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Can anyone help me learn what sensory overload might sound like?

ktseahorse

Hello everyone!

I am a musician who has recently started studying and exploring composing.  Since having my two sons, both with diagnoses of autism now, I have become interested in learning about how it is to be autistic.  

As a project for integrating music with sound design for a course I'm doing, I'm working on a soundtrack for a film of stills made from a picture book story about a little boy with autism.  The most difficult bit for me to write is when he has a horrid time with sensory overload leading to a meltdown.  I really want to try and get as close as possible with sound/atonal music to conveying what that might be like, but it's hard to know if I'm along the right lines as I myself am NT.

It's very important to me that the little boy's point of view is as present in the music as his mum's, so I want to be authentic.  

Is there anyone out there who might be willing to help me get this as good as I can by listening critically to what I am doing, or giving me descriptions of what it might feel like if the images were real?

I hope it's OK to ask.  I don't know anyone who experiences sensory overload personally, or I'd ask them!

Parents

  • Ferret, thank you so much.  That is so informative!  You're a star.

    (I have to say, it makes me admire people on the AS even more, knowing you deal with that.  I had no idea that the body's own electrical noise is even audible.  Also helps a little with understanding my children.  People often assume my older boy is ignoring them because he's 'in his own little world', but I've always suspected that it's been more like he's trying to filter out what he hasn't the capacity to process and still be on top of things and this vindicates me.)

    In answer to your question, I'm definitely old enough to remember the music from the analogue loop machines, but not to have used them.

    Anyway, it sounds like the building up of layers of sound like conversational hubbub, a hum from a speaker, etc, gradually distorted (eg, through amps, filters, etc) would be good?

    I could also introduce abrupt noises to sit outside of the texture and repeat/distort.  (I want to sample the very loud laugh of a bloke I know, while he's not looking, for this purpose - haven't managed it yet!) 

    " Also: think multiple sounds from multiple objects/environment, immediate environment. All sound is at the same 'volume' as in level. So all sounds, regardless of level are received at the same 'volume' ie. there is no distinction between soft, light, quiet, loud, ear-shattering, ear-piercing. "

    Can I ask, do I need to be aiming for clarity in each layer of sound, by being very careful to have nothing overlap a frequency range of something else?  Would an eventual melding into a wall of noise work, when the moment of 'blue screen of death' happens?

    The other thing I was wondering is, you specifically mentioned high frequencies as less of a problem.  I do currently have a highly-digitally-mangled piccolo representing something like the neurological continuation of a tingy bell (if you get what I mean by that!) as well as representing rising panic.  Could this be authentic, or am I better off focussing solely on the bass sounds?  (It sounds awful!)

Reply

  • Ferret, thank you so much.  That is so informative!  You're a star.

    (I have to say, it makes me admire people on the AS even more, knowing you deal with that.  I had no idea that the body's own electrical noise is even audible.  Also helps a little with understanding my children.  People often assume my older boy is ignoring them because he's 'in his own little world', but I've always suspected that it's been more like he's trying to filter out what he hasn't the capacity to process and still be on top of things and this vindicates me.)

    In answer to your question, I'm definitely old enough to remember the music from the analogue loop machines, but not to have used them.

    Anyway, it sounds like the building up of layers of sound like conversational hubbub, a hum from a speaker, etc, gradually distorted (eg, through amps, filters, etc) would be good?

    I could also introduce abrupt noises to sit outside of the texture and repeat/distort.  (I want to sample the very loud laugh of a bloke I know, while he's not looking, for this purpose - haven't managed it yet!) 

    " Also: think multiple sounds from multiple objects/environment, immediate environment. All sound is at the same 'volume' as in level. So all sounds, regardless of level are received at the same 'volume' ie. there is no distinction between soft, light, quiet, loud, ear-shattering, ear-piercing. "

    Can I ask, do I need to be aiming for clarity in each layer of sound, by being very careful to have nothing overlap a frequency range of something else?  Would an eventual melding into a wall of noise work, when the moment of 'blue screen of death' happens?

    The other thing I was wondering is, you specifically mentioned high frequencies as less of a problem.  I do currently have a highly-digitally-mangled piccolo representing something like the neurological continuation of a tingy bell (if you get what I mean by that!) as well as representing rising panic.  Could this be authentic, or am I better off focussing solely on the bass sounds?  (It sounds awful!)

Children
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