Musicians on the spectrum

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I'm not talking about the ones we think might be on the spectrum, but ones that have been diagnosed, or at least say that they are on the spectrum

I know two artists, The Vines and Not A Number, but I am sure there are more

There's Matt Savage who plays jazz and is only about 15.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8yrxadI1tE[/youtube]

He's younger here^.

You'll find plenty here on WP. Many of us are professionals.

Or don't we count?

I would love to hear from any and all of the musicians who are on wrongplanet --

It has seemed to me that an strong interest in music has helped my boys socialize in the cold, cruel world. I'm wondering if that has been the case with all of you as well!

I gave the vines as a non-wp example, and not a number for a wp-related example

I guess that's why I asked. I didn't know if you wanted us professional musicians (whom you probably haven't heard of) to respond.

And I apologize if my post sounded snarky; that was not intended.

EDIT: I don't know who either of those bands are, so I wouldn't have known that Not A Number was a WP example.

Last edited by fiddlerpianist on 13 Jul 2009, 12:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Can't leave out Ladyhawke! "Back of the Van" is one of my favorite songs from this decade...

I don't know if I count because I'm not a professional musician and I don't think I'm very good, but I attended a music school and I think it helped me socialize being around other people with similar interests. I often think of my time there as when I started coming out of my shell. I think I was definitely more social after attending than before. The one friend I have I met at the school.

I'm a professional musician, and yes, I adamantly believe that my strong interest in music has significantly contributed to the mildness of my AS traits. (I also think that my AS traits are mild to begin with, so I'm very lucky.)

I did play in orchestra and sing in choir in high school, and yes, I would say that it helped my socialization skills. My first girlfriend played the viola in orchestra, and my second was in the choir.

Socialization was only a small part of it, though. From the very beginning years of school, adults accepted me for who I was largely because I was seen as a talented musician. The deficient social skills were kind of swept under the rug. Musicians, as a whole, are cut a little more slack for being eccentric. It's almost expected. That's not to say that all musicians are on the spectrum; it's just that musicians are much more free to be themselves without a lot of questions being asked.

Yeah, I sucked at gym class and felt very alien on the playground, or when having to deal with my peers. But whenever I felt down about this, I had my parents and teachers tell me, "I bet that they can't play the piano like you can." I suspect that, in part because of the amazing adult support I had as a child, I'm one of the most confident people I know.

There were some bumps along the way, of course. I used to sit in the back of math class and sing to myself in third grade. My teacher wanted me to be tested because, in her eyes, I was "very unusual" and obviously "living in my own little world." My parents refused, though, because my grades were not suffering. I don't think anyone in the world would have suspected autism back then, largely because AS wasn't an official diagnosis until I had graduated high school. These days I bet it would have been different.

I believe that, in many ways, music dampened the severity of many of the "negative" AS traits. I don't get meltdowns, I don't get depressed, my hypersensitivities to sound are almost completely gone, I have decent enough eye contact, I don't have a monotone voice, etc. While I think that some of this is due to the mildness of my AS traits to begin with, I think there may be something else to it, though. There have been studies which suggest that musicians have a larger / more developed corpus callosum (i.e. "white matter") than average. Autistics, on the other hand, supposedly have a smaller / less developed corpus callosum than average (although studies can't agree on this last point). While there aren't any studies to suggest that music can "make up" for corpus callosum irregularities, it's known that a child's active involvement in music helps to connect pathways which otherwise wouldn't be connected.

A study which explored the relationship between autism, music, and brain development would be very fascinating, indeed, although the sheer number of variables of such a study would probably make it astronomically complex.

I was about to say...I am a musician (not professional but offered at least half a dozen recording contracts), an engineer (was professional for live sound) and did booking (professionally for a short time). I have to agree it seems like those of us who are musicians are a little more socialized. In music communities ASD are not nearly as much of a detriment. Without music and theater I doubt I would have ever socialized. But my obsession helped me out quite a bit.

I have done live sound engineering for Bright Eyes, Ida, Tara Jane Oneil, the Vida Blue, Planes Mistaken for Stars, Brass knuckles for tough guys, and dozens of other indie, emo and hardcore bands.

well, I'm not professional (the band never made more than 1 large at any gig), but the nice thing about being in performing arts, is that people expect you to be 'strange'...

I hear David Byrne is...

I was hoping some of you people would share your music with the thread

There are several videos of me on the net, but this is one of my favorites. This has been shared elsewhere on WP, so apologies if you've seen this already.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aZcNnFyh6I[/youtube]

I would post some of my guitaring, but I have no way to record it.

Well, unfortunately, all my stuff's on cassette, and a little hard to upload...

I found something called Musicshake, that I might try out (to be honest, I got a magazine called Computer Music, which had everything you'd find in virtual form, but half the programs locked my system up solid, so I had to uninstall them...always something.