Aspies and Music

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I play the piano and organ. Used to play the French Horn a while back, never much enjoyed it. I was never any good at playing music though. I find sitting down with a page of music in front of me to play very difficult, though I can read it easily, and pretty much hear it my head anyway. Conversely, if I can remember a score in my head, I can usually play it better than reading it from a page. I learnt Widor's tocatta (recommended as the most powerful bit of music you'll easily find) this way. I'd known the piece for years, and could hear it in my head (my musical memory is great I never need a walkman), then i found a score, and after a week of bloody-minded practise, and a total lack of tuition or technique, I could play it.

I've got perfect pitch, and a certain skill for classical improvisation. I can play for hours, without putting a bad chord down - I think it's something to do with pattern recognition. The way I imagine it is as a language. Many words (chords) can be used in many places, and are often followed by another small group of possible words, but it's the overall statement (theme) you're constructing that defines which progression to choose.

I believe all of these skills are a product of my dash of autism.

I've been mixing and playing with electronic sound for around 6-7 years (I'm 21) and have found my own kind of niche.. I found a weird way to work it, I had to get out every single electronic idea I could, and then go through each one and mix/master/edit them until they're complete. I realised though that to (eventually) make a living or something off this I would have to get myself a stable job and fund an album release of some sort.

Since then I've finished an album P.B.A which is a kinda ambient/electronic/dance/noise/rock (hard to explain) journey of sorts, with a bonus cd of more "experimental" stuff. I will release my other (6) electronic projects over the course of the next few years.

EDIT: contact me if you wanna hear anything!!

Also came across an idea to create an album which uses certain frequencies to affect certain parts of the brain, this is a hard one that has no time limit.

The other thing thats been on hold for a while but is now becoming my main focus, and I realise I can (I think) actually keep a job, is a very heavy project releasing a lot of frustration, but its also a positive anger, with a kinda wall of sound feel too it, crushing yet inviting and warm... Its tentatively titled Umbra, and its a symbolic sort of story about being lost in the oppressing dark, always with a glimmer of hope in sight, but eventually getting swallowed up by the light..

I play guitar, my brother plays drums, We need a bassist so any bassists contact me, though you would have to live in perth, kinda hard to jam via the net, though sharing electronic and other forms of ideas is perfect in this form.

Anyway I've recently begun a label with my brother (Come Again? records), and in the next few months should be releasing P.B.A... So the stage I'm upto is finding and keeping some work and saving enough cash to actually get this thing out..


Maybe we need a place where we can upload/share tracks or something? Contact me anyone if you're either interested in purchasing or hearing my stuff, or even if you wanna show me your stuff.. I'm very interested in music that pushes genres, in music that sounds like no other, in sound itself and possible diversity of ways it can affect..


If you're looking for a label to release on (be warned we haven't even done our first release, soon there will be 3-4 albums though) we might be good for you.

Also... anyone do web design? I will pay you to construct me a site for our label..

Last edited by Scintillate on 07 Oct 2006, 1:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

scintillate i too am very intrested in electronic music, and enjoy alot of the more 'pure' electronic/synthesised music. have you ever heard of 'subatomicglue' i suggest u look at their site, http://www.subatomicglue.com they are an internet based group, so all of their albums are free and available to download of their site. Although I assumed i would only enjoy a few of the songs, i have downloaded 2 of their albums and i love ALL of the tracks on each very very good pure electronic music, i can get lost in them for hours.

I dont personally make my own musical constructions (mainly because i dont have the proper equipment) but enjoy mixing together parts of different tracks, i find i have a natural affinity for melding the different parts and knowing how to organise it all, and my ears are very 'tuned', i can count beats etc accurately even if a track is going as fast as 200bpm

There are many wonderful programs for editing, mixing, generating and mastering..

To make my solo projects I use: ableton live, adobe audition, cubase, sound forge, reaktor, absynth, and 3-4 other programs..

I consider some programs like instruments, and some like arrangers, and some like "studios"

By "pure" do you mean totally synthesised? Because I think you might enjoy what I do..

