Sound - sensitivity/confusion

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Hello,

Firstly, sorry for my first post being this, in a bit of a rush and this is fairly urgent.

I was very nearly diagnosed with asperger's a few years ago, various reasons why I wasn't - but some of the traits I have quite strongly.

One of these is my perception of sound. Loud noises scare me, and can provoke a very strong reaction...that's always been the case, and I'm used to it. When there's lots of sound, I sometimes just hear a mush, I often find it difficult to make anything out.

Now, however, I am studying for a degree in music and coming up against various problems - the most tricky is, we have a class called Musicianship, where for part of it we have to recognise intervals, and for another part play rhythms over a backing track.

When an interval is played on the piano, one note after another, I can manage. When they are played together from a recording I just hear a mush of sound, not two individual notes
With the rhythm tracks - I can manage rhythm by myself, or playing with live instruments - but again, with the recorded track (which has a few sounds going at once) I just can't make it out. I can hear ONE of the instrumental lines if I focus on it - but not the others (which is a huge problem, as different beats are played by different instruments!). So again, I'm just hearing a mush of sound/fighting to work out what's being played, and not getting the excersise done at all.

My theory is that a) I'm just really sensitive to sound but b) that it is much harder to hear on a recorded track than live (because I don't have these problems in orchestra). Maybe because with live musicians you also have visual cues - and especially with percussion, there are the vibrations to go off as well as just the sound (recorded tracks are equalised, live music is not).

What I want to know is am I talking rubbish, and am actually just bad at it - or could this be something that I really DO have more difficulty with than the others, and would be worth bringing up with the teacher?

You're NOT talking rubbish. I have the exact same problem. I don't think it is that rare among people w/ aspergers.

I had trouble when my choir teacher started doing the interval test. We were required to say our scores out loud so I knew that I wasn't improving like the others were. I never got it, and my teacher played the notes on the piano. I can't distinguish sounds when there are more than one. It causes me trouble everywhere. My mom just had to repeat a sentence 3 times because I couldn't tell what words she was saying because the tv is on.

I can't tell u whether or not u or I are actually bad the intervals. I never had the opportunity to take the test w/o other noise.

I am rubbish at trying to figure that out but I can recognize the music for what it is when I hear it.

Thanks for the replies - first onee metaldaniellw I am so glad to hear that, I feel slightly less of an idiot. Because I know I can play, and can hear - but these really simple tests I seem to find pretty impossible.


ianorlin - I don't really know what you're saying. Rubbish at trying to figure what out? And what do you mean by "recognise the music for what it is"? Do you mean "oh, that's shostakovitch" or do you mean "that is a cycle of 5ths" or "that is a major triad followed by a 7th chord followed by a half diminished 7th" or...something else, what do you mean?