__biro wrote:
I'm not talking about savant skills here. I seem to respond very differently to music then any NT's that I have met. For example when my friends listen to music they mostly listen to the words. I never listen to the words and I find it very difficult to listen to them and so I know hardly any words to my favourite songs. Instead I listen the music and not just the music, every single seperate note. I can easily say which instruments are being played and what tune they are playing and my friends can't seem to be able to do this. It's like I have different understanding of music then NT's.
Does anyone else hear music differently? How do you hear it?
Interesting question.
I was discussing this with an NT, the other day and was shocked at how important the lyrics were to him.
To me the lyrics are close to irrelevant.
I guess songs are poems set to music - but the poems only add mood rather than providing great pleasure.
Sometimes the lyrics almost impair melodic enjoyment, which is why I have a very strong preference for alyrical (instrumental) genres .... like Club, Trance, Chillout, etc.
For me, the music does the talking and transporting.
It takes me to places far farther than any lyric ever could, because it moves me at a very profound level.
But then Homo Sapiens was tonally-atuned long before he ever became verbal - in fact, long before he even became a primate.
Melody is so powerful because it's processed in more primitive parts of the brain (ie - at the hardware level) so it has immediate and powerful impact.
Lyrics are processed in the reasoning brain (software level), so it's impact is much less potent.
I listen to internet radio through my phone cabled to the car stereo, specifically because I can get narrow genre channels where the music is almost entirely alyrical.
When a number of my NT buddies get in the car, they often say "Oh no, not the Muzak" - because despite being emotive to me, it does nothing for them because there are no lyrics.
I regard these NT's as musical (melodic) Phillistines.
But they do like the Clubbier beats (no lyrics).
I guess for the tone-deaf, there is only the lyrics ... but that was never really a neurodivergent issue.