The title of this thread is a brief summary as to what the issue is. I don't know if there ever was a certain study conducted to this specific topic as I'd be interested to see what kind of statistics or conclusions such a case would succumb to.

Now, do you think musical tastes are subject to developing themselves through environment or is it just a matter of personal taste and natural selection to someone. The alternative would be saying that both the environment in which someone is set in along with his personal taste are both determining factors as to what kind of music this person will stumble upon which is what I believe.

Pop music being a huge presence in society through its extensive exposure on the media (radio, television, etc.) is very influential because it takes an imposing role in our environment nowadays. The majority of people might have a predisposition to liking pop music because they find it entertaining but the fact of the matter is that it is largely publicised and is exposed to everyone.

Metal, on the other hand, isn't exposed as much because it is simply less popular. Here's where it gets interesting and paradoxical. If metal would be the ideal representation of music in the media, would the majority of people end up liking it ? All notions of popular and commercial music put aside.

This topic can go a long way, what are your opinions ?

A little of both, Ill give my own personal expirences in this:
I was raised on Grunge and Alternative Rock (Nirvana, STP, Smashing Pumpkins), naturally, being a child, I decided this was my favortie music. As I grew, I kept the love for alternative music. My life was shit, im not going to lie, I began feeling a lot of emotional pain and I needed a way out. Then one day I discovered metal, a music form that understands me. As I continued to explore this new found life I was prone to alternative forms of this, combing my original love and my new love of metal. As anyone who knows me on here will tell you, all my favorite bands are listed under the "alternaitve" genre of metal. SOAD, RATM, Slipknot, Manson, etc. So basically eviorment pushed me into the the direction I needed, but I was naturaly understanding of this genere.
Sorry for the autobiography

Written by Guest on 19.04.2010 at 04:22

A little of both, Ill give my own personal expirences in this:
I was raised on Grunge and Alternative Rock (Nirvana, STP, Smashing Pumpkins), naturally, being a child, I decided this was my favortie music. As I grew, I kept the love for alternative music. My life was shit, im not going to lie, I began feeling a lot of emotional pain and I needed a way out. Then one day I discovered metal, a music form that understands me. As I continued to explore this new found life I was prone to alternative forms of this, combing my original love and my new love of metal. As anyone who knows me on here will tell you, all my favorite bands are listed under the "alternaitve" genre of metal. SOAD, RATM, Slipknot, Manson, etc. So basically eviorment pushed me into the the direction I needed, but I was naturaly understanding of this genere.
Sorry for the autobiography

Yep, I think your case is very descriptive as to how someone will orient himself towards a specific kind of music. As you've said, growing up around grunge and alternative rock has maybe constructed a basic set of tastes in music for you.

However, I being one to appreciate alot of death metal wasn't raised on this genre or anything close to its level of aggression. Although my musical tastes expand far beyond death metal or metal for that matter.

Written by Visioneerie on 20.04.2010 at 03:04

Written by Guest on 19.04.2010 at 04:22

A little of both, Ill give my own personal expirences in this:
I was raised on Grunge and Alternative Rock (Nirvana, STP, Smashing Pumpkins), naturally, being a child, I decided this was my favortie music. As I grew, I kept the love for alternative music. My life was shit, im not going to lie, I began feeling a lot of emotional pain and I needed a way out. Then one day I discovered metal, a music form that understands me. As I continued to explore this new found life I was prone to alternative forms of this, combing my original love and my new love of metal. As anyone who knows me on here will tell you, all my favorite bands are listed under the "alternaitve" genre of metal. SOAD, RATM, Slipknot, Manson, etc. So basically eviorment pushed me into the the direction I needed, but I was naturaly understanding of this genere.
Sorry for the autobiography

Yep, I think your case is very descriptive as to how someone will orient himself towards a specific kind of music. As you've said, growing up around grunge and alternative rock has maybe constructed a basic set of tastes in music for you.

However, I being one to appreciate alot of death metal wasn't raised on this genre or anything close to its level of aggression. Although my musical tastes expand far beyond death metal or metal for that matter.

True, I love Death/Black/Grindcore Metal, even though I never even heard of it till I was 14, instantly fell in love

I think there's a diference between the music that you just find nice and the music you actually feel and can identify with. I mean, it's possible to end up liking a certain music genre because you grew up listening to it everywhere, but maybe there's another music that would be more "suitable" to you and you don't know it. Or maybe you just love that kind of stuff and therefore keep listening to it.

