Music and Aspies?

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Hi everyone, its been awhile. I come to you with a request. I am writing a paper on my two favorite topics: Music and Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Temple Grandin says she doesn't understand music on an emotional level? How do you feel about this?

Any reflections on music and/ or emotion?

I for one love music. Plenty of emotion unlike any of the feelings that come from living and its events. I am a musician and very into more avant gardeish, or what have you, post rock sort of stuff. Instrumental, exploring space and creating a sort of musical painting, etc. That sort of music can be very moving, it seems emotional, though not like the life emotions as I mentioned, like joy scared happy, etc. It creates its own set of emotion. Maybe the visceral effect should have another name other than emotion. I also am very moved by Mariah Carey ballads. Her voice, and the great songs they've been writing for her in the last decade can break my heart and these sort of feelings relate more to real life feelings. Like the heart wrenching pain when you miss someone you've lost or the sweet joy of sensual playfulness. Led Zeppelin rocks and makes me feel powerful and in love with living and being a dude. Like just dropping your pants, swinging your dick and shouting, "f**k yeah". They also move into moods that are more purely musical feeling like I tried to describe in the beginning with the music I like to create. Listening to the Velvet Underground can make you feel like you're just the coolest person in the vicinity. Like everything is just alright. You just want to kick back and smile and smoke a joint and say, "hey baby, everything is just fine right now. Or the sweeter songs that feel like a gentle caress where you chest gets soft and you just want someone's head to lay down on your shoulder.
I hope some of this is a little useful. I am curious why this has anything to do with AS. I know little more than what I've read on the internet, a couple books, and visiting WP the last couple weeks about AS. I have know idea how the spectrum would affect the affect music has on people. It seems to vary throughout the entire population. Everyone is affected differently and by different kinds of music. Judging by the posts I've seen here, which are my only knowledge of actual people with AS, aspies aren't less emotional than NT's. I don't know what that means to not be affected emotionally by music. Maybe that person was thinking like me at the beginning of this post in referring to it not being the same set of emotions that life events create. I am guessing it is more of an individual trait with that person though rather than being an AS thing. This is only my assumption though. It's based on too little knowledge.
You know which people are really not too affected by music? Deaf folks. They just go on like it isn't even playing. What the hell is wrong with them anyway?!

For myself, I have an enormous appreciation of music, much more so than others, perhaps. I can tell you, from years of playing several instruments, that I seem to be somewhat rhythmically deficient but I can pick up melodies and play by ear very well. I have a hard time keeping rhythm in an ensemble, but I play fine by myself because I do not have to keep pace with others. Thus, even if I do not keep a steady rhythm, no one besides myself would really know. Nonetheless, from years of playing and practice, I can maintain a base rhythm.

I also noticed, although I feel that it is common, that I tend to corrolate notes and keys with colors. I link A with yellow, B with indigo, C with red, D with orange, E with light purple, F with green, G with teal, Ab with yellow/orange, Bb with brown, Eb with pink, Db with lime and so on so on. Minor keys I tend to envision in sombre hues and major keys I attribute effervescent shading. Also, when I hear any sound, my brain instantly will identify what key it is in.

I mostly stay away from contemporary music, which I find droll, repetitive, unimaginative, and watered down to make accessible for everybody. Beyond, I have a wide spectrum of tastes of some relatively unknown composers like Gottschalk, James Scott, and Scarlatti.

I suppose anyone is different and one with an "extreme male" brain would not have much sensitivity to sound. My olfactories are almost non-functioning so I can see how some AS people would not respond to music.

Musical sponge; melody and rhythm provide a blissfully distracting interplay while I am trying to work. One of the arrangers I work with is often driven batguano by the fact I will have at least one and sometimes as many as three other sound sources playing while I am writing in order to keep various aspects of my mind occupied while I am writing. I have some color response, but tend to see... grid pattens, for lack of a better term, when I am listening. And I listen to almost everything - today was Depression-era bluegrass.


M.

This is called synaesthesia and is not all that common. I do have it, although nowhere near that precise. For music I get compositions of colours and shapes depending on the elements and mood of the song. I also associate colours with numbers, letters, days of the week, etc.

As far as music goes, I can't live without it. It affects my brain in ways nothing else does, from stimulating in the morning too invoking anger, depression, nostalgia, everything. It achieves this in ways nothing else can, and in different times in my life has been even addictive. Like there's a narcotic effect. No bad trips or withdrawal though.

My genre of choice is electronic music, and the vast majority of my collection is lyricless. It's all about sound engineering, song structure, and traditional notions like melodic and harmonic development. It's actually quite mathematical, in addition to evoking powerful emotions.

To give an idea, some of my favourite artists are: Jega, Autechre, Plaid, Bola, Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, Bonobo, Digitonal, Arovane, Orbital, Mum, µ-Ziq, RJD2, Air, Leafcutter John, and many more.

I'm into plenty of other genres though, pretty much anything with creative quality will float my boat. Other artists of interest are Beck, Bjork, Blackalicious, Beirut, Bowerbirds, and probably a few more B's too.

This is so wonderful, thank you! It is really beautiful to hear all of your reflections on music.

I am studying the psychology of music and really wanted to respond to what a lot of musicolgists say about Aspies and people on the spectrum not having an emotional response to music.

My boyfriend has AS and I think he responds more carnally to music than I do as someone not on the spectrum.

Ethos

Btw, may I have your permission to quote you/ use your handle in my paper?

