Music and Aspies?

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this is the same for me.
Music is like breathing - a necessity.
My father was a composer, and my brother is a composer and my sister is a singer/songwriter with an autistic son who is passionate about the Beatles, windmills and trains.
We grew up with all sorts of music, from Classical, through to Irish folk music through to Neapolitan songs, and then Rembetika and pop and rock and country. Everything was consumed and enjoyed and i suspect listening to music with others was a kind of artificial kinship/closeness experience for me. I felt strong emotions that were enjoyable whilst in the presence of siblings and parents.
We were also encouraged to learn instruments. The hall in our house was lined with guitars in cases, trumpets and cornets in their stiff leather box cases, recorders and an assortment of sheet music strewn in haphazard fashion like a hopscotch track in C major.

For me, for a long time, music was the one way I could emotionally connect with others. (Which, alas, tended to be one way.) I couldn't emotionally connect through social means.

Some music I like I have a strong emotional response to. Other music just feels good. I do tend to listen to and respond to lyrics, but, still, there's something about them being set to music.

I can't imagine my life without music.

Before I knew about AS, I always attributed my quirkiness to being a musician. I think that my primary sense is sound, not visual. That gives me a whole different perspective on just about everything. I have since learned that I have hypersensitivity to sound which I have been able to fine tune over the years (loud noises no longer freak me out, but they used to).

I also see colors in keys, but haven't thought through every one of them. Some are stronger than others. F, for instance, is definitely a deep green, C is yellow, G is orange... but some are just there. I also have absolute pitch, which is why I can probably make that association.

^ yes. most members of my family also have absolute pitch. I like the sounds of your synaesthesia. this is very similar to my sensory processing.

Millie, it's absolutely fascinating to me how many of us here have it. I've never before found a forum where I can talk with so many people about the various aspects of it. I've only met a handful of folks in person that have it, and now to find a forum where so many have it is very, very exciting to me. It also seems to present itself differently in all of us.

My taste in music has changed over the years. The Beatles and such were great in my childhood, but I was very interested in film music at an early age, and I have virtually abandoned music with lyrics. I collected much classical music during my 30's and 40's trying to find a niche driven by my love of symphonic film scores, but I eventually gave that up and concentrated on collecting just film and television music.

Surprisingly, I love music from the TV series I watched as a youngster and adolescent. Some of it is cheesy by today's standards, but much of it is rich and exciting. It also temporarily places me in a time when life seemed more full of wonder than it does now. Things were simpler then, and easier for someone with AS to understand. My heroes lived in black and white worlds, not today's swirling abysses where the main characters leave you more confused as to what they're all about by the time the show is over.

I agree with another poster that there is usually some kind of music playing in my mind. If it isn't something I've listened to recently, it's something I'm "writing" as it goes along. Maybe that's why I listen to music so little while I'm driving. Depends on my mood. I just got satellite radio with my new car, and there is a lot to explore, but eventually it becomes tiresome and almost irritating in that you feel obligated to listen to SOMEthing just because you can and because there are hundreds of choices. (I have thoughts on this topic with regard to how much television is available, how much internet is available, etc. This thread will be lost in cyberspace, a single thought among the billion trillions of other thoughts. Why is there so much of everything out there? Why must there be hundreds of models of cell phones? Why must there BE cell phones? But I digress...)

The last thing I will say about music is that I typically cannot bear to hear any music (that is not of my choosing) under circumstances where I need to focus on something, as at work. Fortunately, during the quarter century I have been with my company, despite being moved from location to location at times, I have been able to keep the overhead Muzak turned off. Sometimes it has been a struggle. I came to loggerheads with a secretary once over it, and another time I nearly lost my job over a misunderstanding with a supervisor, but that incident is what led me to research that resulted in my discovery of Asperger's, so sometimes good things happen after bad.

The old TV show, SOAP, had a character who thought the only thing she would change about her life is that she would set it to music. As far as I'm concerned, in my mind, appropriate music is always playing.

As others have stated I would not get thru life without music.

To me it enables me to feel, and more particularly, to feel the emotions encompassed within a piece or pieces; I feel these emotions more clearly and with much finer gradations (from slight annoyance to brutal hatred, let's say, as portrayed in a Tone Poem) than I could ever intuit from another person. So in essence it's a vehicle for me to keep in touch with my own emotions, and also to become an actor whose ego has been sublimated or zenned out so that I may portray faithfully the emotions called for by composers.

I am a professional musician BTW.

I find that music is essential for me to process emotions beyond the most basic ones. Following a trigger for an emotional response, it takes me hours, or days, or years, to associate the response with having felt the same way before, with the association coming through music. I don't typically connect to the emotion in the song; instead, I connect to the way I felt at the time the song imprinted in my mind. Many foreign-language songs carry specific, complex feelings long before I understand what the lyrics mean, and once imprinted carry the same feelings consistently forever, unaffected when I do eventually learn what the singer is actually saying. As any of about 50,000 songs plays constantly in my mind, there is a steady stream of emotions flowing through, which I occasionally "catch". I could not begin to describe the feelings, but I know them when I connect to them.

Further complicating the issue, I have a number-form synaesthesia where I experience numbers as music (with absolute pitch, of course). Some tunes carry no emotions, just a sequence of numbers with no particular meaning. Others carry only basic emotions, serving mostly as a metronome in my brain to keep time for the inevitable stimming.

Hi there,
I am very passionate about music, I hate TV, but love music.......I consider it to be the universal language.
Also I get really annoyed if someone tries to talk to me when I am listening to music!!