About why people like what they like... I find it hard to explain, I wish to find some studies about that too. I think that people, even if they can be influenced to like one thing or another, are also inclined to prefer certain music genres over anothers. I guess your character and the situations you have been through during your life has something to do with it. In my case, I grew up in a very small village and almost all the music I knew till a certain age was the most popular stuff, mostly mainstream pop. I liked some bands and songs but didn't really love them, so I wasn't as interested in music as I was, for example, in books. I just saw it like entertainment and anything more, it lacked depht and I didn't feel connected to it. And then, much later, I discovered Metal, specially Black and Doom, and it was like if I had been looking for something and I had finally found it. I think that the fact that I didn't have a very happy childhood and that I've always been a bit melancholic and inclined to like "dark" stuff has something to do with the kind of music I listen to now.

Just speculating, and sorry for the autobiography too haha

I think it's a bit of both really. Personally I started listening to metal around summer 2008 [I know, not long xD] and that came simply from playing DragonForce's Through the Fire and Flames on Guitar Hero 3 and developed from there, so that would suggest environment. But I believe it can just as easily be a natural choice.

If you think about it the two are kind of symbiotic. You have to experience it [metal] somewhere before you like it, then, through listening to it regularly you develop your liking for it; then, it becomes your natural preference. They both need eachother to exist in this context in my view.

Autobiographies are completely fine and well accepted in order to explain your point as I cherish hearing them personally as it allows me to better know every on here!

I personally think it is both...a lot of black metal fans grow up with it in their environment...especially in the Norse...so that's a cross between natural and environment because its a "natural environment" due to surroundings...

@Kap'n: If that's the case, this gives me a good excuse to write up a tl;dr post and give you my life story.

For me, it was environmental. My parents are neglectful towards me. They care more about their work than they do about me. I was so attention-deprived and so angry over my attention-deprived state that I wanted to do anything to get their attention. Starting around my 13th birthday, I gained my first tiny exposure to metal in the form of the Daredevil soundtrack (spare your jokes, please). I thought, "This music is extreme and nasty. Maybe now my parents will pay attention to me." They didn't pay attention to me. So I decided to go heavier and buy Metallica's Black Album. My parents still didn't pay attention to me. I then discovered the online music trading scene when I was 14. It was also around this time that I first learned the existence of Slayer through playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Yes, I actually discovered Slayer through playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Even after I downloaded the band's entire discography, my parents still didn't pay any attention to me. Then I discovered Death, and my parents didn't pay any attention to me. Then I discovered Deicide and Cannibal Corpse, and STILL my parents didn't pay any attention to me. Then I discovered Black Metal, and my parents STILL didn't pay any attention to me. Then I started downloading Brutal Death Metal, Grindcore, and Goregrind, pretty much everything from the most extreme end of the metal spectrum, and my parents never paid any attention to me. At this point, I just stopped giving a shit about getting my parents' attention, and I was now listening to metal because I liked it.

Personally, I have always been drawn to hard and heavy music with an epic flair. When I discovered metal, it was as if I had finally discovered something that I had been looking for all my life. After that, my inclination towards heavy music became more of a love affair with it, and finally it evolved to a stage of near religious devotion to heavy music. It is now more than just an liking of it. It feels like it is part of me and somehow always has been. Perhaps my feelings about metal can be compared to the way extremely religious people feel about their deity. It feels like a completely natural part of my life and my devotion to heavy riffs feels like something that's always been there in some form. So, I guess you can say that listening to metal is my way of seeing God, so to speak.

So yeah, for me the discovery of metal was bound to happen sooner or later, and when I was 14, it finally happened. Since then it has most definitely changed my life and made me a better person.

Both. I always preferred music that was heavier, I think it was my uncle blasting korn and system of a down in my ears since I was 8. But due to our being in a country town, the only thing I heard of was post grunge, nu metal, and metalcore. The liking of death metal and black metal seemed to be sunned even by people that seemed open minded. One day, on jjj's metal racket, I heard opeth, which was the perfect mix of melody and heaviness. Since I'm a student, I had heaps of free classes, and loads of internet access, so due to my taste in bands like Yes, Rush etc, I looked up Prog archives and found a band called Maudlin of the Well (The greatest band ever.) On one if the forums this site was mentioned, so I used this site to further my metal experience.

I doubt genetics has much to do with it. In most cases of nature vs. nurture, I lean more on the nurture side. In this case, saying music taste is natural (beyond the fact that humans as a species recognize rythm and notes, and hear sound within a certain spectrum) would require actual hard evidence of genetics. Otherwise it's pretty arbitrary. The fact that you've "always" liked a certain type of music says absolutely nothing about your genetically dictated brain chemistry or whatever.

So I say environment. Can the roots of your music taste go pretty deep into seemingly unrelated childhood experiences? No doubt. The preference major or minor chords, or emphasis rythmic patterns are probably fairly deep-rooted. Is it dictated or guided by different human genes? It's not impossible, but it's BS to say so without evidence.

@Insineratehymn: Well, that would explain my parents too a bit...they always cared more about their work than me and I felt as if they raised employees rather than children because I always worked for their company...and they constantly argue about everything, you yeah...environmental for me too...