autistic kid doing beats

As real as the beating his mom gave him for pounding on the washer!
 
I've played with this kid a few times. http://youtu.be/MFEQZUIgjMo Music gives him a way to connect with others. It's also helping him to work directly with others learning to lead sidemen though a song. I'm not sure where he is on the scale of functioning autistics, I just accept him as another musician and recognize that he's just not going to relate as easily.
 
This video is not surprising to me.
My son has Aspergers (as do I) in the high functioning scale, very smart kid.

He was very young (1) on my lap hitting the snare and floor tom (together) all the time. I crossed his hand over to the hats, ch ch ch ch ch...and it was all over. After that he could just do it.
He would wake us up singing drum beats in his crib.

He was just 2 when he got his first JR. kit.
He would spend a half hour playing with sticks on a tree. He played a hole through the plaster on one small wall in our kitchen. We just let him because we were working on stuff anyway. We just fixed that last :)

At 3-31/2 he would tell me which Rush DVD to put in (the Black one, or the Red one) and then, he'd go down stairs...dun dun, dun dun, dun dun.... he could do that dun chi chi, dun chi chi rhythm and the snare hits (WTF?! he's freaking 3!)...then he would spin around and play like he was on the electronic kit... he would kinda freak us out shaking our heads.

The only issue he has with drums now is the noise sensitivity (started about age 6), so he doesn't play his electronic kit he got last year as much, but it seems to be going away lately. He hadn't touched the acoustic kit in ages because of the volume, even with good hearing protection.

But, it seems to be lessening (he's 10 now), so we hope he gets back into playing.

They found that the actual motions you make when you play drums are soothing, and when I heard that, I though, "no wonder I like just grooving hard so much".
 
My son attended a camp in his younger days with an autistic student. The kid is a monster player. Great timpanist and pianist. Excellent on marimba and all other things. The kicker was he didn't practice. He had to learn a marimba trio part and he never practiced. He played it wonderfully. I saw the performance. He's a percussion major currently studying at an outstanding program.
 
I teach CPR to employees of a organization that runs a series of group homes,and a pre school for autistic and mentally retarded (proper term) adults and children.

Some of these amazing people are what's called Autistic sevants,and are amazing artists and musicians.

There is one young woman who is a gifted pianist.Her parents donated a Steinway grand piano to the main campus so she could play whenever she wants.The truly amazing thing is,she dosen't need sheet music to play classical music.

The first time I heard her play,she just sat down and played Beethovens fifth synphony.I was just blown away.

So.....is the washing machine a musical instrument?Discuss.:)

Steve B
 
I have 3 autistic students and one with high function aspergers

they all are very bright and very good players

they just have problems with focus, OCD, anxiety, patience and confidence

we work on the process of learning more than the process of drumming

one of the students with autism is named James who is 14 is obsessed with the Beatles ......he loves to play along with the 1 CD

he knows every song note for note on drums and loves nothing more than to play those songs ......so I learned them all on guitar and for the last 10 minutes of every lesson he will pick 2 or 3 of the tunes and we will rock them out

I love those kids
 
This could be a video of me, and it's not the first time something suggested I may have a form of autism. Growing up I hit everything to see what kind of sound-texture and tone it produced. Even had a bit of a squirrel pile of things and bits that produced pleasing sounds. We had a rule at the dinner table that if I got caught tapping on things while we ate 3 times, I would not get any of that evenings dessert.
 
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