When approaching the process of interviewing some of my peers, there were many different assumptions I began with. I had a general feeling that many would enjoy music as a whole, that those who took private lessons would enjoy listening to music played on their principle instrument, and that they would like to continue musical training if possible. As music can play such an important part in many people’s lives, it was interesting to see how the tastes of different people reflected their musical experiences. Before going into the interview, I made several guesses: that at least one person would have previously played an instrument and decided not to pursue it, that most of them would have a musical style firmly grounded in their instrument of choice if they played one in the past, and that they would all listen to music on a regular basis.
During this interview process, I interviewed three people on my floor: my floor soph, James, and two friends on the floor named Stephanie and Alex. Of the three, only Stephanie had formally studied music for a long period of time, while James simply did it as a pastime (though they had tried piano lessons briefly as a kid), and Alex took trumpet while in high school. When asking them questions about their musical habits, I got some responses that were common amongst them all: for one, they all listened to music on a daily basis for several minutes at a time. They all replied that they enjoy listening to music simply as a pastime, and that they all truly enjoyed listening to music. However, differences began to arise when it came to the matter of their choice of music. Stephanie, who has completed up to Grade ten RCM piano, confessed that she did not often listen to classical music, preferring pop music instead. Alex, who formerly played trumpet in high school, mainly prefers country and folk music, a drastic departure from the instrument that he initially learned to play. When asked about his preference of music, James stated that he had a large variety of tastes, varying from classical to the ukulele, and that his choice of music would largely depend on the fluctuations of his mood.
From this, we can gather that music, like many things, is highly subjective and dependent on the listener. There was not a singular common element in the music choices or background of the interviewed students, and while they all enjoyed listening to music, only one of them (being Stephanie) ever took it so seriously as to have examinations. And, despite all of them having played an instrument in the past, and some to this day, only James found that his choice of instrument truly influenced his preferred genre of music. The one thing the three had in common was a general love for music as a whole: while not agreeing on a particular type of music that they found enjoyable, they all found music individually as a pleasant pastime.
When going into this interview process, I initially thought that there would be larger consistencies in the answers of those being interviewed, however, following the interview, I found that many features of my friends’ musical tastes were varied and different. I, having played piano for most of my love, have a profound love for classical music. However, Stephanie, who has been playing as long as I have, found that her interest diverged and found that she preferred less instrumental musical pieces such as rap. Contrastingly, James, who had hardly any musical training in classical music found that he quite enjoyed listening to Baroque music. And Alex, who had no private music lessons, had a completely different taste in music entirely. I thus found out how the different tastes in music and the effect that music has on people varies greatly from person to person, and may not necessarily have any correlation with each other.
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