viciouskillersquirrel said:
Number 2) isn't from the article, it's from everyday life. I presented a synthesis of common sense and hard science and you pick apart the common sense because you're trying to interpret ALL of it through the lens of the single paper I provided. I provided the article because you asked about a specific point in my argument.
I'm not interpreting it based on that single article. I've actually done a decent amount of research on the subject of harmony acquisition so I'm interpreting it based on my prior knowledge; I am bringing up that article because you used it to substantiate a point that has very little to do with what the article was about. Until you address that disparity I will continue to bring it up.
Yes, tastes are entirely malleable by the environment you grow up in and the social group you identify with. Otherwise, there'd be a thriving market for Tibetan throat-singing in Europe and Country music sales in urban areas wouldn't be so abysmal. The key is exposure. When you're young, the music you're exposed to will contain a subset that you like. If you're not exposed to a certain genre, element or method of constructing a passage of music during this critical time, you are far less likely to develop a taste for it when you are exposed to it later on.
What children draw from the music they hear is entirely variable and certainly makes it possible (if not probable) that what they hear in their developmental years will not at all line up with what they maximally enjoy from music. At the most basic level, a child can derive seven entirely distinct tonal centers from the major scale alone, two of which are only relevant from a pop context; this makes it exceedingly likely that a child will not be exposed to the genre that they like to hear. It is, of course, not as simple as this (as the tonal centers are not all equally easy to hear) but the notion that the quantity of exposure is directly correlated with taste for any reason other than ignorance is patently false.
Don't forget how the discouragement of your peer group from consuming certain styles of music affects you as well (boys aren't considered manly if they listen to Katy Perry).
I've read many articles that state that younger people can be brought to like a certain sound but none that state that they can be brought to dislike a sound.
I'm talking about simple stuff like the perception that a power chord guitar progression = excitement:
What does this mean, exactly? Chord qualities are analyzed generally by the context that they play within a given progression. You analyzed a chord quality known for its lack of quality and did so entirely within a sentence and without providing any harmonic context in which a power chord may induce "excitement". You may also note that perception to that degree is not at all defined by taste but defined by the culture from which one derives their listening experiences; children as young as four recognize the distinct context-sensitive roles of melody notes and by eleven they generally have a full (albeit unconscious) understanding of harmony for their respective culture (See the article that I referred to in my last post for more information). Therefore, it can be extrapolated that all children sufficiently exposed to western music will perceive stability from a G power chord played in the context of C major.
This kind of analysis is entirely within the realm of music theory. A person raised on western harmony cannot perceive a C major chord over C major as anything but stable and resolute.
an association that someone getting into music during the early 70s might have that someone growing up in the early 60s might lack.
Anyone who associates power chords with excitement doesn't understand either the function of power chords, the function of that statement, or both.
Someone raised in the country might appreciate a certain three-chord progression a lot more than they might appreciate a good beat in a rap song. After a certain age, your tendency to learn to appreciate new elements of music and the music's ability to affect you as intended diminishes.
Someone raised in the country may also appreciate a good beat in a rap song if their enjoyment derived from the music they were raised on was rooted in an uncommon beat they once heard or a syllabic vocal solo. What's your point? This isn't a comment on how musical tastes are developed so much as it is stereotyping.
And no, the way music changes isn't discontinous. I never argued that and your reading that into my post is disingenuous. There's no exact moment in time you can point to and say "Disco died here". Rather, Disco faded into a niche and eventually became something else entirely and Disco fans were left out in the cold slowly over the course of a few years.
I'm reading into it that way because you have posted in a manner that suggests that you don't realize that disco, funk, jazz-influenced rap, and jazz fusion have a lot in common, so that one raised exclusively on funk are likely to find something they enjoy in all four even if they weren't exposed to them at a crucial age. On top of that, you consistently fail to recognize that it is possible for someone who is exposed to none of those four things to come to enjoy all four if they have somehow developed a taste for heavy and active bass elsewhere (very likely if that child grew up in a neighborhood with cars and white kids, for example).
A fan of Disco would find that songs with Disco elements were being played less on the radio and in those that had these elements, the Disco was less prominent.
What's a disco element?
It would eventually get to the point where the listener would try an All Disco All The Time radio station, find they liked it better and switch to it full time. On that station, they'd be less exposed to current popular music (obviously they'd hear it through happenstance but they wouldn't find themselves listening to it avidly) and so they'd end up out of touch with it.
If your argument is that people are generally inept at finding new music, then I have to wonder where "hard science" comes into play here because that has got to be virtually impossible to prove.
All this stuff is simple, intuitive stuff. I've explained it time and again and it's going to take a lot more than a "NO U RONG" to change one iota of it.
This is not simple or intuitive stuff as evidenced by the amount of research that has been put into the subject. Music is complex, and so is the subject of musical acquisition. It cannot be simplified in such vastly generalized statements as the ones you're making and I would be happy to continuously provide you with articles published in scientific journals (like the one in my previous post) to exhibit this fact.
