Pre-poll data collection: first exposure to music

Absolutely! I’ve been giving this some serious thought and it has occurred to me that some of those earliest-remembered sounds, while not quite music by typical definitions, probably influence our abilities to relate to lyrics such as I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (my all-time favorite Country song).

Train sounds, whistles and the rhythm of the tracks, especially at a distance and just barely audible.

Waterfalls.

Lawn mowers.

It won’t hurt this thread’s purpose to list such things as they might trigger others to associate actual “early music” with them.

Y’all are doing great with ideas! More!

Despite being a musician, I come from a family of relatively unmusical people. Despite the latter, I couldn’t say what my first impression was. Any or all of these:

  • lullabyes and kids songs my mother would sing or teach us (Twinkle Twinkle, How Much is that Doggie in the Window, Tell Me Why)
  • a song we’d sing in the car on car trips
  • Christmas records
  • a few other records, including Chubby Checkers, Mantovani’s theme songs from movies (Magnificent 7, Ebb Tide, Never on Sunday, Exodus, etc.), one or two broadway musicals like Hello Dolly
  • TV
  • hymns

I see those are all covered in your list already (except children’s ditties). I’d have a hard time picking just one.

Sibling playing the piano while danced in my mother’s uterus.

Wait. “Aware of” as in in remember it now? I don’t. But apparently I enjoyed that song after I was born.

Mom singing
My tiny piano
Mom’s records
The neighbors’ records
TV show theme songs
Ice cream truck

I am told both parents and Gramma sang to me as a baby but my first memory is of the radio. We didn’t get a television until I was in Junior High, as I recall, and the radio was almost always on to a mixture of news and music.