Autism And Music.

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by "sad" do you mean using minor chords and bluesy idioms, or do you mean lyrically sad? or both? there is certain music which makes my Stendahl's Syndrome flare up, such as "Scheherazade" and certain Cantonese folk songs performed on the Er Hu [Cantonese fiddle].

I'll have to look up stendahls.

Not sure how to describe it other than"sad", really.
I only really put it together recently when a guy I know brought me his bands CD to listen to. It was Poppy and up tempo and "happy" sounding. Couldn't even listen to it. Just couldn't connect. They all played well but I just couldn't get the music, and as I was listening to it I was struck by the realization that I've never written anything in a mood anything like that. As I've gone through the collection of music I have since then, I've noticed (when I take the time to think about it) that there isn't anything that sounds happy, or positive, overall. It all sad or painful, even if the subject of the tune isn't necessarily sad.
Some current favorites of mine, for example, are: Khalil Ghadri Syrian tears, recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco tarrega, estudio sin Luz by Segovia, Chopin's nocturne op 27 no 1, Lowkey's song revolution, round midnight.

I guess maybe intense, mean, scared, confused, heavy, desperate, lonely, might all be words to describe the feeling I need from music to be able to connect with it. If that makes any sense. However it is someone conveys that with an instrument, whether it's minor, diminished, augmented chords, choppy progressions, the physical technique they use, etc.
I think one example of a song that doesn't really fit the mood that I still like is Bag's Groove, but I think it's the vibraphone and Miles' breathy horn playing that I like about that one. It still comes through as right on the edge.
I've also been listening to some Chinese folk music over the last few years. Guzheng mostly. I like quite a bit of that. The erhu has a really nice sound.

Not quite awake yet.

I'm still a very big Kinks fan and a Beatles fan as well.

I was just re-filing some vinyl, and apparently I have a very strong preference for artists and groups under "J."

I mostly listen to metal and other types of rock music. I do like a bit of jazz from time to time.

I like folk metal,viking metal and rawstyle

not much written about it on the web. all I know, and all those of us who have it know, is that it is a real thing that affects us palpably, deeply and unmistakably.


do you ever feel "saudade"? that is an almost indescribable feeling of longing for something so distant, so old, so far removed from mundane living that one isn't even sure it exists or existed, on the edge of consciousness but powerfully keening just the same. the music that grabs at me and won't let me go, has that quality or makes me think of it.

only in the hands of a master, it sings. in anybody else's hands it screeches. one has to be a musical magician of sorts to coax emotional loveliness out of it.

are any of us?

I do like Genesis up to the "Then There Were Three" era especially. Iliked the way their music of this period seemed to set out to tell a story, rather than the standard "Love Song" style of pop music.

I discovered Folk music in my twenties.

I have always been exposed to classical music, I can play an instrument and my radio station of choice in BBC Radio 3.

I looked up stendahls. I can relate, although I'd say minimally. Sometimes music knocks me back something like that. I don't have enough experience with other forms of art to have been really moved by it.

Saudade sounds familiar after reading about it a little. I'd say I've felt that.

With most things, I think, the idea of it singing in the hands of a master but screeching in the hands of anyone else seems to hold true. Maybe it's harder to tell the difference between singing and screeching sometimes.

if you have heard the aural works of yoko ono, sometimes one can't tell which end is up in terms of a screeching master.

Ummm.....


"Also Spoke Zarathustra" is not a "pop song" , nor "a country song", but a 19th Century Symphony composed by Richard Strauss. High brow as you can get.

But it is true that once it was used as the theme of the movie "2001, a Space Oddessy", it became so iconic that it quickly became part of pop culture with a vengeance. Elvis used it in his live shows in the 70's. Jazz-rock fushion group Deodato did a cool hit version in the 70's . The Godfather of Go-Go Chuck Brown has done go-go and hip hop versions of it. And even further off the musical deep end: Ray Stevens did a version sung by himself impersonating a chicken, and the National Kazoo Orchestra did a kazoo version, Woody Phillips did a version performed solely on various carpentry tools.

Classic rock, arena rock, and progressive rock.

I would say Progressive rock then Classical then Folk and then Jazz.

absolute fave is jazz performed on the wurlitzer theatrical pipe organ with its bank of percussion instruments, or augmented by a percussionist.

After a trauma, my musical friends insistently took me to a jazz concert by people they adored. I barely managed to stay until intermission. If not for the beat, I would have guessed that none of them could hear the others, let alone harmonize together. Since then, I have purged 90% of the jazz from my collection.
Now, music always seems to involve so much complication from the copyright lawyers that I have quit buying anything, and have not added to my collection for years. I can't even buy a decent MP3 player any longer, and the software is dreadful, designed to play everything according to its own procrustean notions and sabotage all other uses.

i "borrow" lotsa musics