Asperger's and weird taste in music.

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Big fan of pop music here. I get enough music that I like and enjoy through the mainstream channels. The current Top 40 is filled with songs that I like (though there are a couple that I can't stand), and attempts to explore more 'alternative' channels hasn't led me to finding more bands or artists -percentually speaking- that I find more engaging than the mainstream stuff. I suspect that my brain isn't sophisticated enough to notice those subtleties.

I'd say that this quote from Slate Star Codex pretty well encapsulates my relationship with music.

People like to think I only listen to obscure music, for whatever reason.
I guess it's kind of become a joke, but it's still confusing to me.
I mean, I don't deliberately seek out bands and artists only a relatively few have heard of.
It just so happens that some types of music I like are "underground" by default.
And while I like some well-known stuff, such as The Killers, David Bowie, Ramones, and whatnot, I think a big part of the "u only listen 2 bands w/ 5 listeners"-routine is that the people saying this simply have a pretty limited scope. Anyone who's really into music would most likely look at you weird if you told them Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are obscure. It's relative.

And I hate calling things "weird."
I'm not going to go on a crusade against the term, but I'm not also not going to use it to describe any piece of entertainment. "Weird fiction" being the exception to this rule, as it actually does tell you something.

I've gone through many phases of music. When I was very very little (3?) it was mostly nursery rhymes...Old MacDonald, Clementine, Little Miss Muffet etc etc.
I think I had all 4 of these CDs from The Countdown Kids...all nursery rhymes sang by four 1st-2nd graders. Believe they were Canadian. This was the one I played the most: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41C4XKWZCJL.jpg
At the same time, I was also getting into the relaxing format of smooth jazz. We had a local SJ station in Seattle on 98.9 and that's what I would listen to day after day. Loved hearing Peter White, Sade, Paul Hardcastle etc. AND STILL DO! Right now at the age of 17 1/2, my #1 format to listen to is smooth jazz. Most people find that "elevator music" and "boring", but I like the groovy, relaxing sound of a sax or guitar instrumental. Also enjoy the smooth R&B from Sade, Anita Baker, Basia etc. that aired on SJ stations. I would go to sleep with smooth jazz playing on the radio, instead of a CD or cassette with lullabies and Mozart pieces.

I was still mainly a SJ listener for many years, then around 2007-08 got into 60s/70s oldies, back to smooth jazz and soft rock, then a phase of modern country music over a couple of years...because my mom loved country music. Back to smooth jazz. Stayed with mostly soft rock/smooth jazz after that, but do listen to some 90s country, 60s/70s oldies, 80s pop, and some classic rock here and there. Also enjoy the throwback Rhythmic adult contemporary hits from people like Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston. Can't stand most soft rock stations nowadays...they have turned into light versions of top 40 stations. Back in the 1990s, there was a lot more love songs. Now it's the 245th place on the dial to find Katy Perry and One Direction.

Probably 99% of my high school would care less about a 2001 sax cut from Kim Waters. But that's my type of music. They would rather put rap into their car's speaker system and boom boom boom their ears out.

My favourite type of music has always been video game music. With no words. At this very moment I have a video game music radio station playing in the background

I've always been ashamed of this and tried to teach myself to listen to contemporary music as well but just can't really get all that into it.

I do like certain normal bands though, mostly soft/normal rock (i.e. not heavy) bands with male vocals.

I like a lot of old folk music (like from Newfoundland). The strumming of an acoustic guitar is one of my favourite sounds in the world. Part of this might just be that that's what I'm exposed to (my mom and uncle, as well as my next-door neighbours, sing a lot of those types of songs). I also like a lot of classic rock/pop songs. I think my tastes are a bit sappier/more sentimental than those of the average person.

I also like mainstream pop, though.

I enjoy listening to bluegrass screamo much to the dismay of my Grandpa who is a banjo player.

When i'm home I practise my screaming skills so I can join a screamo band. My parents are always like wtf is this kid doing?

I think my autism has influenced my musical tastes here and there. When the Beatles were a working band I was unusually fascinated with them, for a boy, and when they (and especially their older records) became unfashionable, I still felt they were tons better than any other music, and it was many years before I accepted that other musicians could sound just as good as, and sometimes better than, the Fab Four. Most new records sounded lousy to me until I'd heard them a lot. So I was very disconnected from the tastes of my peers, which made it more difficult for me to fit in.

When I started performing in bands myself, the first song I played (in early 1968) was "Ain't She Sweet?" because that was the earliest Beatles recording I knew of, and I felt that I had to somehow "start at the beginning." Some girls in the front row laughed their heads off at us. Even if they'd liked the Beatles, that record was so obscure that they wouldn't have known about it, so they probably thought we were doing a cover version of the 1927 recording. I think all they wanted to hear was psychedelic blues.

I got very into collecting old 78 rpm records soon after that, and was surprised when people said "if only we'd known, you could have had ours, but we trashed them a few years ago." I couldn't get my brain round the concept of a music recording becoming worthless over time, and still can't. I was particularly interested in the oldest records I could find, from the 1890s, for the sheer joy of hearing sounds that had been made in Victorian times.

Later on I hated punk rock and new wave because I was still into "proper" rock, and again it took me years to realise that there were good things among the new stuff.

