"Feel" music differently?
I picked up the guitar at age 13. People started calling me a musical and guitar prodigy by the next year. Though recognized as talented in the music department, I've never "felt" music the way I've heard "feeling music" described. It doesn't really move me, stir up emotions, make me think, or make me want to move my body (dance) at all. As for lyrics, I couldn't care less about what's being said. I enjoy all the patterns that pop out of music, what some like to call music theory. Being able to think critically about how different things fit together and can be replaced is a lot like playing with legos for me.
The problem with this is that it makes me feel dysfunctional. Lots of people love to go out and dance, see live music, become starstruck when they meet people they've listened to, are very moved, ect. I feel very apathetic to all of these; I can do dance moves but I very much dislike combining moves to music, I rather listen to an album on an amazing sound system than see a live performance, and I feel no special attraction to musicians beyond their musical expressions. I'm curious to what extent this difference might stem from ASD. I realize that there is a lot of variation in interests and how people experience different phenomena, and there's plenty of savant-struck individuals who appear to be deeply moved by their special interest(s), however I'm not aware of any self-reports from such individuals with a comparison to other people.
I have yet to meet another person who shares these attributes, so it'd be interesting to see if there are any patterns attributable to ASD.
I enjoy it like I enjoy legos and a math problem combined. Just like I prefer ice cream over tomatoes, there are certain combinations of sounds that I prefer over others. If the quality of sound is really bad, the musical enjoyment can be made up through the choice of chords, rhythms, and notes played on top of it (the more interesting/complex their relationship, the more enjoyable it is to hear). When I learn a melody and embellish it, I go through an intellectual process, not an intuitive one.
Last edited by Spectacles on 10 Aug 2014, 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I like observing patterns in music too. When I first start listening to anything, I like to analyze it heavily. Then after I've heard it for awhile, sometimes I'm able to be moved by it. But then I get bored and start analyzing it again.
I would like to be able to dance, but I can only belly dance...
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