tone deafness

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Does anyone else have tone deafness as well as Asperger's? Music has always been very frustrating for me and it feels like a musical learning disability. I feel like it is neurologically related to my Asperger's, though my son who is also an Aspie has perfect pitch.

What is tone deafness?

I don't know if this applies to what you are talking about, but I have a great deal of difficulty determining if one tone is of a higher or lower pitch than another unless they are very far apart. You could play an A and a B on a piano and I couldn't tell you which was which in relation to each other.

And yet I keep trying to learn to play an instrument. I have a electronic piano, a guitar, a saxophone, even a theramin. I can't play a single one of them.

In trying to explain this to others, I describe myself as being like a computer with a very high end graphics card but with the cheapest, lamest audio card you can get. I am a visual person. I think in pictures and I can imagine and construct things visually in my mind, but I have only the most limited ability to deal with things I hear.

I think related to this is that I am terrible with languages. I have studied Latin, Spanish and French and have retained almost nothing. It seems that I am remarkably dull at anything that requires comprehension or processing of sounds. If someone tries to tell me a phone number, I have to get them to repeat it a few times because I can't process seven spoken words quickly enough to remember them or even write them down.

And yet I have very specific tastes in music. I often play a game of mentally isolating particular instruments in a piece of music and then imagining what kind of instrument would make that particular sound. I guess I'm okay at comprehending structured sounds that are already in a finished state while I am terrible at doing the construction of sounds myself. But I'm pretty good at constructing images in my head.

I have heard that Autism may be caused because certain neurological connections are missing. It seems reasonable then that one may not be able to process audio simply because there is no way to get what you hear into the part of the brain that might do something practical with it. Other people might have great audio processing connections while lacking the visual abilities.

I used to be, though not that badly. The worst problem I had was hearing a melody in my head and trying to duplicate in on a piano, and finding some of the notes I heard in my head didn't exist on the keyboard. I originally thought it had something to do with changing the key of the melody. Eventually I figured out it was because the note in my head really didn't exist at all in western scales.

I do recall sometimes having a hard time hearing when a singer or musician was sharp or flat, even by whole tones, or multiples, but I eventually got really good at hearing the off notes just by working with music for years. Practice is everything.

Now, I can tune a guitar by ear. I've been playing so long I can just tell now, only by playing the open strings at first, then playing a few chords and listening for slight adjustments needed.

Perfect pitch though, is more than just being able to hear what's "right" and what's "wrong." Perfect pitch is being able to transpose what you hear from heard to played, instantly, usually after only a single listen. I don't have that ability at all.

im completely tone-deaf and have no idea what people are on about when they talk about different notes and stuff. I mean, technically I know (from school) but when people talk about songs in notes and whatnot I just don't have a clue. bloody useless I am

I noticed my hearing began to change when I was 16. I don't know why, but soon after I got my ears cleaned I started hearing music at a higher ptich than it normally should be. It was frustrating, but I've gotten used to it. I don't know if that's tone deafness or not.