The Science of Music Taste

Why you love punk and heavy metal, while I can’t stand both.

Every year around late March, when spring announces its imminent arrival, I find myself returning to one song. Call it a ritual of sorts, a yearly fixture in my calendar. I’m awoken- earlier than usual- by bright beams of sun and proceed to turn on my speakers, soon to be filled with the vocals of John Lennon and psychedelic vibe of The Beatles. I light a cigarette on my balcony, take a drag and start singing along… Here comes the sun, here comes the sun. As the song, along with its feel-good factor fades away, I want more. And I wonder why is that exactly? Is my brain associating it with the incoming pleasures of spring, or the serotonin provider that is the sun? Are the chord progressions striking a chord with my brain chemistry in some mysterious way? Or do I owe the enjoyment of this particular song to hearing it played at home when I was very young? Perhaps I’ve revealed the determinants of my personal musical preferences: sense of environment, melody, memory.

But there must be more to it.

Growing Up with Music

There exists a period in the process of growing referred to as ‘the ‘reminiscence bump’. It’s a time of self-discovery, a formative episode when you develop social bonds and identity.

Hormones go nuts. Your brain registers important memories while the songs you listen to become wired into these experiences, forming a soundtrack to a critical life period. These songs can evoke deep feelings of nostalgia. Personally, I find that the single most powerful musical experience. But does your musical taste ‘grow’ throughout your entire life, or is it essentially defined in some time period? The answer, perhaps surprisingly, points to the latter.

Growing up often means developing appreciation not just for new songs, but whole new genres as well as a deeper understanding of music.

But

Does that process of development last throughout life? How likely is it that your taste will continue to change? These scientists have shown that after the age of 24, taste is unlikely to change significantly. Other estimates of the time when this happens slightly differ, but usually revolve around the mid-20s to early 30s. Certain people, like musicians, are more immune to this than others. They keep exploring. But for most of us, after this period, neurological circuits in the brain are near full development, while our psychological identities are nearly formed.

“A sense of wonder is dependent on an ability to experience surprise…” — says writer Larry Wallace — “and if as an adult you’re still surprised by certain things, then you haven’t been keeping up the way you should.”

Also, after a certain age, the social pressures and influences which push you to explore new genres are past their peak, as you have by now likely tightened your circle of friends:

“No longer casting about for an anthem, no longer trying on identities like new clothes, the well-adjusted adult is far less likely to succumb to the sound of a musician’s soul, unless it’s a sound that got to him before his ultimate emancipation.”

So, if taste is likely to be formed in your mid 20s, when does it begin taking shape?

There are slightly different estimates about this, but the consensus seems to revolve around the early teen years. In its study, The New York Times references the age of 14 as the starting point for developing taste. That would make sense, with the age being a time when “hormones make everything we’re experiencing, including music, seem very important”, says Daniel J. Levitin, an expert in developmental cognition.

You experience a series of important ‘first times’, friends start having a serious impact. Personally, I remember my motivation for discovering rap music in depth. My friends seemed to know far more about the genre than I, which in turn made me feel excluded from certain conversations. I was determined to learn as much as I could to catch up and participate, and I ended loving the genre in the discovery process. It wasn’t long before I went through a period of listening almost exclusively to rap, which thankfully has since changed.

Defining oneself often means defining what you’re not. Who was I? A rap fan who disliked heavy metal. That has thankfully since changed.

Wealth, political leaning , linguistic ability: all correlate with musical preference

Meanwhile, a 2003 university of Texas study has linked musical taste with factors like personality, socioeconomic status and values. The authors divided musical genres into four categories —

a.) reflective and complex (jazz, classical, folk),
b.) intense and rebellious (rock, alternative, heavy metal)
c.) rhythmic and energetic (rap, funk, electronica and dance) as well as
d.) upbeat and conventional (country, pop)

and found interesting correlations:

Jazz and folk (reflective and complex music) listeners tended to be relatively open to new experiences, displayed a high degree of emotional stability and perceived themselves as highly intelligent. They were also relatively poorer than other respondents.

Rock and heavy metal (intense and rebellious music) enthusiasts were more likely to be extroverted, driven and scored high on the ‘social dominance spectrum’. This means their personalities tended to be more assertive and dominant in a social setting.

Lovers of rhythmic and energetic music, such electronica were often politically liberal, had agreeable personalities, and perceived themselves as physically attractive.

And finally, conventional — pop and country music listeners — displayed higher self-esteem, were relatively wealthier and politically conservative. They also tended to be less intelligent and displayed lower levels of verbal ability.

Mainstream Music Is Often Made to Be Mainstream

Part of the explanation of the phenomenon of Popular music lies in The mere exposure effect: listening to something repeatedly will make you enjoy it. That’s why you hear the same song on the radio over 20 times a day and though you may not admit it, your brain secretly likes it.

There are of course many artists who have achieved massive success thanks to talent and being that good. Others (DJ Khaled? XDD), not so much. Is DJ Khaled objectively bad? Yes, but there’s no way I can prove that :D

Culture and Geography Matter to Sound Perception

A lot of music theory today is based on the ideas of ancient Greek mathematicians like Pythagoras who theorized that musical melody and harmony — and the pleasures we derive from them — can be explained through mathematics. The laws of aesthetics are written in nature. Examining different sound frequencies through ratios, Pythagoras noticed that certain combinations of sounds are more pleasing to the ear than others. Pairs of sounds that combine to form simple ratios on the frequency spectrum (2:1, 3:2) create harmonies that are considered consonant (pleasing) to our ears. But when the ratios get more complex (16:15 for instance), we tend to perceive the sounds as tense, clashing and ultimately unpleasant.

The implication being that certain melodies are universally and innately pleasing to human beings.

But a 2016 study by Josh McDermott and others from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT) has put the universality of Pythagorean ratios in doubt, suggesting instead that our perception of melody is actually culturally and geographically conditioned. The team from MIT conducted an experiment by playing both ‘dissonant’ and ‘consonant’ combinations of notes to volunteers from the United States on the one hand, and the indigenous Tsimane tribe from the Amazonian part of North-western Bolivia on the other. Tsimane villages are extremely remote places, closed off from significant outside cultural influence. The results, published in the journal Nature revealed that while US participants — half of them musicians — rated the consonant sounds as more pleasant, the Tsiname didn’t display preference: they rated both combinations as equally pleasing.

This would indicate that Pythagoras got it wrong. The mathematician was part of a movement which understood human perceptions of aesthetics as written in the natural laws of mathematics. But perhaps the nature of aesthetics and our relation to it cannot be explained by the simplicity of universal mathematical ratios.

The Tsiname tribe, while showing no general preference between consonant and dissonant sounds, did however, indicate a mild preference for one combination of sounds (the so-called perfect fifth). The study’s author believes that: “We need to accept and document the differences in how other cultures hear the world.

More often than not science tends to answer the ‘what’, often leaving out the ‘why’ as a mystery. And even if the ‘why’ is answered, this triggers an endless series of new, consecutive questions.

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