This is a Global Player original podcast. We've had an email from a listener about something that's really important to you and me. And it reads, As a musician, I'm so curious about music and ADHD. A lot of research talks about deficits with music making and those with an ADHD brain.
But some of the greatest musicians and music lovers I know are ADHD. So I'd love to hear you two chat about music and ADHD. Keep the episodes coming. Pip from Melbourne.
It's such a great question because it's a brave statement. But I honestly believe music is central to who I am. My mum says I sang before I could talk. I just want to figure out why I was singing this thing.
I'll be a long-haired lover from Liverpool. And I have been obsessed with music ever since. Listening to it, playing it, dancing to it. It really affects my mood.
And it can boost me. It can bring me down and sometimes I use that as a tool. Sometimes it's something that I can't control. So today we're going to talk about music.
It's so key to who I am. How about you? Is it as important to you as it is to me? I think it is.
But I think I've got quite a complex relationship with music. So for me, when I talk about being hyper, when I talk about being energetic with my ADHD, often it comes out musically. It will come out with bursts of singing. It will be that I'm suddenly walking around the house singing at the children to the point where they're going, Dad, that's too much.
I once actually got a detention in geography for singing Royal Britannia. I think I just stood up and sung it. And I mean fair enough, I'm not sure the teacher was very impressed. Oh, I also remember us ending up in a bar at about 2 o'clock in the morning.
It was a bar that used to do West End musicals. You put a fiver in the glass on the grand piano and they'd play the piece where you'd sing it. I love singing. Always love singing.
It is giving voice to that feeling inside of you, which for ADHD is exactly what you want to do. But I think what I've realized is that music for me, whether it's singing or listening to music, is very much mood dependent. So when I'm high, when I'm up, when I'm flying, I want Beethoven, I want Wagner, I want Jimi Hendrix, I want Black Sabbath, I want something that meets me where I am and just almost wipes my head and just makes me fly. But if I'm trying to concentrate, if I'm trying to work, if I'm trying to have a conversation, I cannot have background music at all.
So if I go to a party, for example, or if I go to somebody's house and I walk in and they've got sort of low mood music in the background, I just leave things written off. You could do something as simple as asking to turn it off. Yeah, and sometimes if I know them well, I do. If you don't, it's a bit difficult to kill the mood of the party for everyone.
So then you're suddenly trying to concentrate really hard on what somebody's saying, knowing that, you know, it's a Tina Turner singing in the background or something like that, there's a reference for kids. And I do find it's one of the situations, yes, of course you could ask them to turn it off, but that's one of those ADHD moments where, honestly, you mask and you go, I have to go up with this because everybody else is enjoying themselves, but I cannot for the life of me actually hear what's going on. And it's almost painful. It's like a physical pain.
It's like somebody is blaring the music directly into your ear while you're trying to concentrate on something else. When you talk about the different ways in which you respond to those very different kinds of music, is that something you can use as a tool if you are either not feeling it, maybe you need a bit of a jush, or you need something to maybe calm you down? Can it work for you in that way? I find it sometimes will expend energy, so if I'm really, really hyper, it'll wear me out.
Because usually if I'm listening to music like that, because I'm doing a DIY project, it is, it's blasting, you know, recording the ring cycle while I'm walking around the house doing jobs. That's terrifying. Yeah, it is. But by the end of it, I remember there was a job I did, I listened to Vaga for about two days solid, and, you know, but it's again, it's like everything with ADHD.
Once you're getting high, it's making sure you're not blasting that for too long, and making sure that you come down afterwards. So I think that's why I say how complex a relationship with it, because I absolutely love music, and I can really feel it and really enjoy it, but I know that quite often for me it's mood dependent. What about you? So I'm, is it my emotional dysregulation?
I don't know, but I am somebody who loves to have a good sob. That's a sad story. It makes my Irish genes. But actually, that's a really good example.
Irish folk music. I can listen to it, I can play it, I can sing it for hours and hours and hours, because there's a narrative in lots of those songs that comes with an emotional punch. You know, you look at something like The Fields of Bath and Rye, someone disappearing off to Australia whilst their love is left behind outside the prison walls. These are sad songs.
