Musical Taste Research Articles

Possibilities of music preferences measures in younger school age children

The musical-preference framework of a child at younger school age is gradually formed and shaped. The study outlined the possibilities of measuring musical taste at a younger school age and draws attention to the real specifics that this entails. We verified the newly created instrument - Musical Preference Questionnaire of Younger Pupils - MPQ-YP on 84 pupils (n=84) aged from 6 to 10 years (Mage=8.23). The 3-factor solution, which divides MPQ-YP into 3 categories of music genres - reflective and unconventional music; energetic and rhythmic music; optimistic and complex music, turned aout to be satisfactory. Psychometric properties are adequate, MPQ-YP seems to be sufficiently valid (construct and content validity) and reliable (measure of internal consistency and split-half reliability). Pilot descriptive results of younger schoolchildren's musical taste provide information about recognized musical genres and their preferences. The findings can be applied to the practice of music educators, music philetics and music therapists.

Psychoacoustic characteristics of music soundtracks moderate juice taste perception

Eating and drinking constitute the most multisensory aspect of our daily lives. Altering external sensory factors, particularly auditory stimuli, has been suggested as a promising factor for influencing taste perception. In this context, this study investigated the effect of music on the taste of orange juice in a multisensory and controlled indoor environment laboratory (Sens i-Lab). We conducted a juice-tasting experiment, focusing on individuals' flavour perception while exposed to eight music soundtracks that were created, manipulating three sonic attributes (Articulation, Tempo and Pitch). The audio stimuli underwent analysis using various psychoacoustic parameters, including sound pressure level, loudness, sharpness, roughness, fluctuation, and tonality. Correlation analysis revealed specific patterns between the average taste ratings of orange juice and the psychometric characteristics of eight music soundtracks. The sweet flavour exhibited negative correlations with roughness. Besides, the sour and bitter taste showed positive correlations with sound level.

Cultural capital, standardised testing and East Asian education: The transposition of disposition of Taiwanese elite students

Cultural capital has been an essential concept for educational stratification research. While several studies suggest that in East Asian educational contexts, cultural capital may exhibit less emphasis on aesthetics, there remains a need for in-depth exploration of such orientation. To fill this gap, this article examines non-aesthetic subspecies of cultural capital by exploring how standardised testing, a predominant educational institution in East Asia, shapes a distinct embodied cultural capital – a pragmatic learning disposition. We examine two cases where Taiwanese academically elite high school students adapt their standardised testing-driven dispositions to distinct contexts: a different activity domain and an alternative educational field. The first explores how elite students transpose the disposition shaped by standardised testing to their participation in rock music activities. Our research reveals that their academic learning experiences fostered a disposition for honing precise exam skills, which influenced the trajectory of their musical taste development, along with the accumulation of technical capital. The second case involves elite students experienced in open-ended mathematics competitions, who later enrol in French preparatory classes for admission to French grandes écoles. These students have difficulty shedding their pragmatic disposition, which is deeply rooted in standardised testing, but hardly suits the French preparatory class. Disposition transposition and its hysteresis effect across contexts can serve as a useful methodological tool for cultural capital studies, enabling an exploration of emerging technical subspecies of cultural capital and the associated pragmatic dispositions, thereby shedding light on the diverse relationships among students’ subspecies of embodied cultural capital.

The state of formation of vocal-pedagogical culture among future music teachers

The article analyzes the level of formation of vocal pedagogical culture among future music teachers. The formation of a vocal pedagogical culture is an important task that helps them effectively train and educate students in the field of vocal art. There is a problem in the education of students – a decrease in the level of artistic and aesthetic needs. Most students prefer to listen to samples of low-quality mass youth music that does not meet the criteria of artistry. One of the reasons for determining the unformed musical and aesthetic taste of the younger generation is the lack of information about artistic examples of vocal culture and domestic and foreign performance. In this context, special attention should be paid to the training of vocational education specialists who are capable of creating an alternative to pop culture, preserving and enhancing the best traditions of professional musical art. To solve this problem, it is necessary to obtain special theoretical knowledge that will contribute to the development of the performing culture of the future music teacher. In the framework of our research, the concept of vocal pedagogical culture is considered as a certain integrative quality of a person, which includes a value attitude towards the heritage of humanity in the field of various types of singing activities, a high level of professional abilities (in the field of vocal pedagogy), a high vocal and performing level, as well as creative component in vocal and pedagogical skills.

