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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

  • Simon, Claire, thank you very much indeed, also really helpful.

    In response to all the input from you and from Ferret, I've made a few changes - tried to bring the sudden noises to the front of the sound, added white noise somewhere in the region of 8kHz all the time we are looking through the boy's eyes and - gulp! - removed the limiter that had been on that section...

    It sounds awful!!

    If you want to, follow the Dropbox link below to the first draft and I'd really value any comments.  Please, please don't if it is going to be uncomfortable or painful for you, though.

    It starts with the very last few bars of the first section, from mum's viewpoint, which is pure music.  

    At 0:10, we switch to the boy.  We first see him looking miserable and withdrawn, but still coping.

    At 0:29 the sensory overstimulation begins.

    At 1:10 he loses it and starts shouting and bashing his head.  The string chords you hear represent the adult reactions, while the sound effects continue to be what the child is perceiving.  (It's more obvious with the pictures which is which.)

    At 1:28, they have gone outside to calm down.  He is still bashing his head at first, but it calms.

    At 1:36 we return to the mum's point of view and you just hear the beginning of the final section, so back to pure music.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqzo6w1se4grsux/Meltdown%20Section%20no%20limiter.wav?dl=0

Reply

  • Simon, Claire, thank you very much indeed, also really helpful.

    In response to all the input from you and from Ferret, I've made a few changes - tried to bring the sudden noises to the front of the sound, added white noise somewhere in the region of 8kHz all the time we are looking through the boy's eyes and - gulp! - removed the limiter that had been on that section...

    It sounds awful!!

    If you want to, follow the Dropbox link below to the first draft and I'd really value any comments.  Please, please don't if it is going to be uncomfortable or painful for you, though.

    It starts with the very last few bars of the first section, from mum's viewpoint, which is pure music.  

    At 0:10, we switch to the boy.  We first see him looking miserable and withdrawn, but still coping.

    At 0:29 the sensory overstimulation begins.

    At 1:10 he loses it and starts shouting and bashing his head.  The string chords you hear represent the adult reactions, while the sound effects continue to be what the child is perceiving.  (It's more obvious with the pictures which is which.)

    At 1:28, they have gone outside to calm down.  He is still bashing his head at first, but it calms.

    At 1:36 we return to the mum's point of view and you just hear the beginning of the final section, so back to pure music.

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/lqzo6w1se4grsux/Meltdown%20Section%20no%20limiter.wav?dl=0

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