I've been playing music since before I can remember. I am told I could pick out melodies on the piano with one finger at age 3. I didn't find out until after she passed away that our next door neighbor paid for my piano lessons because she had such faith in my ability - so I never got to thank her. I took lessons until two teachers realized that I couldn't read the notes, but I could play by ear in a manner much more advanced than what the lessons were supposed to be teaching me. In retrospect, I just needed someone to show me how to operate the piano, and I learned the rest by feel. I went on to teach myself to play drums, then bass, then guitar, then to compose songs. I can't write lyrics, but I can think up tunes, and remember how they go, and hear all the parts in my head. And I still can't read music to save my life. I don't think about what the names of the chords I play are, and I couldn't tell you. Thinking about that would just interfere with the playing. (I also have absolute pitch! I spend a great deal of time pitch-correcting music on the computer so I can listen to it at A=440 instead of somewhere sharp or flat.) I only know how to play on an emotional level.

Music was my only escape for many, many years. When the other kids were doing whatever it is that kids do, I was teaching myself to play music. It's as if I go into auto-pilot mode, and the music plays me. I connect with it in a way that I can't even describe. It's in my blood. It's in my head all the time - I don't know how to shut it off. While I would never, ever compare myself with Paul McCartney, he has said in the past that he doesn't know how to read music, either, it just sort of falls out of his fingers. He doesn't want to learn to read, either, or study the theory or mechanics of it, because then it would take all the magic out of it. I feel exactly the same way. I can't explain it to you, but I can play it for you. One of my favorite John Lennon quotes is from when a stuffy music journalist asked him if he made conscious use of onomatopoiea. He replied, "Automatic pier? I don't know what you're going on about, son." And when someone wrote about the scale modes or some such thing in "Not A Second Time," he said, "I dunno. They were chords, just like any other chords." That's how I feel. I don't know what it's called, it wouldn't help me to know, and I don't really care.

Now, I am not here to blow my own horn (I can't play anything you have to blow into anyway), but I have been at jam sessions where I've sat down at an instrument, and whatever noise was being played suddenly becomes music, and the whole atmosphere in the room changes. I hear a groove and can direct it to somewhere interesting, usually. And I don't know how, it just happens. My biggest obstacle has been in finding anyone else who can do the same thing. I'm not the greatest player, but I'm pretty proficient after all these years. So what I've done is learned to make multitrack demos using the limited resources I have. I started out with two cassette decks and patch cords (no mixer), but now I can do it on the computer. My ambition is to get a Kurzweil keyboard workstation, and make my own album, according to how it sounds in my head. There is something immensely satisfying about hearing a piece of music that you invented, where every sound is exactly where it ought to go. That is VERY hard to achieve with other people, when you have no sheet music, and wildly different levels of proficiency.

Which brings me to my wife. She has three degrees in music, and is a piano teacher. Her ability dwarfs mine. She can play the piano so well it'd scare you to death... from sheet music. We can't play together, because she can't play much by ear. She is so indoctrinated by The Method that she is loathe to improvise. So we have spent our entire marriage not jamming. Is that sad, or what?

Sorry, I've been rabbiting on about stuff you probably didn't want to know. In short, I only know how to understand music on an emotional level.

Sometimes I find that music enables me to connect with my emotions, listening to a certain kind of music can help me to determine how I am feeling.

yet another stereotype! probably true for some, but not for me! i am a musician and i get very emotionally absorbed by music, i dont think i could live in a world without music! i would probably kill myself if i lost my hearing

I've been a musician for most of my life - and for as long as I can remember, music has captivated & affected me at a very deep emotional level. Specific music & types of music have consumed me, so that I can't imagine living without that music.

I have known lots of people throughout my life (most of whom I believe to be NT) who seem to be completely indifferent to music. That has never described me.

I also know some people who always relate their feelings about specific music to a past emotional state. For instance, if a specific song was playing when they learned of the death of a loved one, they will forever after get sad when they hear that music. That has never described me.

While I have always been emotionally affected by music, music doesn't take on emotional significance for me based on other things that are happening in my life. Some music makes me feel happy, some music makes me feel sad - but music isn't linked to happy or sad times for me.

I often use music to detach myself from unpleasant emotions - so if I'm feeling stressed, I'll play music to relax. And sometimes I use music to focus my emotions - so if I'm feeling sad, I'll play music to express that sadness.

Music usually has an emotional effect on me. The right kind of music can induce feelings of euphoria or stimulate my imagination. The wrong kind can drive me nuts. Electronica has the strongest effect. That's why I collect Tangerine Dream Albums.

I am told I am tone deaf and I can only play an accordion badly, but I have been interested in classical music mostly sacred music from the renaissance since 1972.
I collect liturgical music for the dead, lamentations of jeremiah, stabat mater dolorosa, setting of the passion, pange linguas, and other sacred choral pieces and organ works. I usually listen to my music over and over agan. I can go for days listening for long hours to requiem masses, lamentations, or other pieces. There is a certain emotional satisfaction in doing so in that the music calms my anxiety, but annoys my life companion who hates it and cannot understand why I love it so much. Collecting the music and learning about the composer and history of the pieces is also satisfying, and it is exciting when I finally find all the readings of the music in print or formerly in print and add it to my collection.

I am told I am tone deaf and I can only play an accordion badly, but I have been interested in classical music mostly sacred music from the renaissance since 1972.
I collect liturgical music for the dead, lamentations of jeremiah, stabat mater dolorosa, setting of the passion, pange linguas, and other sacred choral pieces and organ works. I usually listen to my music over and over agan. I can go for days listening for long hours to requiem masses, lamentations, or other pieces. There is a certain emotional satisfaction in doing so in that the music calms my anxiety, but annoys my life companion who hates it and cannot understand why I love it so much. Collecting the music and learning about the composer and history of the pieces is also satisfying, and it is exciting when I finally find all the readings of the music in print or formerly in print and add it to my collection.