While I was waiting fro my Amtrak bus to my train connection today, I stopped in at the main library in SF - huge beautiful place. I happened upon a book: "Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability In Music"

Edited by Neil Lerner and Joseph N Strauss

Publishers: Rutledge

They looked at autism and music from a musicological point of view rather than from a music therapy point of view, and there are several interesting essays, including one about how NTs can learn autistic thinking through music. Mostly art music composers are mentioned, and it's a pretty academic text, though a lot of it is pure BS.

Still it seems worth a perusal.

"NTs can learn autistic thinking through music"


No wonder Michael and I "get" Max.............

http://www.amazon.com/Sounding-Off-Theor...4505&sr=1-1

Having read about 1/4 of it at the library, I can't recommend spending $30+ for it, but I can recommend borrowing it from the library or spinning through the Amazon page about it for free.

Funny segue--I was just reading this the other day: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16709-musicians-are-finetuned-to-others-emotions.html
and the related item: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20...the-babble.html

Those are both interesting articles - but they brought to my mind the fact that speech itself has been used as/ seen as music for at least 40+ years.

I am thinking in particular of the "phase music" of minimalist composer Steve Reich's 1966 piece "Come Out" - in which phase differences begin to make spoken word into sound until it is unintelligible.

I composed a piece using snippets of radio preachers, who after endless repetition in the context of other speakers and musical phrases found their pieces sounding no longer like words but like music, and also the composition of a former professor of mine wherein he literally transcribed the pitches of conversations and used them as the basis for a contemporary art music piece.

Personally, I can sit and listen to 72 tracks through a console in a studio control room - and hear just the kick drum, or just the bass part, etc. even as they are being played back as a mix - and switch attention at a moment's notice. This seems similar - the skill of being able to pull one thing out of a huge audio stew.

I was asked at a noisy party not long ago "Did you hear what he said?" - Yeah - a good 80% of it. My NT interlocutor understood less. And yet Audio Processing Disorder seeems linked to Autism.

It's an area that deserves further study - but I'd like to see the science people include the hardcore music and audio people into the designs of the studies.

There's stuff we hear daily quite differently from what regular people do - and that kind of learning and practice might well be of use to autistic kids.

But the original book that I cited touched on the themes of repetition and orderliness in music as a way of connecting Neurotypicals, who enjoy the same things about music, with how autistic people approach everyday life.

Great articles, though.

This is a link to a very recent re-mix by Ken Ishii of "come Out" - I suggest the original, but it seems unavailable on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T3O84pZtbc

Listening to NPR - and they're claiming Thelonious Monk is explained away by Bipolar - which I find impossible to believe whenb he is so obviously on the Autistic spectrum based not only on his music, but his constant need to stim - especially spinning - based on film footage of him.

As an Aspie, I want credit for Thelonious Monk.

The friend whose party I will be attending in PDX this weekend used to throw out a phrase from Monk on the guitar and look at me to finish it, because I would usually be the only one in the room who recognized it. If you listen carefully to Jimmy Page, you'll hear some of Monk's phrasing and almost quotes.

How dare this author steal Monk from the Spectrum?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121197087&ft=1&f=13 The author rejects ASD, claiming that Monk's spinning on stage was "dancing/"

Ok,Pal. So why was he "dancing," on film, at an airport? `Middle of the airport, just spinning. To whom was he explaining his musical rhythms as the author claims he did to explain parts to his musicians? As if stims can't be rhythmic? This guy is so FOS. USC must have some low standards for hiring if this is what passes for academia there.

I singlehandledly could knock Monk out of the spectrum.

I couldn't carry a tune with a wheelbarrow and 10 assistants.
And no stims involved.......

If you saw the documentary I did, you'd put Monk on the Spectrum. In fact, you'd probably place him closer to Kanner than Asperger. His ability to think outside the box and use repetition to make dissonance musical, his ability to be so tuned into a beat that he could play it flawlesly or putposely make it almost stutter at a level so subtle it can't be notated, and his silent understanding of all forms of music place him there.

Monk didn't talk much. He spoke, quite profoundly, through his music. And he wasn't afraid to spin in the airport no matter what people might think.

Please see this film before making your own decision: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098465/

I'm not a super jazz-cat. But Monk influences all of my work in all genres. Hearing, seeing, and trying to understand what Monk was saying has allowed me to better judge what can be heard as musical and what audiences will likely NOT hear as musical, though I personally consider all sound as music - it's just that some of it is better music than the rest.

Interesting article tying back to the importance of Music in Asperger's: http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/maeda/2009/12/why-business-leaders-should-ac.html