What gene or other device determines our musical tastes or preferences? Why do we gravitate toward a certain genre or type of music while merely tolerating others? Is it a genetic imprint? early environmental exposure? peer pressure in adolescence? social conformity (fear of being apart from the crowd)? other stimuli?

your thoughts and comments please.

Check out this chart /survey where a guy uses Facelift Network Statistics Pages info to determine a link between musical taste and SAT scores.
See how you rate.

http://musicthatmakesyoudumb.virgil.gr/

carkins, thanks, i think but what does it mean when i can't understand the graph?

Dunno, Don, although early exposure had a decent amount to do with my own tastes. So did WJR, which back in the 1960s and 70s was the very best radio station in at least the midwest, if not the world. They had shows devoted to jazz, big band, and old-time radio; they played Meat Loaf and the theme from Jaws; they had pretty much every darn thing you could want, and they were incredibly connected with the city of Detroit. A far, far cry from radio stations these days. < /showing my age >

I listened to classical albums, movie soundtracks and Broadway cast albums, Beatles and Motown, folk and rock (e.g., Seger, the Who, Clapton). The radio was my biggest gateway, even moreso than TV. And, except for acquiring a diehard love of folk music and some world music along the way, those genres are still my great loves.

Don, I think the graph shows the SAT scores from low to high (L to R).

Below each score is a list of musical styles and groups that people (according to the Facebook Stat Pages) with that SAT score liked to listen to.
Some of course overlap or spread into the next score column.

Of course the sampling is only for people on Facebook who shared their musical preferences so is probably skewed in favor of the younger segment of the population.

My opinion is that we are all born with a certain audio sensitivity or preference, maybe shaped genetically or even in the womb.
To some, certain sounds are soothing, to others, the same sounds may be a fingernail on a chalkboard.

Starting with this base our musical tastes then begin to form, influenced by some or all of the influences stated above.
Bottom line is some people may never like certain types of music because they conflict with their "inner harmonic".

Hey maybe I could write a New Age philosophy book! Would come with a free pair of hip waders.

Check out these quotes about music and taste, pretty funny.

http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/music_quotes.html

Enjoy,
Carkins

another interesting thing with me is...my taste is still maturing. i have new desires to see a broadway musical and even an opera. i credit my biab friends for broadening my music appreciation. i now listen to a far wider range of genres after gentle exposure on these forums. perhaps a part of the reason is that i like the person first then i get a desire to share their "musical space."

Tom,

WJR was a staple in our household, with J.P. McCarthy on in the mornings. I don't remember them playing Meatloaf, but I do remember the jazz shows (tried to look up the host's name - I think it might have been Jimmy Launce, but I'm not sure), and Kaleidoscopes.

There's a pretty good wikipedia article on WJR - including discussion about the various music shows that were on.

For me, I sneaked the transistor radio under the pillow at night and listened to CKLW originating out of Windsor - because they played rock - about the only AM station that would in the Detroit area back in the day. One of the funnier twists of that whole thing was that I remember that CKLW played the Bay City Rollers, who weren't from Bay City.

-Scott

I think it boils down to what you are capable of emulating. It starts off pretty simple and develops with expertise. When your musical prowess outgrows your chosen genre you move on to something more interesting.

I agree with the exposure theory, but would add a couple of things. I think some of it has to do with where you grew up. In my early days in the inner city of Cleveland Ohio, all I really heard was Motown and various variations of R&B. I am sure the kids in Texas and Oklahoma grew up with a steady diet of country music. New Orleans and St Louis had the jazz, Chicago had the blues.... you get the idea.

It is also tied to your music education. In studying music, they teach a concept called "levels of listening". The more you know about the theory of the music, the deeper the level you can listen to it.

Listen to Yesterday. As you listen, count the measures of 4. Most songs have a cadence that comes out to "8", meaning 8 phrases of 1-2-3-4. Count them off in Yesterday. You find it is only 7. That's what makes that song unique. Your average Beatles fan hearing it on the radio has no idea what any of that 7 phrase movement means, and it doesn't matter that they don't, just that they like the song.

