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September 18th, 2025
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Welcome to the latest entry in my blog about autism and
sometimes music. It's been about a week since I last
posted, and I had yet to get around to making a post about
music, but luckily the stars aligned today. The day began
with a bit of dysregulation, and I ended up retreating to
music and my heating pad for about an hour before actually
beginning my day. It's amazing how well that works,
especially with the right band or song at the right time.
It may seem pedantic to mention but I don't think anything
has as an immediate, prolonged response on our emotions as
music does. I know I've been using it to regulate my entire
life, even if I didn't u nderstand what I was doing.
Since the day I picked up a bass guitar to play in my
stepdad's country band at 13, I knew music was a special
part of me. Up until that point I had never had a "thing".
My parents had put me in soccer and Karate when I was
younger but physical activity wasn't my bag; I absolutely
cannot stand the feel of sweat drying on my body, a
sensory-avoidance issue I didn't understand how to
communicate at the time. My main hobby had been reading, as
I was never far from a book. Indeed the only way my mother
could often find peace for herself was to stick a book in
my hands, and thus she was liberal with their purchase back
then. But when I discovered music everything changed. I
believe guitar might have become my first special-interest.
That first simple Andelusian cadence in Am was the key to
unlocking a thrill that I now understand a little better;
it gave me something to belong to. Even just in the context
of being in a band, music creates a sense of community and
collaboration that I personally have not found anywhere
else. I wish I'd stuck with it, as a few years into my
musicianship I discovered computers, the Internet and
hacking, and my special-interest changed. But I never had a
guitar too far away and usually found the time to spend a
few minutes a day jamming around.
That was until 2010 when I moved in with Margo. The only
guitar I had by that point was a beat-up blue acoustic I
had paid $70 for on eBay, and it wasn't an easy guitar to
play. I went years with it sitting in the corner, and over
half a decade without picking up an electric guitar at all.
It's truly depressing how much skill I lost during that
time; to this day there are things I cannot for the life of
me figure out anymore that were once second-nature. I did
finally get a new electric in 2018 but my skills were
absolutely laughable by that point and I was discouraged. I
didn't learn a single meaningful note between 2010 and 2021.
Finding out my biological father had passed away rocked me
when I found out. Our relationship was tumultuous to say
the least, for reasons I won't go into in this particular
blog entry. But one of the few things we did have was
guitar, and my mourning process involved picking the
instrument back up in a serious manner the likes of which I
had not done in a decade. Not only did I start to play
again, I started to learn again. At one point I was
devouring a new song with my coffee every morning -- not
the best way to retain new music, but fun nonetheless.
I also tried my hand at recording, for the first time,
using a digital interface to plug my guitar into my
computer, and a Digital Audio Workstation software named
Reaper. Beyond being able to simply record ideas, it was a
lot of fun learning how to layer sounds and post-process
and mix. I never got that great at it, as my focus was
playing, but I vowed to return to it sometime when I felt
that my skills with my instrument had sufficiently
progressed.
And then....my special-interest shifted, and I lost the
music again.
For four long years it eluded me. I'd occasionally pick up
my guitar but there was no motivation or drive there. Every
time I talked to my stepdad he'd ask if I was playing, and
sometimes I'd lie just so he didn't worry. Don't ever do
that, by the way. Lie to the people who are checking up on
you. How can anyone help you if you lie? Anyway. Tangent.
But when I got sober at the beginning of 2025 it coincided
with me coming into a little bit of extra money, and I
decided to treat myself with a new instrument: the
much-coveted, elusive Gibson Les Paul. This was by far the
most expensive guitar I had ever purchased; indeed, it was
the most expensive single-item purchase I'd ever made
outside of a car. My thought-process was simple: dress for
success. If I surrounded myself with the trappings of a
real musician, maybe I would start to realize the potential
of a real musician. Maybe I'd feel so insecure about owning
that guitar that I'd justify it's purchase by learning to
play the damned thing.
Surprisingly, it worked. I began to practice, daily. I
bought new gear, I restored old gear. I stayed up all night
long watching videos about guitar, reading articles about
guitar. Studying music theory, a subject that had long
fascinated me but that had always intimidated me. I even
joined a community of guitarists on Discord, an early
attempt at finding friends that unfortunately didn't pan
out. But the rest of it did, and not only did I improve --
I improved fast,
Really damned fast.
I have a nickname among the guitar friends I did manage to
make, now. They call me "the leveller". Because I level up
my skills. Because I take my instrument seriously. Because
I find new plateus every time I refocus my energy. And
today I decided I was good enough.
Not good enough to be satisfied. Music study is a lifelong
endeavor, so satisfaction is out the window. And not good
enough to play everything I want to play, either; there's
still a lot of technique work ahead of me before I'm
busting out Shawn Lane legato runs, for instance. But today
I decided I was good enough to make music. Today was the
day it stopped being about leveling, and is now about the
emotion and passion once again. I have so many songs inside
me, riffs and ideas that I've come up with over the last 9
months. It's time to bring them to fruition. So I pulled
out my midi keyboard, learned how to apply patches,
programmed the drum pad, and got to work.
The music is back.
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Record Time
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Today's Record Time will be a short one. "Powers of Ten" by
Shawn Lane is the freshmen outting of one of the most
underrated guitarists in rock history. Released in the
mid-90s, the album ushers in rock/jazz fusion with virtuoso
sensibilities that I find to be the greatest example of the
genre. Shawn was one of the most technically gifted axemen
of the era, and his blazing "outside legato" technique
still stuns listeners almost 3 decades after hs untimely
death. The middle of the album jumps away into symphonic
prog territory, but the effort is bookended by pure fusion
style.
