What was the first kind of music you were exposed to?

My parents were round dancers in the 70s and watched a lot of Lawrence Welk. I hated that music at the time, but I enjoy some of it now.

I was exposed to quite a bit thanks to my parents and my older siblings in the 70s. My father loved big band and swing, my mother enjoyed Elvis, Kenny Rogers and Barry Manilow, and my siblings enjoyed classic rock. There’s not much I don’t like.

The first album I clearly remember is “Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf. My dad would play it in his car when I was little.

Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Elvis, Johnny Horton. My parents still had most of the Albums until their basement was flooded in 2000. We didn’t have a TV until I was 6. And then we got it only because it was included in the entertainment center with the record player and the AM/FM radio.

Classical, specifically opera, was the first music I was exposed to and I know that’s the reason I’m such a classical fan today. My parents also played a lot of oldies rock as well, but I never really developed an interest in it like I did with classical.

The music people at school listened to influenced me the most after that. It started in elementary school with Britney Spears, the A*Teens and bubblegum dance like Aqua and Smile.dk. I also liked musicals at a young age as well since my parents had a lot of musicals on video. And I have added more and more music to my “likes” including foreign pop music, indie rock and pop, and electronic dance music. I never really stopped liking any kind of music; more gets added to what I like, but nothing goes away.

Interestingly enough, I’m the biggest classical fan I know. I know people who like some classical, but I’ve never met someone who likes as much of it as I do.

The Beatles. When I was 3 or 4, my parents brought me to this “oldies” diner every week where they had a jukebox. I always chose Beatles songs to listen to. I don’t know, but I was very attracted to their strong melodies.

The blues. My father is a blues musician, so it was all around me when I was young. It was influential enough that I incorporated blues elements rather frequently back when I was studying music composition.

Motown. When my mom was 7 or 8 months pregnant with me, she went and saw Dream Girls on Broadway and she says that every time a song came on, I danced in perfect rhythm in her belly. To this day, I love Motown.

I remember being about 6 years old, jumping from the floor to the couch and then to a chair in a wild dance-like reaction the Stravinsky’s Fire Bird. And there was something my parents played that made me, my brothers, and mother get up from the dinner table and march in high spirits around the table while my father looked on indulgently. Classical music was all I heard at home. It was also music lessons in second grade, short pieces like The Barcarole and Til Oielenspiel (sp?). Then came jazz, pop music, Broadway musicals, folk songs and more.

Trance. Not that I do not listen to other types of music, I listen to everything. There’s something about trance… It’s more of like a getaway out of this word…. I hope someone knows what I’m talking about !

The first kind that I was exposed to was R&R, when my parents gave me a single of Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets for xmas, 1955.

Even though R&R is one of my favorite genres, that wasn’t influenced by that gift because RATC didn’t really rock my clock.

The first song that I fell in love with was Tammy, by Debbie Reynolds, which is a romantic ballad. That was in 1957.

The first R&R song that I really liked was Jailhouse Rock by Elvis. I remember playing that one 6 consecutive times for 25 cents at my late Aunt’s diner.

The Rolling Stones’ tunes are the ones that most influenced my preference for R&R.

Classical music when I was really little and then opera and the great Broadway show tunes as I got older. The big bands, also.

I started taking piano lessons when I was six and plunked away at Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

world*

Classic Rock is the earliest I remember, my step-dad used to always play cassettes of The Beatles.
I never had my own Cassette/CD/Mp3 player when I was younger, but in middle school I was surrounded with Rap and Hip-Hop. I didn’t like it, the only two I actually enjoyed were the Beastie Boys, and RUN-DMC.
In high school, I had two friends who influenced my musical tastes. One had almost nothing but Classic Rock, and got me back in touch with those songs I loved from when I was little, and then some. The other was a wider range, and introduced me to groups like The White Stripes, Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters and CAKE.
While this was happening, my mom had a boyfriend who introduced me to a band he had been listening to since his youth. He put a CD into his truck’s stereo labeled “The Best of the Beast”. Then he turned up the speakers, and blasted “The Trooper” into my skull. I would have fallen to my knees if I hadn’t been sitting down. It was the first time I had heard Metal. For the first time, I felt a particular genre of music call out to me. That was the pivotal point in my music life.

I still listened to all the other things that brought me to where I am today, but I knew my core was Metal, and it has been ever since.

Church music, without a doubt: both hymns and gospel tunes, as well as sacred choral and organ pieces. But classical music was always there, right alongside it, on the radio and on a very ancient Victrola. I was hearing operatic selections on single-sided recorded 78 RPM discs before I started school; in fact, when I was three one of the pieces I regularly asked to hear was Wagner’s “Ride of the Bacteria.”

The classical quality of sacred music is really no different from that of traditional classical music. The same values of composition and rendition are in evidence. I’m sure those characteristics shaped my early tastes and still do. Most of my music collection is classical, and I am still a season ticket holder to the opera.

Along the way I also came to love folk music, Gilbert and Sullivan, the Beatles, many pieces from the light concert repertoire, and a variety of music from around the world, from Scottish folk tunes to African a capella choirs, from Indian classical music to the Don Cossacks of Russia. But I think the classical composers set my framework and remain the foundation of my preferences.

My dad liked The Inkspots, Jim Reeves and Dusty Springfield (these people stand out in my mind). My siblings liked The Shadows, The Beatles and other 60s music. I also remember listening to certain classical pieces my father liked. He also often played the harmonica in the evenings at weekends.

I still like many of the classical pieces, not so much The Inkspots and Jim Reeves. I do love music from the 60s though. Into my teenage years, my brother bought me a few albums such as Carole King’s Tapastry, The Doors LA Woman that continued to influence my now very eclectic taste in music.

Soul music. My grandmother had a huge record collection and used to enjoy to teach me and my little cousin to dance.

My Dad and his brothers were musicians. They each played an instrument, and they also sang Barbershop quartet. My Grandmother taught piano, and played in the church, so that was probably the first music I was exposed to.

My family and I grew up in the Northwest, so Alternative, Grunge, and Hip-Hop (not rap) were big. I listened to my mom’s Alice in Chains, Deftones, Soundgarden, Blackstreet etc cassettes.

Nursery rhymes of course, ya daft puddin!

Ragtime. I used to sit in my dad’s lap while he played Scott Joplin on the piano.

The earliest thing I remember is Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. During my teen years I didn’t listen to classical, but I love it now. Always something for what ever mood you’re in.

I am often told that, when my mum was pregnant with me, the only thing she would listen to was Madonna! Does that count?

I like her early stuff but I am not a huge Madonna fan myself. I do like many pop females though!

My mom raised me on quite a bit of variety: classic rock, Native American bands (I remember Red Bone in particular), and at some point she put me through a country phase. She says I used to really like Guns n Roses…I remember liking Alanis Morisette the most. I don’t really remember a time that I listened to music that I didn’t listen to Alanis.

My music taste is still pretty varied. I don’t listen to all of the music she played for me as a little kid, but I still listen to at least a bit from almost every genre, and I’m willing to give any kind of music a chance.

I was exposed to a lot, but not all of them necessarily influenced my preferences. Hippy stuff from my dad, country from my mom.

However I’d have to say that Metallica (metal) and Econoline Crush (grunge, but really violent grunge, the first two albums anyway) were the ones who really kicked me into my tastes. Metal, and then Industrial. Right now I’m into a lot of folk and folk metal stuff, especially if it has something to do with Vikings. However, a lot of what I listen to now is relatively calmer than my stuff from previous years ago. Aside from the Industrial, which is like God to me, but lately, it’s made way for other stuff.