I still tend to think that most records are rubbish, although I have very broad musical tastes these days. It's unusual if an album has more than one track on it that I really like. I usually get bored well before the end of a music concert.

Key concepts in understanding all this: special interests, aversion to change, perfectionism gone mad, and the disconnect between me and the rest of society. They're Aspie traits, I think.

I'm not sure, except i like sad music. also, music that sounds sad to me doesnt sound sad to nts and vise versa.

I don't see any connection. However would you view this as odd?







Turn down your volume for this last one

Yes I believe Asperger's can effect your taste in music. Music isn't just music it is also a social factor. Asperger's can affect your social conditioning and overall mindset. There was an experiment done to show that music does have a major social factor.
This article says it

This makes sense to me considering MTV was dictating what was "cool" to listen to for nearly two decades and some people go out of their way to like artist/genres just because cool people they know like them. I also believe music videos are another factor in why people listen to the songs it is because the music video helps enhance it on what they should picture/feel when listening to the song. A lot of artist also have to have some sort of image/lifestyle they give off for their listerners want to vicariously live through hence a lot of songs with lyrics about luxuries and partying.

Growing up I never really cared for music during my elementary school years. I just tuned out most of it or found it to be annoying noises. Music was pretty foreign to me I honestly thought some of the pop songs used in movies actually belonged to them I once made an idiot of myself when a couple of kids were watching a music channel and I claimed they band ripped that song off from a movie. Only until Middle School did I develop some sort of taste in music. Music I listened to mostly during my Middle school years was the openings/soundtracks of cartoons, videogame soundtracks, Weird Al Yonkovic, some stuff I stumbled upon on Newgrounds and Linkin Park (pretty much because Till The End and Numb were practically played everywhere). My high school years didn't evolve much either in taste, just some songs that were used in animes and a couple more games got added to my playlist.

I never listened to the radio and I was to only kid to not have an ipod/mp3 player not even an old cheap CD player either. I put my Aspie brain to use and mesmorized every little detail of the songs I liked. So I just played the songs in my head, pretty handy especially in situations you can't to use your ipod like in class or dead batteries and it saved my parents a ton of money too.

I never followed mainstream/pop culture so I never kept up on music nor did I follow it. If I never got a facebook account and added peers from school I'd probably never know about whats going on or even know what a handful of celebrities look like (I just found out what JayZ looked like a year ago thanks to a facebook post someone shared). I live under a rock, a very big rock. I don't know about most of the bands you guys list and the ones I do know like the classic rock bands I only them because I've been reading/watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

My older sister gave me her old ipod touch two years ago and I'm making it a mission to use every single byte on it. I'm starting to learn more about myself like that I prefer instrumentals. Songs with lyrics are okay as long as it is not mushy romance or about sex/drugs/crime/money, I actually find the lyrics good, it is being sung in another language (easy for me to just think of it as just vocals), I like the voice singing the words, or the instrumentals are so good they make up for it. This most likely explains why when I was younger I did not like most music I heard. I also learned I'm pretty picky. Most mainstream songs don't do it for me. I have better luck going through more obscure artist even then just because the artist was obscure didn't mean I'd like them it just meant I had a 80% chance of finding something I liked more.

I only have about 7 favorite artist currently, I consider them favorite based on the fact that I like more than 3 songs from them as I have several songs from multiple artist but usually only 1 or two from each since I'm pretty picky. In terms of ranks for my top 6 it be

1. Archive

2. Yamajet

3. Nemesis Theory

4. Demon Hunter

5. Becoming The Archetype

Some of these artist are pretty obscure, especially Nemesis Theory and Yamajet. The genres of songs I like belong to Trip Hop, Glitch Hop, Electronica, Techno, Eurobeat, Trance, Synthwave, Downtempo, Psybreak + Drum n Bass, Jazz, Ska, Post-rock, Progressive rock, Hard rock, Jrock, Jpop, Metal, Heavy Metal, Christian Metal, Death Metal, Electronic Metal, Gothic, Funk, Japanese Disco/Funk, Alternative, World and some other genres me, itunes, and windows media player don't know of along with I believe are a combination of genres. I have yet to find a song I like in Western pop music, brostep, mainstream EDM, hip hop, RnB, and rap (not including Trip Hop raps). Unfortunate for me these are the most popular genres for my generation so I really stick out especially as a Black kid. My family is at least glad that I listen to things now that don't sound like they came from a Japanese cartoon .

I've been told that I like "naff" music.

I mainly listen to pop and rock from any decade. I think some of my music taste might be a little unusual for my age, but I think I also like some stuff that other people my age like.

I like future garage, dub techno, hard dub, mathcore and jazz.

I don't really care for mainstream popular music at all. To me, most of it sounds like mediocre singers and mediocre musicians playing mediocre songs that were probably composed in about 2 hours with boring chord progressions and melodies. The stuff I like is video game soundtracks and classical music. I have unusual preferences in other things besides music, so I guess my AS may have something to do with it.

I now like to listen to historical German music from the Early 20th Century. I try not to tell too many people because I know how they're going to respond. I particularly like the stuff from the 30s and 40s. I also like to listen to sleep and meditation music.