Autism and music

It could be uncommon but I don't think it's weird. I've always had an interest in music since I was 15 for learning, listening, and playing, not really understanding how it works but it helps me cope with a lot of things, getting in touch with some of my feelings, expression, and make friends.

I though, have a hard time enjoying top chart pop music (most but not all) because I don't like the sound and don't care much about lyrical content. I enjoy heavy metal, symphonic metal, orchestral sound tracks and video game music.

Here's some examples of what I like:
Metal: Dream Theater, Nightwish, Epica, Angra, Twilight Force, Obscura, Inferi, Spawn of Possession.

Video game music: Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy series), Jeremy Soule (Elder Scroll and Dungeon Siege series), Rob King and Roc Chen (Might and Magic series), Inon Zur (Dragon Age series), Sam Hulick (Mass Effect series)

I don't think your autism will stop you from listening to the kind of music you love. Statistics show that music can heal diseases or help during the treatment. For example, my music taste might change from one day to another, depending on how I'm feeling and what I'm doing that day. On top of that, I can't llive without concerts, so I even joined a live online show platform that helps me watch concerts for a great price. If noise might be overwhelming for you, you may try it too. It's incredible, and it's not much difference from a simple concert, especially if you have good sound system.

Music is my life Metal and punk miles and transformed into the I don't give *** attitude or care what people think of me anymore attitude that I have to do. Music is my war cry it's my confidence and it's my strength. Metal is my obsession and my creed. I'm working on my sabaton battle jacket ready for the Sabaton tour to end all tours in march up at Wembley arena this year can't fucking wait 

if music is good, ill listen to it. especially rock.

I love music and listen to it all the time. I listen to it on my way to school and when I'm doing homework or when I'm just sat relaxing. I find there's so much music and interesting songs to hear and they take me to another, and better place. It's like it reaches deep in to my soul and lifts me to places I can't reach by myself.

Hey, nice to make people smile. Thanks.  This thread just came alive again so I'll chip in again and get a bit geeky - I'd love to hear from anyone with synaesthesia. A bandmate once said to me over a cuppa that playing music was 'weird'. Why? '..because we spend our whole time making patterns in the air.'  'We make air molecules behave in a certain way, it's strange thing to do'.  I probably pondered his point silently, I think there's more to it than that, but I agreed it was weird. It is very weird.  So weird in fact that I cannot think of a single thing like it. Humans appear to absolutely depend on it, for survival almost. I've been listening to some of the same music for decades, must have chalked up many thousands of plays.  Has anyone ever read a book or watch a film a thousand times? 

Here's the thing I think is the trick, I wonder what you think. Imagine a piece of written music on a page -it's all there, the pitches, dynamics, shapes - the patterns are described there. It's a form, a thing a chunk of spacetime perhaps. I think of it, see it, feel it as a piece of three-dimensional architecture with colour and texture. So imagine that it is a building, perhaps a large interesting building that you cannot see all at once.  You walk round it, go inside, visit the  different rooms.  You might go back many times, it might be your home.  You will never tire of seeing it in different light, different moods, discovering things you hadn't noticed before.

A supercool way of saying that is that music is 'holographic' and this is how I think it works on the brain. It plays all the time with memory. And with that statement I'll pause.  

Any geeks out there into Penrose/Hameroff theory? Ahh, the things I have to read!

Music is pretty much my most helpful coping mechanism. Singing is my favorite vocal stim. I need to listen to music when I drive or do school or clean or work on anything or I can't concentrate as well. When I get overstimulated sometimes music helps me calm down. Music plays a huge part in my life. 

I find that I need to listen to music all of the time, usually 6 Music or Radio 3, but also Virgin Music and Radio 2.  Having silence is deafening to me

For me, like with lots of other things, it's a feeling of being in control. Even music I really like can be intensely irritating to me if someone's playing something when I need quiet. Some great choices in that list. "..and you will know us by the trail of dead" are great!

I don't think your autism will stop you from listening to the kind of music you love. Statistics show that music can heal diseases or help during the treatment.

