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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

  • Hello Ferret,

    Again, this has all been extremely useful and not just for the musical experiments.  I have a first draft now, but need to work on the hiss a little more, I think.

    I might even stick it in Dropbox and post a link if I am feeling brave enough...  I'm a bit nervous that I've got it horribly wrong...

    You are absolutely right, we are all in our own worlds - it is the nature of consciousness, really.  Now I'm getting philosophical! 

    Meanwhile, I'll remember your words -

    "anyone who takes umbrage over being 'ignored', I would say: try being Autistic for a day - and not being understood or listened to, misjudged, dismissed, labelled and called disordered, walk around with a stigma as a result of others ignorance and generally treated like a second class citizen... - try that for a day and then maybe a frame of reference will be achieved for how being ignored really feels like"

    - for future use when relatives are being uppity.  In a way, the people who are most unaware of others are those who have never had to worry about finding a way when they feel different or excluded, as they've always been blissfully socially comfortable.  Lucky them.  But also, what limiting, narrow horizons.

Reply

  • Hello Ferret,

    Again, this has all been extremely useful and not just for the musical experiments.  I have a first draft now, but need to work on the hiss a little more, I think.

    I might even stick it in Dropbox and post a link if I am feeling brave enough...  I'm a bit nervous that I've got it horribly wrong...

    You are absolutely right, we are all in our own worlds - it is the nature of consciousness, really.  Now I'm getting philosophical! 

    Meanwhile, I'll remember your words -

    "anyone who takes umbrage over being 'ignored', I would say: try being Autistic for a day - and not being understood or listened to, misjudged, dismissed, labelled and called disordered, walk around with a stigma as a result of others ignorance and generally treated like a second class citizen... - try that for a day and then maybe a frame of reference will be achieved for how being ignored really feels like"

    - for future use when relatives are being uppity.  In a way, the people who are most unaware of others are those who have never had to worry about finding a way when they feel different or excluded, as they've always been blissfully socially comfortable.  Lucky them.  But also, what limiting, narrow horizons.

Children
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