Danielle Bonnet
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If you haven’t heard, Spotify named Cal Poly the most musically diverse university in the United States.
What this means is that here at Cal Poly, we listen to the widest variety of musical genres of all universities in the nation. We are a musically appreciative and respecting group of people, and this is something to be extremely proud of. But have you ever wondered how each of us arrived upon our diverse musical taste?
The three things I believe most influence our music taste are familiarity, intelligence and active listening.
In this article I will share examples and offer you personal insight to explain your own musical preference.
1. Familiarity
In basic terms, we like the music we’ve heard many times before.
Say your parents constantly played classic rock around the house while you were growing up. You will likely forever hold a soft spot in your heart for Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, despite the album being released 20 years prior to your existence. There is a good chance you would have never listened to classic rock had your parents not familiarized you with the genre.
The same goes for the music our friends, neighbors or employers play.
Since we become familiar with these types of music, we learn to love the music that surrounds us. This reasoning also applies to how pop became so popular. Right now, I can’t go five feet without hearing Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”
This familiarity made me learn the lyrics to this song word for word, whether I wanted to or not. This is why there’s been a recent trend of sampling choruses and beats from formerly successful pop songs.
For example, in Nicki Minaj’s new song “Anaconda,” she generously samples Sir Mix-a-Lot’s classic song “Baby Got Back” (which coincidently also sampled another song called “Technicolor” by Channel One). When hearing “Anaconda,” we listeners are already so familiar with the beat and chorus that Nicki Minaj could say literally anything over it, which of course is what she does, and we would still love her song.
2. Intelligence
Believe it or not, the artist and music genres you actively listen to can actually predict your intelligence level.
A study comparing students’ SAT scores to their music tastes found a correlation between test performance and students’ favorite artists. Students who favored Lil Wayne got the lowest scores compared to everyone else. No offense, but if you are a huge fan of the Shrimp Daddy, you are also likely a few bricks short of a full wall in the intelligence spectrum.
Alternatively, if you are a huge fan of Beethoven: Congratulations. Odds are you have a big ol’ noggin and are, in fact, a genius. Hardcore listeners of classical music scored the highest on the SAT exam. Additionally, if you are a big fan of Sublime, Kanye West, Modest Mouse or Bob Marley — good going, you are all beautifully average individuals. My reasoning for this trend between intelligence and music is based on how our brains perceive the melodic line and chord progressions in a song.
The melody in Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” is just about as simple as they come, making it very easy for the brain to predict what is coming next in the song. Our brains like to achieve song prediction and release satisfaction as dopamine if the prediction is correct.
Meanwhile, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 is an extremely complex piece and contains many different components and harmony changes that are very difficult to predict. Therefore it takes an active brain to predict and enjoy all the changes that occur throughout the symphony.
3. Active Listening
Active listening combines a bit of familiarity and intelligence in the form of song prediction.
If for some bizarre reason you wanted to get into the genre of yodeling, all you would have to do is actively listen to songs from that genre continually. At first, you wouldn’t really appreciate this music, but after repeated listening you would slowly grow to love the songs and genre by actively becoming familiar with it and teaching your brain to predict the harmonies and melodies common to yodeling.
Next thing you know, you’ll be hopping on a plane to head out to the triennial yodeling festival in Switzerland to get your fix.
This type of listening is perhaps the most rewarding because it is not something that comes naturally, and it requires work to appreciate these pieces.
In the end, you begin to like something you never thought you could, consequently expanding your musical taste.
That is why I encourage all of us to continue being the musically diverse individuals we are now known to be. Keep on actively listening to unfamiliar genres and artists and continuing to expand your musical diversity and complexity.