For this installment of the award winning Topic of the Week
TOTW series you will be answering this question:
What influences your taste in music?Actually, scratch that. It's a bit too broad. I'll answer it for you: 1) your current environment, 2) your upbringing, and 3) your own personal taste. These are the three major variables that influence musical taste. (This is not necessarily limited to just music however; it applies to pretty much all psychology, sociology, and philosophy.) Here is an explanation of each, accompanied of course with pictures found on google image search:
1) Your current environment concerns where you live. For purposes of this topic, it influences the music you listen to primarily through other people's tastes (peer pressure!), but also through what, if any, type of music is promoted in that area through other means. Example, you live in an area where people your age mostly listen to the Jonas Brothers, or your personal group of friends all listen to the most obscure crap you can find because its rebelling against all the dumb kids who like the JB. Either way, your taste in music will be influenced because you either listen to the same thing as the people around you, or you rebel against it and avoid that type of music.
As for the second part, what type of music is promoted in your area, its basically the same thing as the first, the only thing different is the source. The source in this case is something like the local radio stations, any concerts booked in your area, what traditionally became part of your area's musical culture, etc. Again, you can either accept it or reject it (not 100% in either direction of course!), but either way it is an influence on your taste.
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| 2) Your upbringing is as important as your environment because it deals with what you listened to in the past. For example, when I was younger (like 8-11 years old), I listened mainly to classical music like Beethoven and the sort. Now therefore I have a natural tendancy to steer away from that genre because I no longer find interest in it. It can also work the other way around, say your parents are Polish and they played alot of polish pop around the house when you were younger; you may find yourself interested in hearing more of that sort of music now that you are at the age of comprehending what you are actually listening to.
Basically, what experiences in the past affect what you listen to now?
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3) And finally, Your personal taste, which is not so much a separate category from the other two but rather a result of them. As you grow your taste in music will change naturally, helped along by the above two influences. You may say that personal taste supercedes the above two, and you are probably right, however that personal taste is still a result of the way your taste has been influenced. I include this category as a topic for discussion because while it is a large part of your decision on what to listen to, it is not always present. Take for example you are in the car with one of your friends, when she puts on a song that you've never heard before from a station you don't listen to. You end up enjoying the song, despite it not being (what you originally thought to be) part of your style. That's an example of your environment bypassing your personal taste.
What personal taste does govern is what type of music you enjoy listening to and actively searching out on your own. Example: you like jazz and you look up all sorts of underground clubs in the city that play jazz.
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Very sorry for the long read, and if you are still with me up to this point, I guess you can reply in two ways: first, describe the things which influence your taste according to the categories given (environment, upbringing, personal taste); or second, argue with my appointed categories and perhaps add/subtract any from your response.
One last thing: This is NOT a thread to talk about what kind of music you like, we have enough of those. This is to do some introspection and figure out WHY you like that kind of music.
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[TOTW] What influences your taste in music?