The underground: Alternative scenes and clothing styles in Costa Rica during the 1990s

During the 1990s, Costa Rica experienced a growth in young bands performing emergent music genres. From a post-subcultural approach, this article argues that a varied array of young bands from different musical genres and scenes created a sense of unity and support that led to the creation of what was known as ‘the underground scene’ during the 1990s. The ‘underground scene’ served as a platform that opened up a series of spaces that were alternative to the mainstream, where youth groups were able to perform their music and create new styles. In these new spaces, members of the underground developed new clothing styles linked to their musical tastes. By interviewing members of different alternative rock and reggae bands, information was gathered and analysed to visualize the development of these scenes. Members of the scene established their clothing styles based on their icons and could be identified within a specific genre due to their dress. Aesthetics were a mix of influences and bands that came directly from western countries. Americanas (thrift stores) was youth’s primary outlet for clothing hunting and they adopted current styles directly from the United States.

Music and political identity salience in Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election

ABSTRACT This article addresses the nexus between musical taste and political identity salience, and how (if at all) that informs citizens’ own perception and performance of national (cultural) identity in Nigeria. It specifically interrogates the extent to which Nigerians signalled political affiliations and identities in the sonic and textual references of selected 2023 presidential election campaign songs. Following a synthesis of the discourse on political and cultural identity, Nigerian musical arts and culture, and with specific analytical reference to three preselected election campaign songs, we demonstrate that, beyond party ideology, campaign promises, money, and literacy level, Nigeria’s voting public activate and perform political identity salience when messages and objects of cultural and socio-political value align and are communicated in song.

Mangkoan Sound: the Concept of Traditional Talempong Prohibition in Luhak nan Tigo Minangkabau

Aesthetically, the aim of this research is to reveal the musical taste and musical standards of tuo talempong in alignment talempong tradition – mangkoan sound. By ontology and epistemology; form music talempong in life public Already Lots revealed by the researchers previously. However there are one component important that hasn't been touched by researchers, which is related to draft alignment t alempong tradition in Luhak Nan Tigo Minangkabau. Principle base alignment talempong related with the musical taste and musical standards of the tuo (elders) of talempong in Luhak Nan Tigo Minangkabau. Based on qualitative research principles; The researcher becomes the main instrument in collecting research data,includinginitial study and problem analysis, primary data collection through participant observers – ethnography, in-depth interviews – free and structured, documentation, and data analysis.The analysis was carried out on musical taste and musical standards that were found in the field. Research results show that ' mangkoan the sound ' is A draft alignment talempong tradition in Luhak Nan Tigo Minangkabau.

Adolescents’ Music Tastes in the Streaming Era: The Case of Belgium

The sociological literature about music considers youth as a crucial period for the development of one’s music tastes and identity. Yet, scarce research has documented the taste profiles of adolescents and their composition in relation to identity characteristics, especially in the current streaming era. In this article, we integrate different strands of literature analyzing the role of music tastes in identity building to define and segment the composition of contemporary adolescents’ taste profiles. We employed data from a cross-sectional study among Belgian adolescents ( n = 533, Mage (SD) = 15.3 (1.6), 61.1% girls, 83.2% Western European) and used latent class analysis to derive their taste profiles. Multinomial logistic regression subsequently segmented the socio-cognitive, social, and digital characteristics of these profiles. Our findings contextualize adult taste profiles among adolescents and the streaming landscape, shedding light on cultural tastes as gendered technologies of self-presentation.

