What Music Gives
June 16, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
13-year-old Thomas Gonzales plays trumpet, trombone, baritone and flugelhorn and has accepted an offer to be a professional member of Mariachi Nuevo Ensueño in Azusa, California, the June 15th Whittier Daily News:
Michelle Lazar, founder of Coast Music Therapy, a San Diego-based agency for children with special needs, said that while the topic has yet to be widely studied, there does seem to be a positive correlation between autism and musical talent.
“Part of the reason individuals with autism tend to excel is because of the structure that music provides,” she said. “It’s very comfortable to them.”
It’s definitely a correlation for Charlie, who can read music better than he can words and sings back songs and melodies right after hearing them. The words aren’t always the clearest, but the melody is often exact.
16-year-old Matt Savage is a “piano prodigy” who was diagnosed with PDD-NOS at the age of 3. Now he’s released his eighth CD, Hot Ticket: Live in Boston, and played with the likes of Chick Corea and Chaka Khan. The June 12th Concord Monitor profiles him:
Labeled a “supergenius” by the medical community, he keeps his gift in perspective, practicing piano a modest 60-90 minutes a day and finding time to help out on the family farm.
“It’s really funny because sometimes he’ll be moping around the house and he’ll say, ‘I really don’t feel like practicing today,’ and in unison, my husband and I say, ‘Well then don’t,’ ” said Diane Savage, who travels with her son and helps him book appearances but insists upon only one title: Mom. “We want him to be in control of his own career. . . He decides what he plays, when he plays, where he plays. It’s always been that way.”
Savage certainly has no trouble with the what. He composed nearly all the tracks on his latest CD, a gumbo of Latin songs, ballads, funky numbers and a Miles Davis cover, performed with his new sidemen Dave Robaire and Joe Saylor. “It’s a fun little upbeat CD . . . it’s got a lot of variety packed into an album,” he said.
An auditory integration therapy program is credited with changing the aversion to sound that Savage had when he was 6 years old “inside out.”
While on our trip to California, we’ve been taking a break from practicing piano and cello. I’ve rented the cello for another couple of months and have been grateful for the years of piano and viola lessons I took when I was young, and the hours I practiced (sometimes rather grudgingly, because my parents insisted). More and more, music has become a way to communicate with Charlie.
What fun to see Michelle Lazar quoted nationally! She was my son’s first music therapist here in our home. She was fantastic then and continues to mature in her career and business.
Music is the best thing in the universe.
I’m going to write a novel one day about a girl who has autism and goes to Juliard.
But first I have to finish that other novel.
Kristina, off topic here…you know of any music teachers around central NJ for children with autism? My daughter loves music, but I have not been able to find anyone who knows how to teach her.
I am searching too—-Charlie learned to play piano from a teacher who has (sigh) moved to another state. I have been in search of another teacher—-our (former) piano teacher has a website at Innovative Piano and he has his books for sale there. I’m looking around and will let you know what I find.
Oh, hell, yeah! We nerdy bandsmen have known this all along. We hold the senior position in military ceremonies, at the Right of the Line, you know. In fact, I was just about to cue up some Kenneth Alford; maybe “The Mad Major” in honor of my favorite just-barely-normal redleg, Maj.(ret.) John Donovan at http://www.thedonovan.com.
If you have the slightest autistic tendencies and like shiny gizmos all lined up in rows, you MUST look at the marvelous Gun Pr0n at his site.
P.s. Oh, also some serious discussion of foreign policy and military affairs by some pretty sharp people, some of whom have “seen the elephant.”
I have the best photo. Earlier this winter little boy played grandma’s piano with his elbow and with one hand and a wooden spoon played the zylophone and the other played the drum. He still does it… Grandma leaves everything set up for him until the next time he comes and visits – they live next door.
It wasn’t “noise” it was music.. none we’d recognize… but it wasn’t random noise making.
Instead of gym next fall, I too am thinking of piano lessons or the “Mom” is going to have to dust off her music reading abilities and teach piano too.
S.
Now that’s multi-instrument-talent!
@justhisguy, “shiny gizmos all lined up in rows”—-sounds (no pun intended) like just what the doctor ordered!
Andy loves music. He’s never had any lessons, there really isn’t the money for them. But he enjoys composing songs on apples Garage Band. It’s amazing the sounds he puts together that sound good.
Oh, I think I mentioned it to the Diva in an email, once; back when Major Donovan and Beth Donovan lived in Kansas City, near Fort Leavenworth, there was an autie girl who lived a few houses away. They mention that she didn’t seem to follow prosaic speech very well, but if you sang to her, she caught your drift, so to speak.
I cannot speak too highly of the Donovans and their site. As an ailurophile, I think they are ‘way cool for keeping eight cats. They also have two dogs (the smallest number they’ve had in years) two horses, lotsa chickens, lots and lotsa guinea fowl, some goats, etc and so forth.
Oh, and again, there is so much shiny goodness in the ancient artillery artifacts of Argghhh!
Artillerymen are the only rational sojers, and get to use shiny intellectual mathematical instruments which are very pretty to look at when they are say, 100 years old, but yet carefully and lovingly preserved, as is the case at Castle Argghhh!
Ok. My ulterior motive: Every now and then, The Donovan posts what he calls a “Whatziss?” which is a picture of a detail part of a piece of old rare military equipment. I’ve won more than my fair share of these, but lots of whatziss’s have gone un-named.
I’m appealing to all autie-aspies with military-gizmo perseverations to go over there and get it right the first time, next time John posts a perplexing picture of a part of a projectile-projector, or something.
If you like shiny things all lined up in rows, try organ pipes!
The rifle stacks at the U.S. Springfield arsenal have been compared to such, in poetry, even.
M’self, I’m thinking of a pulse-jet calliope I’ve just read about, prolly best heard at a distance of several miles. I do wonder how they start and stop each one in time with the music. Starting up a Dyna-Jet is a pretty elaborate process.
Oh, yeah, Paula, when I was a kid, and in the choir at church, there was a door in the choir room with a threshold about two feet off of the floor. Behind that door was the room with the pipes in it, separated from the sanctuary by thin cloth only.
Curiously, I like organs, and like churchy organ music, but get creeped out by the kind of people who seem to be organ fans, mostly. I can’t explain it.
I’ll always listen to any halfway-decent Bach performance on an organ, though, and the Wicks organ builders have my undying gratitude for also supplying Sitka Spruce and other goodies to the builders of homebuilt aircraft – I wants me a Pietenpol