NAS62055 said:

Music is art - it comes from a different human place to strimmers

Made me smile. Sums it up very well :-)

I am, or was, a working musician.  Suffered autism burn out a couple of years ago and that's why I am here now.  Interesting thread - my music is stormy stuff.  And I completely relate to that love of noisy music while hating noise - there's something to be said about sensitivity there.  Music is art - it comes from a different human place to strimmers.  Music tickles the autistic senses.  In the film "The Big Short" autistic hedge fund manager Michael Burry has death metal at full blast in his office...  Marilyn Manson is probably NPD/Asperger's like Eminem and Mozart - I can listen to all of them. I get full blown synaethesia only when I am deeply relaxed but I get lasting impressions from music I hear of colour and texture.  I'll start a separate thread about some questions I have.  I have one important musicianly statement to make:  When musicians gather and play instruments it is very loud.  When you play stuff at home you are listening to "Mechanically Reproduced Music" it has a different, smaller dynamic, and you will turn it up if you want it to work at all like the real thing.  I am forever in trouble for it!

i struggle ho heal with background sounds. I think my brain takes more time to process speech as I often say "what" to someone but then reasize what they said.

When I was a teenager I would sometimes put my hifi speakers on the floor about 12 inches apart and lie with my head between them using them like headphones! Also took out the volume limiting resistors from the headphone socket of my HiFi :-)

I get exactly the same as you - my hearing is normal (I test it myself with signal generators online and have had it tested by the NHS) but I *often* fail to hear what people are saying because of other conversations / background noise.

DarthJoeyJoJoI don't *think* my hearing was affected, it's still pretty acute although not, I think, as acutely sensitive as it was when I was young - but I have a friend who knows about acoustics etc who tells me I could lose the 'top' end of my hearing if I listen to really loud music for too long. He does know what he's talking about so I'm careful.

First music concert I ever went to I stood right next to the stage and beside one bank of speakers. Dont think it affected my hearing because I can still hear minute sounds others cant. Sometimes people think Im a bit deaf because I cant pick up what theyre saying to me but its only because theres something else going on in the background thats getting mixed in as well.

Yes, I'm also hypersensitive to sound but love music and used to play it really loud when I was young (now worry about ears and use headphones at sensible volume). Like Chemical Brothers too! I put headphones and music on and just sit and stim for hours on end, far, far away . . .

i listen to music, i don't like heavy metal or anything like that but classic rock, classical music and the 60's in generral. i grew up with music as my dad played it all the time. I hate sounds in the background and often drown them out with music. If I am feeling down i will try and play something louad bet it classical or classic rock at volume as I like the rythms. i like music that has a beat to it it gets me going and in the mood to get things done.

i have a bad memory but i can tell the difference between two recordings of the same song.

Yes I love music and I have some thoughts about how appreciation of music is different for me to how it is for typical people:

• I listen to music because I like the sound, the aural pictures it paints, the timbre of the instruments, the rhythms, the feelings that it creates: I have little to no interest in the culture of the musicians & the typical "fandom" that I first observed in others as a teenager. I judge music on its sound, not its origins.
• I'm a little demand-avoidant when I feel that my peer group / demographic "tells" me that I *should* be listening to and appreciating something. So for example, I rebel against the idea that Elvis is the best musician ever (I'm in my 50s and apparently I should hail Elvis). Add to this list the Beatles, Johnny Cash, Country music, almost anything from the 60s. 
• Despite being unable to cope in chaotic background noise, I am fine with very loud music. I've realised that my sensory problem means that I can cope easily with a single, coherent stream of audio irrespective of volume. Music, even with multiple instruments and voices, is coherent and represents a single input to my ears. Contrast with someone talking over the tv or music (at least 2 streams) or a conversation in a noisy restaurant (many streams).

So I have the following musical "places" that I regularly go to:

• 1980s electronica (Human League, Kraftwerk, Jean Michelle Jarre)
• 1980s general chart music (generally dance and electronic)
• Orchestral / strings / piano music from the Baroque period
• Orchestral / strings / piano music from the Romantic period
• Trance / ambient / dance from the 21st century
• Modern pop (2015 on - not the 1990s and 2000s that iTunes seems to want to force at me).
• Despite my aversion to country music generally - I have a guilty pleasure in Shania Twain and Sheryl Crow!

Modern pop I particularly like because I find it energising, uplifting and it has a "fresh" sound - contrast Elvis and Johnny Cash! (I'm mildly synaesthetic and modern Pop comes across as light, airy, blue and silver whereas Elvis and Johnny Cash come across as dark brown, muddy and morose).

I listen exclusively to very specific underground styles / subgenres of Trance and Progressive / Deep House.

Sometimes some instrumental soundtracks.

I generally dislike music with vocals, as to me lyrics seem to mostly revolve around the same boring themes.

I hate commercial dance music like EDM as to me it's a poor uninspired non-innovative representation of the genre.

I apparently process music differently to most people.