Application of recommendation system based on fuzzy logic in music culture communication and music teaching management

Music has been utilized throughout history as a medium for cultural communication and artistic expression, embodying various nations’ and societies’ ideologies and experiences. Music culture communication is crucial for encouraging cultural diversity and understanding and developing social cohesion and community building among people. Music teaching management is the process of setting up, arranging, and executing music education programs in a manner that successfully teaches students the essential skills and information necessary for becoming proficient musicians. Users’ exact preferences for various areas of attraction cannot be determined, nor are users’ choices for traditional music recommendations sufficiently accurate. A recommender system estimates or anticipates people’s preferences and offers appropriate recommendations. First, the sparsity problem emerges when insufficient data is accessible for the recommendation, and the coverage is one of the key drawbacks of social labeling. Cold start issues might be difficult since new music learners might not have given sufficient details about their musical tastes. Hence, the Hybridized Fuzzy logic-based Content and Collaborative Music Recommendation (HFC2MR) system is proposed to create personalized music teaching plans that are effective and engaging for each student based on their music preferences and learning outcomes. Enhanced Fuzzy C-Means clustering is used in collaborative recommendations to group users based on their shared musical tastes and to provide each user with more individualized, accurate music recommendations based on other users’ listening habits and preferences in the same cluster. Subsequently, an assessment of the recommender system using parameters like accuracy, precision, f1-score, and recall ratio is shown with optimal cluster selection. The coverage ratio is used to compare experimental data based on skill capacity covered through the assessment of music teaching. RMSE metric is used to evaluate the accuracy of students’ performance based on music attributes related to teaching goals.

“Knowing these stories”

In this article, I explore the ways participants in underground dance music (UDM) scenes learn about the political, historical, and social context of their leisure pursuit, such as its queer-of-colour roots, gender dynamics, and economic structures. Semi-structured interviews and information horizon mapping with three Toronto UDM scene members revealed that the online and physical spaces of UDM served as information grounds for the participants’ initial serendipitous discovery of social context information, which led to further intentional seeking in books, libraries, and beyond. Established UDM information sources and normative expectations shaped the participants’ information behaviour, leading them to infer the political stances of DJs and other scene participants based on musical taste and identity. Finally, social context information shapes the participants' experiences of UDM, affecting their sense of community, safety, and belonging. The serious leisure perspective has thus far focused on information behaviours related to the pursuit of the hobby itself, such as, in the present context, finding events or learning to DJ. This study opens up a new direction by considering how social context information flows through and shapes the social world of the hobby. As rising mainstream awareness of structural oppressions leads to more people and communities considering how these oppressions manifest in every aspect of their lives, this perspective will be germane to information behaviour studies in several contexts.

The Portuguese Court’s Acquisition of Musical Scores from Italy in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries and the Fundo do Conde de Redondo

ABSTRACT The assembling of a library of musical scores of Italian music and libretti was an enterprise undertaken by the Portuguese court throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The library served a practical need, especially in the wake of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, and expressed the court’s musical taste; as a result, it received significant investment. Information concerning the growth of the library can be found in previous work on the composer Niccolò Jommelli and his heirs, who were involved in sending scores of the composer’s music to Portugal in the 1760s and 1770s. Drawing attention to evidence in Portuguese royal household correspondence that has not been considered fully to date, as well as some of the scores today preserved in two Lisbon libraries, this article offers a wider examination of how music manuscripts came to Portugal from Italy between c.1770 and c.1820.

Music and Personality

In this paper, we will seek to discuss the effect of music on an individual’s personality. We will look at whether there is any correlation between the two and how the music tastes of a person determines their personality. The main objective of this study is to examine the relationship between the Big Five personality traits, i.e., Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional stability, Openness and music preferences namely Mellow, Unpretentious, Sophisticated, Intense and Contemporary. This paper will also focus on the history of music theory in relation to psychological and philosophical theories.