Listen to Beethoven's 5th. That signature line that phonetically sounds like dah dah dah daaaaaahhhhhh.... dah dah dah daaaaaahhhhhh.... It is very recognizable and people all over the world can tell you that they recognize it as Beethoven's 5th. However, what makes that signature passage musical? If you listen to the piece all through that movement, with any ear training at all you soon realize that you are hearing the same minor 3rd interval over and over and over and over, just with a different base note. Your average listener will not pick up on that, and it doesn't matter, just that they appreciate the piece.

Here we have a very fine outdoor venue known as Blossom Music Center. There is some pavilion seating and a big hill where people come and spread their blankets and listen under the stars. The Cleveland Orchestra does a summer concert series there. About 6 years ago, they were doing a Mozart program, and Mozart's "A Little Night Music" (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) is my absolute favorite piece of music. I have the score to that symphony, so I bought my lawn ticket, put the music in a briefcase, and went to the performance. I got there, spread out my blanket, and got the music ready. It is all taped together accordion style so I can turn pages like the pleated bellows on the accordion. So 8pm came, they started the performance, and I sat there moving my finger along the score following along with the music. Everybody around me was looking at me like I was crazy. Except for one 40-ish woman who was watching very intently. Between the movements, she leaned over and said "You really know what all the means, don't you?" and I explained that yes I did. At the intermission we started to talk and she said how she always wanted to learn how to play the piano. My reply was "So why can't you? Nobody comes from the womb knowing how to play music. Or drive. Or cook. Or hit a golf ball. It is just repetition. If you are willing to put in the time, you can do anything you want to do." We exchanged business cards and I didn't give it another thought. The next year in about March, she called me. She had started piano lessons 2 weeks after that concert, and in just that 9 months that transpired she was playing piano in her church and having friends over for singalong nights.

Just because of that chance encounter at a concert, she developed an interest, and her "level of listening" changed.

Classical, rock, blues, jazz, country, rap, show tunes.... if you are not exposed to it, you have no chance to appreciate it. Whether you do or not is where the choice comes in, and how much you appreciate it is where the tangent points come in. I appreciate lyric writing, unique chord changes, and polyrhythms, things I might take for granted had I not studied music.

So after that dissertation, the answer comes down to "It's a combination of things."

CKLW - In the '60's I'd wait up with the transistor under the pillow trying to get that station. It came in around 9:30, we are about 120 miles from Windsor. I never figured out how I found that station, nor why I had to listen to it when I could.

I moved WAY north near James Bay and about 1 a.m. I could get it for about an hour or so. A long time ago.

Now I just seem to stay tuned to www.jazz.fm most of the time, with a bit of CBC Radio 2 which due to a format change has gone stupid and away from the weekday allday classical format.

If I'm not too lazy I put in a CD, but that means getting up and doing it. LOL.

Tinnitus is driving me mad, one hour at a time, and I hate going anywhere people are talking a lot, I can't understand anyone unless they are right in front of me.

I went out to a steady 'gig' I have once a month and the room had a 3 manual organ with a full set of pedals. I played it last month. I get there this time and they had a Lowrie with one of those new fangled casette players and a huge percussion section, all attached to an outboard Leslie the size of a fridge. (Not quite a full one, just enough for an afternoon's Canadian beer requirement.)

They took out the other one, stuck this thing in, and didn't plug anything in or turn it on. Good thing I brought my Korg and keyboard amp just in case. More than once the organ didn't start. (That was 2 years ago, the B4 that was there had problems with the starter motor.)

After the meeting I plugged the organ in and fixed all the switches, someone turned every last thing on, I felt like a jet pilot getting ready to take off.

I have several editions of the Norton Scores (Not to be confused with the Norton from these here parts...) They now come with a set of CD's. They are scores of Classical Pieces with parts highlighted to make them easy to follow, so if the violins are prominent that part is shaded, and if the Basses and Chelli (made that word up eh?) get a part the shading goes there. If you buy the older editions used that's a good deal. They are trying to get universities to always use the next edition so that someone can't copy them for school, which I don't like either way. It inflates the cost of texts. The music profs I know have started to refuse to make the students pay for the textbooks, and they just do without.

