Influencia del Conocimiento Musical Sobre el Gusto Musical

Abstract

The psychology of music can be found within a conceptual and empirical framework that is useful as a reference to explain the human response to it. An important research line of this discipline is the one that studies the musical taste, on which is based this article. The comparison is between musical taste and preferences of musical genres among people with musical education and those without it. The sample was constituted by 104 participants that were divided into two groups: a) individuals with musical formation (MF), with 52 participants (19 women and 33 men); b) individuals without musical formation (WMF). As a result, it was found that music is important in peoples' daily lives, the MF people like music because of musical expression, and their favorite music genre was the highbrow. This contrasts with the WFM people that like music because they find it relaxing- their favorite musical genre is pop. Both groups agree in their favorite musical component- the parts that integrate music. Although the MF group likes the highbrow genre more because of the parts that constitute its structure. Conversely, the WMF group were drawn primarily to the lyrics and rhythm. We can conclude that education is a determining factor in musical taste, and therefore plays a part in the choice of what music we like the most. Since musical tastes change depending on musical education held by the individual. People that have musical education encourage their taste. They use music as an artistic expression resource, and the genres they listen to are what can be considered "highbrow" music. Whereas the people that don’t count with musical knowledge listen to popular music because they want to relax themselves. These individuals spend more time daily listening to music that the vox populli listens to because they like the lyrics and the rhythm.