I'm a traditionalist, I Don't like pizza and street food: The relationship between cultural consumption habits and food preferences

According to the stratification theory by Bourdieu, music taste, literary genres read and taste-related patterns such as eating constitute the determinants of cultural consumption of individuals based on their position in their social class and also function as a criterion set to separate or differentiate themselves from other individuals in the same social class. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the cultural consumption patterns of individuals and food preferences within the scope of the stratification theory. This research adopted a multi-methodical research method for this purpose and determined the food consumption preferences of individuals by categorizing them performing clustering analysis within the framework of the stratification theory, and then the cultural consumption patterns of the obtained groups were revealed using multiple correspondence analysis. As a result of the analyses, participants’ food preferences were grouped as traditionalists, yes-sayers, modernists, hedonists and weight controllers. When the results regarding the relationship between cultural consumption and their food preferences are examined, the food group that the traditionalists have been avoiding is pizza and street tastes, while they do not prefer/dislike classical western music, Latin and heavy metal out of music genres, poetry out of literary genres. The individuals in the weight controllers group liked rock music and classical Western music, while they did not like arabesque music and religious music genres. Modernists prefer international cuisine products and fish. While yes-sayers liked religious music in the cluster, they did not like Turkish folk music. Hedonists, on the other hand, avoided from arabesque and protest music genre.

Imagining Women’s Archives of Silent Film Music

Although women comprised the majority of American cinema accompanists during the silent film period (c. 1895–1927), few of their music libraries or compositions have survived, whereas collections created by male cinema musicians dominate the silent film music archives. Women musicians suggested, shaped, and helped define the musical tastes of the time; educated listeners; and showed how music could serve as a creative, narrative, and interpretative force in the cinema. I offer an accounting of extant collections by women accompanists and read their contents and contexts from a feminist perspective. Using hints and fragments found in letters, period trade journals, and catalogs, I then speculate on an imaginary archive, one that collects music composed or played by female silent film musicians whose work has been lost to us, but whose influence in the development of film music is unmistakable.

현대음악으로서의 실용 및 대중음악 분석

Objectives The need for an accurate understanding of the concepts of contemporary music, practical music, and popular music, and the recognition of the necessity for changes in music education based on individual music tastes and preferences, are affirmed. This aims to advocate for a reassessment of music textbooks, particularly in elementary music education, through a quantitative evaluation of practical and popular music content. Furthermore, the proposal emphasizes the necessity for changes in music textbooks through individual assessments of multi-frequent songs.
 Methods Analyze the popular music area included in elementary school music textbooks. We analyzed the songs included in 32 textbooks from 8 different publishers, established the multi-frequent songs, and looked into the characteristics and contents of each song. The need for changes to the songs included in textbooks is confirmed through individual evaluation of the distribution of songs included in music textbooks and the multi-frequent songs.
 Results First, animation music accounts for 26.4% and movie music 25.8%, which accounts for more than 50%. Second, there are 121 foreign songs and 61 domestic songs, with POP (13.2%) followed by K-POP (9.9%), and there are many POP in the singing field. Third, there are differences between textbooks, Fourth, the content related to the music industry is insufficient, and it is included in 5 textbooks (out of 32), and Fifth, there are problems with the content and release period of multi-frequent songs. Lastly, since multi-frequent songs are repeatedly included in middle and high school textbooks, a feasibility study on this aspect is also necessary.
 Conclusions There is a need to realistically reflect the songs included in textbooks, and for this, it is necessary to reexamine the songs included in textbooks. There is a need for a change in perception of popular music education due to scientific development, and a practical approach to the methods and content needed for future popular music education is needed.

Music consumption and uses in Japan

This research investigates the relationship between music consumption and cultural dimensions within a Japanese context. Since Japan is the second largest music market globally, it is surprising that there is little focus on those factors often examined in cross-cultural research that might mean Western findings do not extrapolate well. A questionnaire using established measures of tightness–looseness, relational mobility, and ideal affect was used to test three main research questions. RQ1 was that there should be a relationship between cultural dimensions and musical taste, and this was fully supported. RQ2 was that cultural dimensions should relate to participants’ goals of music consumption, and this was largely supported. RQ3 was that there should be a relationship between socioeconomic status and musical taste, but this was not supported. The findings also supported several more specific research questions concerning how specific uses of music ought to relate to specific cultural dimensions. The findings of the study help us better understand the way music is consumed in relation to specific cultural dimensions in the context of Japan and beyond. It also extends the literature concerning music and cross-cultural psychology where prior research has not considered these dimensions within the context of music consumption.