Reason 3.0's pretty decent too in terms of having something that's a good all-in-one, doesn't have the VST's that ProTools or CuBase might have but still I think its great intro software for someone to start off with. Also, you mention Absynth - very good program. A couple other things I keep hearing about on other forums I go to for production are Albino 3 and Spectrasonics Trilogy. Right now I really want to start playing with FM modulation of basslines, seems like thats what a lot of the pros do for that real metallicly callibrated sort of grime.

I use Ableton a bit too, to make orchestral trance and various other styles. I'm still quite new to it, but I've been getting good results on and off. PM me, if anyone's interested - will gladly swap tracks for listening.

I sing, sing, sing sing, like the Travis' song says...

I actually wouldn't mind checking into an artist site one of these days soon. Back in 2000 I had about 7 hard trance and acid techno tracks on MP3.com, they got taken over, I never gave them rights to keep my stuff out there, and right now I really don't know where I'd want to host my music. If anything once I have a few more tracks done I wouldn't mind having a page with all of it and giving the link out here and other places like AFF, Intensity2, etc.

Another thing I was just thinking of, I'm really starting to give serious thought to buying myself a copy of ProTools MBox with ReWire so I can use Reason 3.0 as a plug-in. I also hear that ProTools has pretty much any hardware synth you can think of available as a software VST plug-in, that's another major selling point but the only thing is I'm still a little concerned on how much it might cost (yeah, I could soulseek em but I'm not even sure what they have available). One of my friends at work was telling me that I really should look into getting myself a small midi keyboard as a controller - might be a good idea just in terms of playing with sounds but its not like my desk has the kind of space I'd like to actually have a decent sized controller on top of.

if anyones interested, me and a couple of others are creating a label for aspie/experimental/unique/ANYTHING music, contact me we'll trade some tracks and see if you fit into the whole scheme of things.

This is the hardest part for me, getting the business side of things going, I have 7 projects I've created over the past 5 years, but I'm going to release one album every 5-6 months, starting off for free with bonus cd's if you pay, eventually becoming a label in our own right (hopefully).

Come Again? productions is the name...

The first slogan is "music by geeks, for geeks"

Even if you're not ready to release it unto the world, I love sound and would love to swap tracks with anyone and everyone..

Pretty much the only thing of good quality within those songs is the guitar play (sorry if i offend and i didnt read half of your post so) anyways you can tell the guitar is good but the sound quality isnt good so the singer sounds like crap (it happens with bad recording equipment?) anyways it took me around 3 minutes to learn my first song (Wish you were here by Incubus) and I started practicing drums as well as learning bass guitar (bass is even easier than regular guitar) I dont know about anyone else but I prefer the base because you hit one note at a time while on the guitar its usually around 3 or 4

You aren't in west australia are you?

(we need a good bassist )

I play clarinet, with a strong preference for jazz to classical. Trouble is that the clarinet tends to be more common in trad jazz music, whereas I'm much more of a modern/cool jazz fan.

If I would suggest that AS has any music on my (negligable) musical abilities, it would be the ability to comprehend and recognise the different scales and keys used in jazz music. There is a lot of modulation going on and the scales often aren't the conventional, "natural' melodic scales used in popular music.

Well, one more really great bit of news - I just ran out and got myself Absynth 4 and Digidesign ProTools Mbox2. Hopefully now I've really got it locked, all I need to do is follow through with getting the new monitors (either Mackie HR824's or Genelec 8020A's with a 7050B woofer) and I'll have it made

Whoah sounds awesome! I love absynth... I think I need some better monitors myself, because instead of having a "flat" mix that I can judge from, I've been forced to use headphones, and my large speakers, and 2 other stereos, and make the best between the four.


I've been finishing the mastering on this project for way too long now (I'm a tad perfectionist) but it should be getting out and about from now onwards.

Cool. I'm only stuck with one problem though - for one I still need a second harddrive for MBOX (sounds like it needs to run so independent of windows that the power setting need to be changed and the hyperthreading be turned off as well as at least having an independent conceptual drive - I don't have the storage to back up my hard disk right now). Also, it looks like either you can't export Absynth 4 sounds to wave or they're just making the knowhow really obscure. there's one preset that I'm dying to modify a bit and use in a d&b track I could start on Reason but oh well, I'm hoping having ProTools up in a few days will help me around that hurdle.