Wires & Waves
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- Feb 4, 2006
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Nature vs. Nurture
- Thread starter wwallinga
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Opethian666
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- Sep 17, 2005
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It's probably for a large part nature and a smaller but still important part nurture. Each person has a different way of experiencing the same music and this is dependant on your brain structure which is dependant on your genes obviously, but also on the way you grew up.
For example, some people like aggressive music because it gives them a nice intense feeling, but others hate it because it gives them a bad feeling of anxiety and fear. So the way the musical input is processed in the different brains of the 2 different people leads to the release of different hormones which lead to different biochemical cascades and to different emotional experiences. Your genetic makeup will determine for a large part whether or not you will enjoy or dislike the music (for example much more men listen to the aggressive kind of metal than women, because men in general enjoy violence and agression more). But of course if you were raised up with parents who played nothing but hard rock and the roots of metal, you will perhaps be more likely (because you're used to it and like it) or less likely (because you've grown absolutely sick of it) to enjoy the genre later in life. The same thing probably goes for liking/disliking complex song structures, growled vocals, weird dissonant melodies etc...
For example, some people like aggressive music because it gives them a nice intense feeling, but others hate it because it gives them a bad feeling of anxiety and fear. So the way the musical input is processed in the different brains of the 2 different people leads to the release of different hormones which lead to different biochemical cascades and to different emotional experiences. Your genetic makeup will determine for a large part whether or not you will enjoy or dislike the music (for example much more men listen to the aggressive kind of metal than women, because men in general enjoy violence and agression more). But of course if you were raised up with parents who played nothing but hard rock and the roots of metal, you will perhaps be more likely (because you're used to it and like it) or less likely (because you've grown absolutely sick of it) to enjoy the genre later in life. The same thing probably goes for liking/disliking complex song structures, growled vocals, weird dissonant melodies etc...
Powers
Good Morning USA!
Ah social science, my second true love. The nature vs nurture debate in so far as music, isn't widely discussed as it seems to specific to a particular avenue of human culture. However, if we apply so norms of the general n vs n debate we can assume that it is in fact a little of both. Tke in to account that certain thing which count in our perception of music as a whole, are theorised to be genetic, perfect pitch for example is something which it is theorised people are just born with. Even deeper into the genetics of a musicican is the theory that certain people may not even need to be able to hear to appreiate sound, as sound is essentially just out way of assimilating a set of structured vibrations, Mozart for example was deaf. For me this breaks music down in to something far to sterile and clinical but still it's interesting.
As for nurture it is doubtless that this plays some part in our taste in music in later years, argueable from a post modernists point of view, because nothing actually changes and we simply recycle the previous generation accompliashments in all avenues of culture. On the otherhand it could quite simply be that we just come to like certain sounds rather than others, I'm sure there's some obscure musicological research into this somewhere.
But, consider this, could our parents, family, culture and society we're born into affect us just as easily toward liking certain sounds, as to not liking them? I'm talking of course about the human, particularly in adolescents, need to rebel. Is it just a very strange coincidence that our taste for music which will ultimatly affect what we listen to for the rest of our lives, starts to surface as we enter puberty or just before?
As for nurture it is doubtless that this plays some part in our taste in music in later years, argueable from a post modernists point of view, because nothing actually changes and we simply recycle the previous generation accompliashments in all avenues of culture. On the otherhand it could quite simply be that we just come to like certain sounds rather than others, I'm sure there's some obscure musicological research into this somewhere.
But, consider this, could our parents, family, culture and society we're born into affect us just as easily toward liking certain sounds, as to not liking them? I'm talking of course about the human, particularly in adolescents, need to rebel. Is it just a very strange coincidence that our taste for music which will ultimatly affect what we listen to for the rest of our lives, starts to surface as we enter puberty or just before?
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