Scott -- yep, back when "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" was first a single, J.P. played it. The afternoon host was Jimmy Launce, but for jazz I was thinking more along the lines of the Jack Harris Open House Show. My mom was a nightclub singer in the late 50s and early-to-mid 60s, and she was on that show a couple of times, and I even got to sing with her once. (Couldn't tell you a thing about it -- I was seven at the time.)

And Karl Haas' Adventures In Good Music, and Mike Whorf's Kaleidoscope, and Jay Roberts' Night Flight 760 (which became Night Flight 76 after the Bicentennial), and Tiger Baseball, and and and....

And you and John are correct -- CKLW was the other really amazing station in town. All that Forbidden Rock And Roll, Some Of It Sung By Black People. Amazing stuff.

(John, I think I know why you could get CKLW from where you are: there simply weren't as many interfering signals back then. I went to Toronto with my dad in 1972, and we could pick up WJR just fine.

(And, I don't want to talk about CBC2's format change. Except to agree with you. Stupid, stupid, stupid.)

We used to listen to CKLW here in Cleveland too in the evenings. That was our big thrill because it had some kind of silly "forbidden" property to it because it came from what seemed like a million miles away back then. (How cool. We can listen to radio from CANADA!!! Not understanding then that as the crow flies, Cleveland to Windsor is like 94 miles.... and nothing but lake between here and there.) This was just about the time that that "other radio band" was coming into vogue. We had a station here at 93.1 FM named WZAK, and while during the day it was a lot of ethnic programming, largely for the Slavic languages but 50% English, until 10pm when Doc Nemo's Underground came on to the sound of Bob Seger's "Heavy Music". It was a one hour show that was the only place in town to hear non "commercial" cuts from Cream, Hendrix, The Who, The Blues Project..... it caught on quickly with the musician community and lasted a couple of years until the homogenization of radio started. It took about 15 years until WZAK sold out and became just another station, and they are now a terrible station, programmed from a distant control center like most, and playing the awful sexist, racist, angry crap that sells advertising aimed at the urban listener base.

I would hate to be a kid in this society. It's hard enough being an adult in this society... Poverty, unemployment, illiteracy due to parents not caring enough to make the kids go to school.... so many of these kids really have no chance of becoming anything but the next generation of parent who breeds more kids into a progressively declining state. Music offered our generation a place to where we could retreat. Now the music is so negative, praising domestic violence, drug abuse, killing.... makes me sad after growing up with "All you need is love...."

I don't fit any particular genre. At this time in my life I like country and rock. Not all. Just the stuff you want to dance to and rub bellies together.

When I was a kid I listened to what we called "Western Music". Then "Western Gospel". Next it was big band and swing. Then classical and show tunes. I was in the school orchestra and played violin. Then I moved to rock 'n roll near the end of the the 50's and start of the 60's. I never liked pop swing or jazz tho'. Pop swing sounded too sterile and jazz didn't even feel like it had a good rhythm to me. It just didn't move me.

In my adult years I went from rock 'n roll to what was happening during the mid 60's on thru the 80's, all the while performing myself. It was hard to get a gig with local bands because they were all into someone or something. It was really hard to get with musicians who were into dancing music.

For awhile, while I lived in Seattle until the end of the 50's and start of the 60's, I got into surfing music. Loved The Ventures, The Beach Boys, Link Wray, etc. But when I moved to Baton Rouge in the 70's due to being in the military) my style changed to Soul and older Rock 'N Roll. Elvis Presley stuff, etc. Then I got into the 70's Disco sound until I quit the music scene in 1978.

I was living in Seattle again from 1975 to 1982 and then moved back to Louisiana, where I've been ever since. My taste changed to country. I found I just don't care for the newer rock media and loud noise. I became en-rapt with the country scene. Music was changing to that style and was very popular in Louisiana. And that's where I've been ever since. Because of my huge background in music genre's I can play a lot of different songs, so long as they're dance type music. Some things never change.