My Complicated Relationship With Sound

Posted Thu 9th May 2024 at 10:37
by Adam Lewis

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A few months ago my wife made a short film about a musician who can’t create unless theres a loud noise playing in the background at all times. The longline of the film was “a musician’s complicated relationship with sound…” and it made me think about how my own complicated relationship with sound has possibly shaped my entire career.

I’m a musician. I also have Tourette’s. I first picked up an instrument when I was about 6 years old - the same time as my parents noticed the onset of tics. So, I’ve been a musician as long as I’ve had Tourette’s and I’ve had Tourette’s as long as I’ve been a musician. I’ve always wondered how one affected the other. Was I drawn to music because my vocal tics made me less inclined to speak? Did the fact that while I was performing my tics were  basically “cured” make it an attractive prospect?

On one hand, of all the things in the world that can overstimulate a neurodivergent person I find sound the most difficult to deal with. Give me all the flashing lights and fast moving images you like and I’m fine - but give me a sound that I don’t like and it’s another story. And give me more than one sound source at a time and its all over for me - if the TV’s on in the living room and the radio’s on in the kitchen, I mean come on! My tics get completely out of control.

But for all the negative aspects of sound being overstimulating, when it comes to composing music for films and TV, its probably one of my greatest assets. Because a film composer’s job is to underpin and enhance the drama but never to overpower it. So my built-in distraction-meter really makes it the perfect job for me!

For me, listening to and writing music all reduce the frequency and severity of tics. And performing music makes them disappear almost entirely. I can’t remember ever ticcing on stage whether that’s in a small club, a West End theatre, or in front of thousands at a music festival. It’s like there’s an unconscious pause. And it wasn’t until fairly recently that I found out its a fairly common thing amongst musicians - it’s not just me and Billie Eilish it seems! In fact a 2015 study published in the Journal Of The Neurological Sciences found that both listening to and performing music “yielded in a significant tic reduction” and the largest change came “in the condition of musical performance, when tics almost completely stopped.”. They even found a reduction in tics in the short time AFTER a musical performance.

So, would I still be a musician if I didn’t have TS? Probably. Would I be the SAME musician? Probably not. So, in a way, I’m grateful for my Tourette’s. Its definitely shaped my career, and I often wonder where I’d be without it.

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