And I have spent nights crying at the same song, night after night after night. I know what's coming, I know what's coming, but I still feel that real kind of smushy feeling whenever the song kind of comes to an end. And that's music at its best. That's music touching you emotionally.
Yeah. But how do you find it interacts with your ADHD? So do you find that there are sort of moods or times when the music's too much for you? Oh, gosh, that's a really good question.
Very rarely, I do have to turn it off. But what I have tended to find is that there is a kind of music that I can put on in the background and continue to work, and it calms me down. So I was a chorister as a teenager, it gave me enormous pleasure. And choral music, especially, I find incredibly calming.
Again, quite emotional, depending on the piece, but definitely something that helps me concentrate. And I have a little album on my computer called Choral Music for Svesh. I play it every single night. Every single night, this album comes out and I'll put it on.
And it's just, you know, it's Howells, it's Whittaker, it's all these beautiful kind of incredibly crushy chords that do something extraordinary in my brain. They definitely kind of make the spaces in my brain expand. And I have that sort of response to Jacob Collier. His heart, isn't he?
So extraordinary. He's finding new directions in harmony. And fireworks go off my brain when I listen to his music. And it's just extraordinary.
I mean, one thing I find very interesting about my response to music, especially, is that when I was younger, when I was a teenager and through my early 20s, I never ever needed to drink as much or take any of the drugs that my friends needed to take and also have a good time at a party. Because if there was really great music on at that party, I would be having a great time anyway. And they'd be taking whatever so they could stay up until four o'clock in the morning and stay pumped up. I'd be on that dance floor anywhere.
I'd be on that dance floor from 11 o'clock at night. I'd be there until 6am going, you know, like clippers. But it's interesting you say that, because what you've described is music for you essentially being a tool for emotional regulation. And that, you know, it's the old cliche, music is a drug.
You know, it is extraordinary, isn't it, that sort of, that fears and that buzz that ADHD gives you, you mix that with music, and it's the most... Your party. Yeah, party for one, thank you very much. And I'll be lucky, I'll be lucky that we get to do that.
And I've done it, I've been alone at the house and thought, yeah, you know, I need a bit of motivation, I've got to do some flippin' housework, I don't want to do it. So I put on something fabulous and Thompson Twins or whatever, and off I go, and, you know, my husband always says, has to be in a tempo, so I can walk to it whilst I'm dancing, and off I go, and it's free. And how great is that? Yeah, what about music making?
Because we often talk about this idea of ADHD and creativity. I have always wanted to play the piano, but when I sit down at the piano and my head just goes off in a hundred different directions, I cannot, for the life of me, concentrate. When I manage to play The Dead of Mary Had a Little Land with one hand, as soon as you can choose second hand, my brain and body just can't keep up with each other. I've never been able to master that and play an instrument.
That's really interesting. You had lessons, did you? No, I never had lessons, and I think, this is the classic thing about me, it's a bit like when we talked to Tony Lloyd about whether I can ride a bike. Yeah, yeah, I was just thinking that.
And I totally recognise this in myself as something about ADHD that I've had to work on. It is the being faced with something where you look at it, and the excitement is there, I should be able to do this, I want to be able to do this, I understand how this works, but hang on, it takes patience, it takes practice, it takes routine, it takes regulation, I'm out. And that's the block, and the thing about singing is, it just comes naturally to me. And that's the whole, the really difficult thing about ADHD, is that when you really want to do something, and you can't, and I think, you know, we use the word can't, you can do it, but it's going to take hard work, and probably if you've got ADHD, what's hard work for everybody else, it's probably even more hard work for you.
It's so interesting, isn't it, because you say you didn't have lessons, and I wonder if you've been caught early enough, Sam, and whether, you know, so I was singing before I could talk, and my mum was advised by the nursery teacher to get me music lessons, because nursery teachers claim that I have a bit, I don't, but she claim that I did. So I started lessons with Mrs. Rudd, my piano teacher at the age of four, with my legs swinging on the piano teacher, and, you know, starting off with one finger, I kind of jumped over those feelings that you describe, of feeling frustrated and not being able to do it. By the time I was able to knock out a tune, I've already reached that stage where every time you're able to do that, you get a dopamine hit.
