comment excerpt:
ADHD is a boon to creativity the challenge is consistency… or seemingly so. I think in general living, you need to impose structure to survive as an adult with ADHD, especially if you go no-meds like I have. I don't think that's nearly the case with creative activities though creativity is our domain, man. It's more about trusting your mind to do good exploration when you let it run free.
Everything that ever really stuck for me about music theory, stuck AFTER doing that. Not from reading and practicing but inadvertently actualizing it in my noodling, which I've come to realize is my mind's way of sorting out the information.
It's really interesting how the knowledge comes sometimes. I have been playing guitar for 20 years, largely self-taught. l've spent a lot of time pouring over different techniques and studying theory, never really feeling like I got where I was supposed to with it. I certainly enjoy what I play, but it's always felt like the understanding that other people have, escaped me.
But now, I tend to think I just never actually realized how much theory I had picked up over the years of scattershot study. Maybe I don't have the most well-rounded foundation, but my actual output on the instrument conveys to other, more learned people, an understanding that they always seem to want to know more about, like somehow I have figured out something they haven't.
My answer has always been "Well, I never practice, but I always play." Most other players l've met, are far more 'on-grid' than me, more predictable and consistent in their decisions and application of technique. You never know what I'll play, or why it actually works. One of my best friends is an incredibly talented and dedicated musician, with high mastery of guitar, piano, and especially trumpet. HE does not understand what I do half of the time, puts all of this analysis into it, trying to crack the code. He wants ME, to teach HIM what I know.
And yet, I don't even know the code. It's all impulse from my perspective. I don't know why things come together like they do. I just know that they do the majority of the time. I know enough theory to point out what worked about them — I do that sometimes, get into a mode of reverse-engineering what I play under the lens of modern theory and it helps me internalize — feed that intuition I'll need later. It's still terrifying for me to improvise in front of people, but every time I do, people tend to presume I am much more serious and studious than I have ever been — like I meant for things to work out this way, when I probably had little clue what I was going to play before I began.
It's like I am fully present when I play, just not cognizant. Maybe it's just that the strain on memory in those times doesn't permit my brain to consciously process it all, but it seems like it still does SOME kind of recall that is almost absolute. I can do anything a normal musician can do, it's just not accessed in quite the same way. I just put in the time and it worked out.
I WILL however say. It was not always that way. For the first 5-7 years I had a hyperfocus for it that just would not let go, so I would in fact practice for hours every day. Now, I worry less about it because 'm more focused on learning new stuff and being exposed to different music that inspires me to play and write more music. At some point, I found I just had the skill-born freedom wanted on tap and it just became about discovery for me.
A lot of my best skills are like that. I don't know how or why l'm good at them, or why I can randomly rattle off in-depth information I otherwise don't ever consider. I think our ADHD brains internalize things differently. It's not that we forget things, it's more as though much of the information stored in memory comes out somewhere outside of consciousness, more in the space of intuition. The problem with ADHD isn't as much one of storage as it is recall mechanisms. The better relationship I have with my intuition, the more my skills in things I want to do just seem to come to me by just following my own impulses to engage and letting my brain get whatever it thinks it needs… and just accept that I might never know that directly.
Learning with ADHD is often akin to tending to a garden and watching as the flowers bloom.
- differentbutsimilar7893
