the Gobbos has some tracks I use in a Christmas mix. Some tracks in Final Fantasy XII are quite uplifting, or calming. 

[christianled59]

Funny enough, my ex girlfriend is who got me into most of the music I listen to. Prior to her, I only ever listened to 90s rock and classical. 

[mariushm]

I didn't care much about music genres when i was really young (highschool days), i just copied others to fit in, to be invited at parties and all that.

 

I'd say what influenced me most was when i was in university campus as a student... two doors down from my room there was a guy a couple years older than me who used to work at an IT store in the afternoons and since I was into computers we became friends and chatted once in a while.

Usually at the end of each week, when he came from work he and his roommates used to leave the room door open and relax in the hallway with some coffee or beers and cigars with a high end speakers playing the latest John Digweed mix or Cafe Del Mar.

 

So yeah, he introduced me to chillout , lounge, downtempo chill ,ambient and various genres i wasn't even aware of until then... before that i was listening mostly to pop or some commercial crap.

 

edit..parents used to like folk bands and bands like ABBA, Scorpions, Queen (and i don't mind them) .. but keep in mind that i was in a country which was communist until the 1990s so they didn't have access to a lot of foreign music

 

[WereCat]

I am really into orchestral music and I am the only one from the family listening that kind of music.

But I do enjoy all genres, metal, techno, rock, jazz, ... no problem. I am just picky about the particular songs.

 

I don't think that I copied anyone's style from my family, I may have developed my own taste... is that possible?

I remember finding some old Apocalyptica CDs as a kid and when I played them I got into it right away.

[Guest]

My taste is that I like soundtracks from series and such, instead of actual music that's supposed to be standalone music. 

[Denis Rakhmanov]

Yes, it all started with Metallica/Primordial/Queen/Couple of russian bands that my older brother listened to when i was 5-7. Then it went with similarities/collaborations/split albums. I had a graph of genres somewhere that i made with the evolution of my music tastes. Its a very sophisticated Web.