Sounding Habitus: An Interdisciplinary Study on the Factors Influencing Musical Preferences

This paper employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of 'habitus' as a theoretical framework to scrutinize the multifaceted elements that influence musical preferences and inclinations in individuals. Drawing from an interdisciplinary approach, this study weaves historical accounts with empirical analyses conducted on scholarly articles primarily in sociology and educational studies. It seeks to explore how the constitutive factors of habitus, specifically education, Social Class Background, Cultural Background, and Ideology, affect one’s taste in music. The paper argues that these variables are not merely incidental but play an integral role in shaping a person’s musical predilections. Through a detailed examination of academic literature and historical contexts, the study further contends that understanding the complex web of these contributing factors can offer profound insights into not just musical tastes but also social hierarchies and cultural legitimacies. The findings aim to contribute to the existing discourse in both sociology of music and educational theory, offering a nuanced perspective on how identity is musically constructed and socially embedded.

Musical Genre Preferences among School Students: The Role of the Family Background and Musical Instruments Learning

The study presents the results of research that examines the popularity of videos representing four different musical styles among students aged 9–19 ( N = 1159). The measuring instrument was a self-developed online questionnaire that explores students’ musical genre opinions based on four types of music videos: street music, rock music, classical music, and folk music. In relation to the musical pieces, we inquired about background aspects, with a specific focus on engagement in instrument presentations and the viewing of music programs. We analyze the data considering the context of learning a musical instrument and attitudes toward instrument training and family background. Findings show that the perception of genres varies significantly between students who play instruments and those who do not, as well as based on their family background. Among the seven groups of students, encompassing both instrument learners and non-learners, a distinct pattern emerges those who neither learn nor have a desire to learn an instrument exhibit notably lower fondness for musical compositions. Furthermore, significant differences are apparent among the students based on the educational level of their parents. The implication of this study lies in its revelation of how instrument training and parental education significantly shape students’ musical opinions, underscoring the need for targeted interventions to enhance music education experiences and enrich young individuals’ musical tastes.

Amusia e afasia expressiva: a história de Maurice Ravel

ABSTRACT The French composer, Maurice Ravel, at the peak of his career, showed signs of a progressive disorder that affected his ability to function with verbal and musical language, as noted by the neurologist Théophile Alajouanine. The worsening of the disease led to a craniotomy, performed in 1937, which failed to reveal the cause of his illness, and he died shortly thereafter. A lack of post-mortem neuropathological evidence precluded a definitive diagnosis of the illness, which remained enigmatic. Speculations about the precise diagnosis of Ravel's neurological disease have been largely based on Alajouanine's observations, which included aphasia and amusia, mostly expressive, and ideomotor apraxia, while musical judgement, taste, and memory remained relatively intact, implying different neuroanatomical substrates. A possible subform of frontotemporal lobar degeneration complex was the diagnostic suggestion of many authors. His untimely death deprived the world of this remarkable musician, and the music that remained trapped in his mind.

The Measurement and Coherence of Taste: Analysing the Music, Art, and Literary Tastes of French Academics

By analyzing the responses given by a population of French academics to three open questions about their favourite musicians, writers, and painters, this article examines the frequent use in the sociology of cultural practices of genre classifications as indicators of taste. Do the theories of eclecticism and dissonance stand up to analysis when we move away from genre classifications that are widely assigned between legitimate, average, and popular in favour of questions that relate to a preference for certain artists? How should we differentiate between artists within the space of taste and thus determine the existence or not of relative unity? Using network analysis, the article shows that each sphere of taste has its own organization according to differing supply structures and their respective fields of production. Meanwhile, it is possible for tastes in music, literature, and art to intersect, and to obtain categories of taste that are relatively coherent from the point of view of the position of the different artists in the space of the tastes expressed. These categories of taste are also related to the social characteristics of respondents. Finally, we observe that “cultural transgressions”—citing preferences for artists from spheres that are distant from one another in terms of legitimacy—occur in music. These transgressions consist in the expression of a taste for musicians who have little legitimacy in combination with very legitimate tastes in literature and art.