My Amazing Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Female student with Autism singing on stage

Many voice teachers feel uncertain about working with students on the Autism Spectrum due to a lack of training and understanding. However, I have years of experience with this group and find these students to be incredibly amazing and creative individuals. Here are stories about three of the most remarkable music students with ASD that I have taught.

#1- Milana

The student who taught me the most about how the brain processes music was Milana, a middle school soprano with perfect pitch, who played Mozart by ear and was a talented artist. Diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, Milana spoke and sang in several languages, including Japanese, which she learned due to her interest in Anime. I worked with Milana for five years, teaching her singing, music note reading, piano, music theory, and music history. While I shared my musical expertise, Milana introduced me to an intriguing phenomenon called Synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a response of another sense (sound, sight, smell, taste, touch) while experiencing one stimulus. As Milana heard a pitch, she visualized a corresponding color in her mind. The colors she described didn't follow a predictable pattern. For instance, if middle C appeared as a shade of red, one might expect related colors for adjacent notes, but this wasn't the case for Milana. She saw Middle C as red, C# as neon greenish-yellow, D as bluish-gray, D# as orange, E as lavender, and F as brownish-yellow, etc. As we moved through her soprano range, there was no logical pattern to the colors. Even within an octave, the colors weren't consistent. When Milana heard a chord, she saw colors simultaneously, including some of the overtones along with the primary pitches!

Fascinated by Milana's experience, I embarked on a journey to learn as much as possible about the brain, music, language, and the integration of other senses. This led me to explore neuroscience, particularly in relation to Synesthesia and the wonders of the human brain.

#2 Francisco

Another remarkable student is Francisco, a 20-year-old with multiple learning disabilities and a developmental coordination disorder, recently diagnosed with High Functioning Autism. He was referred to me by his sister, a voice student majoring in film and theater at the University of Arizona.

Francisco began as a piano student, playing various instruments by ear, sketching, and wanting to learn singing. After a year of piano lessons, he asked to learn singing to help with his communication issues. With my background as a speech-language pathologist, I gladly worked with him and his clinician on his communication skills.

Despite being an accomplished musician, Francisco struggled with matching singing pitch. Initially, I trained him to hear the pitch on the piano and reproduce it vocally, but he consistently sang a perfect fourth below the original pitch. This raised the question: why was he reproducing each pitch a fourth below?

Pitch reproduction involves multiple brain processes in a microsecond. First, the auditory system must function correctly, meaning proper hearing. Francisco's ability to play instruments and transpose by ear indicated no hearing issues. Next, the auditory cortex processes and makes sense of the sound, which was fine. Through questioning, I discovered Francisco hadn't learned to sing as a child, either at school or home. Similar to language acquisition, the "door" to learning closes after age 12. However, unlike language, singing ability can remain but may atrophy from lack of use.

Francisco realized he was singing below the pitch but didn't know how to correct it. I introduced a voice training software that provided real-time visual feedback as he sang. This visual-auditory feedback was exactly what he needed. After about a month of brief daily practice, he is now successfully singing five-note scales in tune.

As we continue through the school year, I anticipate helping Francisco gain control over his voice and showcase his beautiful baritone voice. He mentioned that his speech-language pathologist noticed improvements in his breath support, speaking rate, resonance, and intonation in a short time.

#3 Claire

Claire came to me four years ago as a high school junior with a stunning soprano voice. Diagnosed with Autism, she showed several deficits in pragmatics, socialization, and confidence. Claire has perfect pitch, an innate understanding of music theory, and is now studying to become a music teacher.

What began as preparation for Arizona Solo and Ensemble auditions turned into a four-year journey with a gifted student who taught me much about the challenges of acceptance with ASD and the power of determination.

My task was straightforward: listen to Claire, identify her vocal strengths, select a song suitable for her range and development, and prepare her for a graded state-level performance. Her musical ability and vocal flexibility were unexpected for such a quiet, introspective young lady. Claire had a range of over 3-1/2 octaves, perfect pitch, could sight-sing at a college level, and could sing major, minor, augmented, and diminished scales and chords without assistance. She could identify the historical period of a piece of music and was performing above her high school level. I was amazed!

Claire received an excellent rating at the Arizona Solo and Ensemble that year. We continued working towards her goals, succeeding in her aim to perform with the Arizona All-State Chorus during her junior and senior years. She learned most of her music independently, and, as with college-level students, I assisted her with posture, breath control, phrasing, focus, placement, stage presence, and confidence. Her high scores earned her a spot to perform at the Musical Educators’ National Conference with students from across the U.S.

Claire joined every vocal ensemble in Tucson she could while continuing to work with me. She learned to sing classical music, musical theater, pop, jazz, opera, and folk music. Claire can sing in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and German and mastered the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) at my suggestion. This knowledge enables her to learn songs in any language she wishes to perform.

I am thrilled that Claire is now a student at Pima College, studying music education with a major in voice. I have told her that she can join my studio when she graduates, and I am confident she will become a great voice teacher.