And for me, I found that bizarrely with scales. Now, you tell me whether that's normal, but it's not. I used to love practising my scales, because every time I did one perfectly, I got a dopamine hit. And of course, if you can practise scales, everything else falls into place.
And, you know, so learning the piano has been a privilege and a probably wild ride for me. I wouldn't say that I have a particular talent, especially when it comes to sort of improv and things like that, but I do love to play. And there's one aspect to me learning instruments, which I do think is very ADHD, identified by my husband. I love to take up an obscure instrument for two to three weeks, and then never play it.
That would be me. That would be me all over. I've got a piano, by the way. I just never play it.
Piano accordion, ukulele, Irish flute. I've got various percussion instruments. I've got, you know, these things. You know, the collection grows.
And the ukulele, I printed out about 300 pieces of music. Amazing. Yeah. And sat there on the bedroom floor.
Why the bedroom floor? The bedroom floor for two to three weeks, playing the ukulele, thinking, oh, yeah, this will be fun. I'll take this on holiday and we can play this, you know, on beach. Well, your family would have been probably pleased you left that behind.
No, on the piano accordion, that I learnt to play Albert on, oh, this is really exciting. Hang on a minute. Two hands. What?
What? Oh, no. Oh, I can't go with this. And it's the same hill that we all climb up with ADHD.
It's just a question of whether you want to keep going to the top. And hopefully one day I will. I think it's just a question of like getting away, doesn't it? Well, I wonder if, I wonder if, actually, what you should do is embrace the knowledge that your instrument is your voice.
And, you know, maybe you should focus on that. Maybe you should have lessons singing. I've lost the top notes. Oh, stop it.
You know you'll regain them if you sing. Yeah, absolutely. You've always improved if you sing regularly in practicing. It's a muscle.
So if you were to meet up with somebody who could give you some pointers on what to do and you sang scales and did all those things, you can have such a lovely voice. This is genuinely maybe something that would give you pleasure. And, you know, it's all those things. It slows down the brainwaves and enables you to calm.
Classic ADHD, though. I like singing, but I like singing when people least expect it. I must refer to singing in geography and in the street and in my daughter's face and in the newsroom rather than in a choir. We'll see.
Going back to this idea of creativity and ADHD, I think there is a sort of desire out there, and it always has been, to link neurodivergence with genius. And I think also when we look at sort of what we would consider geniuses of the past, there's always this desire to dive into their emotions and even their sort of mental health. You've only got to think about Schumann, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff. There is a decent case out there for Mahler perhaps having ADHD.
We actually wrote about it. There's an article we wrote for the Classic FM website. But I think the difference with him is, okay, he may have had ADHD, he may not have, but he was also incredibly gifted. There's also some interesting stories about Mozart.
And people love to sort of look at him and say, was he neurodivergent, did he have ADHD? Was he dyslexic? Was he bipolar? There is a story of a lady who was sat at Plymouth and she was playing some of his music and he came and sat along next to her.
He played with her and then he appeared to get bored but halfway through and then started jumping around and meowing like a cat knocking over chairs, which is a story that's obviously lived long in the annals of history. Sounds like you. Yeah, well, it does. It does sound like you.
It's literally you that you're describing there. Oh my God, I know that people really kick back. They kick back on this idea that you would retrofit an ADHD diagnosis to historical fitness. I love it.
I love the retrofitting because I think it validates my belief that neurodivergent is a wonderful thing and the gifts that it's given the world. And Mozart's a really good example. He was definitely autistic. His ability to remember music like that.
He was impulsive. He was rude. He was really annoying. You and I both know that ADHD is really annoying people.
We're really irritating to some people and a lot of people found him really, really irritating. What about the story about miserere? Because I don't buy that at all. Yes, yes.
You do, don't you? This story about the alegrid miserere kept under lock and key by the Vatican because they realised the power of this piece of music and they only brought it out to be performed once at Easter and he goes along to the pieces in Rome. Here's it once, walks away, writes the whole thing down. It's 14, 15 minutes of music and...
Didn't happen. It didn't happen. But also, Mozart benefits from what I believe to be, going back to a conversation we had earlier, a perfect, ideal version of an ADHD education. His father discovers, realises that his son has this exceptional gift which I think is out of his neurodiversity and takes him on the road.