You have my persmission, no problem. I also urge you to have your boyfriend check out some of the elecronic artists I mentioned if he doesn't know of them already.

permission gladly granted. Responds carnally?! YYYeeessssss. Music makes me wild and I'll dance an entire night only stopping for drinks till I'm absolutely exhausted. Would have died already without music in the world.

I've always got off on music, from childhood onwards. Only thing is, I'm not good at playing along with others.

Elderly dudes with guitars, unless they're good at it, aren't a pretty sight.

My boyfriend loves music, but very much limits what he is even "willing" to listen to...he tends to relate to certain music on an emotional level, because he relates lyrically. Though the only music I find that he listens to regularly tends to be almost slapstick music like The Dead Milkmen, he just listens sings and laughs to it...it is very similar to what he is "willing" to watch on television and in movies.

i very much like music, but i am not able to relate it to emotions. i do not have deep or complex emotions.
i like the frequency patterns and the timbre of music.

i always superimpose my own imaginary "backing tracks" to music i am listening to that i like. it is sort of like playing "cat's cradle" (with string) in my mind to interlace with the patterns i am hearing.

if i am at home, i usually switch on the keyboard and play in accompaniment to music i am listening to. (the keyboard sound i use is "grand piano", and it is played through the same main large speakers as the song i am listening to. because of this, i can mix the sound level of the piano properly into the song and have much fun).

i do not actually feel any emotions when i am having so much fun with music. i just feel .... (i will think about it)......

well i guess i feel a "pleasant surprise" at the notes my mind spontaneously contrives in harmony with what i am listening to. i seem not to have any deliberate control over them.

i am impressed by composers who can think of musical structures that are so easily understood, yet totally unique. i am impressed when the musician playing the lead in a song i like, wrote it.

when i hear sad whining songs, i do not like them, and i do not engage in any imaginary interplay with them.

i do not like songs that are balladic or in other ways "instructional".

for example, my girlfriend likes "hero" by mariah carey. she put it on the other night. she did not want me to play piano to it. she got teary. she wanted me to "really listen to the lyrics".
i kind of like how the melody is written, but i care not for the words. music for me is pure melody, and not a form of verbal communication.

when i listened to the words "there's a hero....", i thought of the similarity between "hero" and "here-o". so i imagined the words to the song as :

Here's a "here-o",
And there's a "there-o",
And over there is a "where o where-o"

.....etc so i started to become silly. she was not impressed.

the next night when she was not there, i played a honky tonk version of it on the keyboard for my entertainment.

i am saying this because i am trying to provide an example of how i can be absorbed in melody without any emotional connection.

I was reminded this morning of the downfalls of being so affected by music combined with a pattern thinking brain. I had little snippets of a song I heard Sunday night repeating over and over again, frantically, like lines repeating themselves and jumbling up and I couldn't get rid of them for hours. Usually it's not that bad, but I will have random parts of songs jump into my head constantly. Or, I'll be reminded by a melody, or sound, or lyric by something I hear or think of.

Those connections are very prevalent and for the most part I like them. They fuel my creativity, and I'm always looking for new influences and ideas. New music is always a terrific prospect, and when something clicks right away (or even if it grows strongly), well there really isn't another feeling like it.

My taste in music is like my taste in food. I like spicy or very strong flavored foods. I also like Beethoven or Blues but I don’t like Brahms or Modern Jazz.

Music has always been an obsessive subject with me. It has always been something that feels more of a necessity than a hobby. Throughout my childhood I always had my CD player with me and various genres of music.

I've never been real into music that's just in or what was popular among my peers. In fact I use to get made fun of for listening to a lot of old stuff and varities coming from other countries. I never understood the mentality of enjoying music only because of its popularity rather than beauty or something one feels within themselves while listening to a song.

Music has been a part of my life since I was very small: listening to it, and later, playing it. And I have a very definite emotional response to the right kind of music. I'm into quite a variety of stuff - rock, punk, indie, alternative, blues, jazz, classical, early music...and I have different reactions to almost all of it.

I think it has a lot to do with my emotional state at the time. F'rinstance, this may sound surprising to anyone who knows how much into Nirvana I am, but back in the 90s their stuff really passed me by...I was living a very different life, stuffing a lot of my emotions away, living in big-time denial - and listening to the AOR my ex liked, which today absolutely leaves me cold. In 2004, though, I was at perhaps my lowest ever ebb, emotionally, and just by chance I found Nevermind (which my husband had bought way back and barely listened to since) and put it on just for something to listen to, and - it just instantly, totally got to me. I suspect I was just...ready for them at that point. There are so many different nuances - the noise and the screaming, which can be either pure cathartic rage or f**k-you life-affirming, and the quieter, more melodic places, which are sometimes mournful but can also be, I find, deeply comforting. Big cliché, I know, but Nirvana really did save my life. They actually kickstarted my interest in music after a hiatus of a few years where I couldn't seem to get into anything (I think that might have been good old common or garden depression, to be honest), and there are a whole bunch of other great bands that I got into after that point...like some others here, it's not about what happens to be 'in', it's 'Do I like this?'

I'm one of those people who does go for the lyrics as well - I like words, I get off on words in other contexts, so of course I love it when someone does something with words that grabs me - but I can also respond purely to the music. I think it goes to a deeper than verbal level. For example, there are certain Bach 'cello pieces where I know what the 'cello, and the 'cellist, and Bach, are trying to say, but I couldn't tell you in words...does that sound odd?

I also play guitar, sing, and write songs, and because the songs are coming from my own emotions, I can't not have a reaction. Plus, the creative process itself is about the biggest emotional high I can think of.