Musicians on the spectrum

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Aspie COMPOSER here!! !

The great thing about being a musician is how easy it is to find people, NT's or otherwise, just like me. Majoring in music in college was not so bad, either, except for the whole composer thing. My first music school didn't have a lot of teachers that really encouraged listening and appreciating good new music, so many of my classmates were classical music snobs. When I started my master of music composition degree, I ran into more students who were really into not only the weird music that I liked but also more of the geeky, technical music theory kinds of things. I felt like I'd come home! Also, the anti-social Aspie trait can make one more suited to musical study since music majors tend to be isolated in the music school or building most of the time, anyway.

If it weren't for music and theater, I'd have next to ZER0 social interaction beyond my family.

Warren Zevon ???

OK. Definitely Aspie musicians: Craig Nichols of The Vines, Ladyhawke, and Gary Numan. There's speculation about plenty of others, of course, but those are the only ones I know of. Famous ones, that is. I think you're always safer sticking to people who've actually come out and said they have it, rather than second-guessing the ones who haven't.

I write songs, play guitar and sing. The sticky Musicians Thread has a link to my Myspace page, which has some of my songs on there...way overdue for a change, I really need to record some more stuff and I need to get off my butt and do another open mic (and I wish I lived somewhere where you could do this sort of thing and not have miles to go to get home afterwards. I hate living in rural Britain.)

I'm pretty sure being more involved in music would have helped my socialization when I was younger if I'd had the nerve to get into it. I had an attraction to music early on, but strong family opposition to me actually learning an instrument. (I think my interests collided with someone else's unfulfilled ambitions.) But playing a guitar is the one time I can get up in front of a bunch of people and not feel totally self-conscious and uncomfortable, and because of that 'accepted eccentricity' thing, I feel a lot less out of place around creative people anyway.

When I get a new drum kit, I'll show you what I can do.

In the meantime, have a gander at my Electronica music I create:

www.myspace.com/M0AN3R

Let me know what you think.