Takes him on the road. He's not forced into a classroom to learn Latin and Greek. These will be used to things for Mozart. He is on the road performing getting dopamine hits at every new keyboard that he meets.
And yes, those challenges of his autism slash ADHD come out later in his life when he writes things the night before. We know he wrote overtures at midnight on the day of the first performance. He would turn up and perform piano concertos himself having not written the music and he'd improvise them. He was an extraordinary brain, incredibly gifted, obviously, but he was different.
He was different. But I do struggle with retrofitting diagnosis onto people and I think particularly with him because I think it creates a caricature and there is a caricature of him being a bit scatty and a bit crazy. But actually, he was this incredibly gifted, talented composer and musician who also was able to tour around the world who was able to hold his own concerts and was actually really organised at times as well. And I just think sometimes the danger is that we create caricatures of people that fit our nice little box.
And I think as we've described so many times, ADHD, neurodivergence, doesn't fit into any little box. And I do think when you start to link genius with neurodivergence, you're trying to sort of create expectations that not all of us can manage. You know, my piano playing suggests I'm perhaps not to Mozart. There's more going on than just his ADHD.
I'm not for one moment suggesting everybody with ADHD is a genius or everybody with autism is a genius. We know that. But I also think that it's as if neurodivergence expands the brain in a different way and allows us to explore places we've never been before. And that's exactly what Mozart did.
There are, you know, that sense that do musicians who also happen to have ADHD come with an ability to invent new music? Jacob Collier, I think, is an example. And that sense that somebody is not afraid to look in corners that other people haven't looked in before. Well, we've got just a person to answer some questions about where ADHD intersects with music and creativity for musicians.
Tristan Hunt is an ADHD coach who specialises in the music industry. Hi Tristan, nice to have you. So music is really important to us. Sam and I are presented at Classic FM and obviously have both spent our lives surrounded by music, performing and listening to music.
Do you think that there is a relationship between music and ADHD? Absolutely. On a number of different levels. It can be hugely beneficial and helpful for people that have ADHD.
What do you think though about creativity? Because there's a lot made sometimes about the idea that ADHD is a superpower. ADHD comes with creativity. And yet at the same time, those of us with ADHD will find that sometimes that's a block to doing things like learning instruments or practising.
Do you think that there is a particular sort of creative arc that comes with people with ADHD? What's your experience? For sure. So I think that an awful lot of the people that come into the music industry especially are neurodiverse.
I ran a survey some years back looking at sort of the proportion of people with neurodiverse conditions within the music industry and it shows that a very high number of those people have such conditions because they have what's known as non-sequential thinking. So they don't think in a regular sequential way, they think in a non-sequential way which means that they're basically putting together lots of disruptions. ideas that come together as new creative ideas i think that's one of the reasons that we find an awful lot of those people working in the space on that subject that non-secretual thinking that you describe is that cause or effect do we learn to think in a creative way because of our adhd and we're living in a neurotypical world or do we arrive or be born with this sort of special way of thinking so adhd is a neurobiological condition and the neurosciences out there is weighted very much towards the idea that there's a heavy genetic component to the condition so that people are essentially born with adhd there's a school of thought as well that says that the adhd can be expressed by certain environmental conditions but essentially adhd is something that we're born with so people are predisposed to having this high degree of creativity and of course if you've got this predisposition towards this high level of creativity and an enjoyment and love of music you're going to be drawn towards the music industry i think that's one of the reasons we find so many people with adhd working in the music industry that's fascinating i suppose one of the things that i question because we've talked about this we've talked about different composers and different musicians over the years sometimes i think there is an idea out there a bit of a stereotype that if you're neurodiverse somehow that's linked to genius but surely you can be attracted to a creative industry you can have a way of thinking that is very creative but there's going to be another part to that you know some people who have adhd also gifted in certain ways you know yes you can be attracted to the industry yes you can perhaps have a creative bent but there still needs to be sort of hard work and talent there as well i suppose absolutely it's not enough of course just to have adhd you have to have the tenacity to work in what is a very competitive busy industry there's an awful lot of people of course you want to work in the music industry and you've got to have the uh discipline to create a framework we talk a lot about in the coaching space around building and structures and routines and able to function effectively within your chosen career in this case within the music industry because it's a very busy often noisy um environment um with a lot of pressures to commute to travel to interact