So we got a piano!

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We went to the music shop and bought a piano! We got him a guitar too and he holds it real low - just like the stars on tv. Now for reality - does anybody have any experience of aspies learning instruments and any ideas/memories they want to share? I am wondering what kind of teacher could really help him learn (without being walloped/ignored) and what I need to look for and where to look for it.

Thanks!

My mom loved to find baby sitters that could teach her kids something. All three
of us took piano lessons. I physically could not do it. It was to the point the teacher (old women) put her arm around me and leaned her head close to mine and said "you do not want to play the piano do you?" I said "no" and that was the
last time i had to do that crap ! !! !! !! !! !
In 6 grade the entire class took a test to see who had hearing good enough to
get in the band. I scired high and the band teacher wanted me but I told him I
wanted to stay in art class.
But you know forcing a kid to learn something like piano would help him. Plus
music students kick butt in math . I took calculus III in college and there were lots
of music majors in my class.

my aspie son is a muscial genius~ he currently plays piano, electric guitar and saxophone. i wish he'd practice more~or go for lessons again, for that matter. he seems to believe he knows enough to get by.......he took sax lessons through school, and his teacher was wonderful~since son's changed schools, no more lessons .......he used to take piano through a colleague of mine, but stopped when his depression became out of control. guitar he's just picked up on his own. he particularly likes to play Smoke on the Water.

I've never even touched a musical instrument in my entire, although I've done some singing as a kid. It was in some children's music school my parents signed me up for. I actually didn't mind, since the instructors at that school used progressive (read: enjoyable for kids) teaching methods. They intentionally picked out either childhood classics or kid-friendly pop songs, which made the lessons tolerable even in the worst case. Most of the time, they were pretty fun.

Now if my parents bought me a musical instrument "for my intellectual development", and made me practice playing it, my reaction would be quite different. Either me or that instrument would go flying out the window. (I lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building.)

My son wanted badly to join *something* when moving on to middle school this year, so he chose the band. Then he chose the tuba. He is very happy with it, and I water the flowers for the 15 mins he practices a night LOL. My recollection from school was that the band kids tend to be their own little group, they were all pretty much smart kids who liked music, and so I think he'll fit in. Fortunately he didn't follow mom's footsteps, I was 1st chair violin in orchestra, we were the super-geeks!

I took music lessons of various kinds pretty much non-stop from the age of 3. First it was piano, then cello, then back to piano.

I started piano at the age of 3, and I don't really remember well what I was like back then. I've been told it was hard to make me practice. My teacher from then quit teaching, and so I had to change teachers at the age of either 6 or 7. When this started, I began to really hate practicing, and fought with my parents all the time and tried everything I could think of to get out of it. I only practiced once or twice a week because that was all the energy they had to make me, and when I did that, I set the microwave timer for 30 minutes, and the second it went off, I was out of there.

I finally quit piano when I went into middle school and my grades plumetted. But they moved me right into the cello, and it was pretty much the same thing. For a while during my lessons, my dad (an Aspie himself) would sit with me while I practiced and talk to me about what I was doing, and that worked well. But one day he snarled "I shouldn't have to do this" and stalked off and from then on refused to have anything to do with my lessons. About that time I had a disagreement with my teacher about how to hold the cello bow* and from then on wouldn't practice or work. I quit taking lessons when that teacher had to move.

I was off lessons for a few years. In my mid to late teens, I decided I wanted to take piano lessons again. And because I wanted to I guess, I never had any problems with practicing like that, and I even rode my bike to a couple lessons even when my parents weren't around to find out if I'd gone or not. I always liked making music, I just HATED being forced to practice.

*My hands are shaped oddly, and my pinky fingers are set really low on my hand, so that their tips only come to in between my first and second knuckles on the ring finger. Because of this I couldn't hold the bow without getting a severe cramp in my hand. I found a different way to hold it (bracing my 5th finger against the bow for leverage instead of trying to hold it down with my too-short finger), but my teacher wouldn't let me play like that. So I started refusing to play.

I tried to play guitar during high school, but I really couldn't concentrate on configuring my hands right and singing at the same time. The only songs I got pretty good at were Plush by Stone Temple Pilots, and In Bloom by Nirvana. Both which were mostly power chord songs. I did learn to have much more respect for how difficult it is to play rock guitar though, you have to be super-fast.

Thanks everyone - well it looks like its in the hands of the gods!