to turn up on time to turn up on time absolutely yes so things that neurotypical in air quotes and people might find easier such as turning up on time being consistent those sorts of things these are often big challenges with people with adhd so one of the things we sometimes see is that you have people with a huge amount of talent and ability not being able to actualize so not being able to self-actualize and live out that talent and ability because they are constrained by simple things like turning up on time and of course if you don't turn up on a regular basis you'll get fired so these sorts of constraints do impose an extra level of work if you like for people with adhd so they have often a huge amount of talent some people consider these talents to be superpowers and they absolutely can be but there's still a huge amount of work to sort of keep the show on the road if you like to enable people to show up and perform as they might like to and how successful is coaching in teaching neurodiverse people to learn these skills because they're quite tricky ones to learn later in life aren't they they are so just a personal disclosure i got adhd dyslexia and dyscalculia i was diagnosed at 40 after 20 years working in the music industry many of those years i'm heavily self-medicated so i was using and drinking drugs for a period of time like we often see many artists and people in the papers coming out and saying i've been having these experiences because it's been a coping mechanism and in the absence of knowing what they've got i didn't know i had adhd until i was 40 you use what's at hand and if you're in an environment where these things are kind of acceptable more acceptable than in a wide society that's also what people will do but getting a later stage diagnosis has its own set of challenges and benefits to your question about coaching when we understand that somebody has a condition it's highly treatable so the benefits of adhd is it's really the most treatable of the mental health conditions psychiatric conditions that's out there the medication for adhd has the highest efficacy of any mental health medication in the world i'll just repeat that it has the highest efficacy of any mental health medication in the world so it's a highly treatable condition the joy is that when we know that somebody's got adhd we can treat it we can support it i'm not a doctor i'm not advocating any particular um medical or um pharmacological approach here but that's when that's combined with something like coaching coaching is highly effective because we know that given the right environment we talk about the environment design few quotes a calm peaceful environment for somebody who's working where they have stability structure routine that's very anchoring for them and that then enables them to turn up on time it enables them to do all of the other things that maybe um other people that don't have adhd find easier and then obviously they can sharpen they can perform as they might like to in their given tasks whether that's being an artist or it's working as a live event and it's working in production and our record label wherever it might be so it's your question coaching coaching can be highly effective just in terms of what you do with someone when you're coaching i'm thinking particularly about a musician who perhaps is um still violinist or pianist but what i struggle with is regularly saying to themselves i have to practice i've got to pick up my instrument i need to have a routine i need to keep working at this what are some of the actual things that you do to help them manage that so it's the regularity of the routine it's about making it obvious and easy for them so say for example to take your violinist you don't want the violin in a cupboard somewhere where you can't see it you would like the violin to be out um on a table where it's accessible where they're going to see that instrument on a regular basis where they've got the space to obviously pick up and be and blow and play as when they would like to free of distraction where there's no one else around and there's no competing visual distractions we're taking about sort of 40 45 percent information through the eyes so we would like an environment where there's a calm space where they're not being um you know visually pulled away um or from an auditory point of view being distracted by other people and it's the cadence of the practice that's important so that if this person is able to sharp on a day-to-day basis and play and perhaps recording themselves back so they can watch their performance that's going to be effective for them where people often struggle um sort of casey to your point earlier about turning up on time it's showing up for the thing that you want to do and in the case that sam's showing here it's about practicing that's often the tricky bit again coaching we can provide a structure that somebody chooses if it's forced upon the person and it feels confined or constrained they will push back against it and it will not work this has to be a choice but when they see what works for them and they start to take on these tools tips and techniques and incorporate them into their everyday life then they can start to set up for their violin practice on a day-to-day basis and they can improve their practice different styles different kinds of music different parts of the music industry i imagine are easier i would think for people something like you know in a recording studio putting together a pop track for instance is going to be more self-expressive you can stand around you can get up grab a coffee and all that kind of thing whereas sitting in an orchestra is a completely different kind of skill isn't it because it's sitting there often for long rehearsals waiting for the conductor to tell you what to do and waiting whilst the other section of the orchestra plays and i do wonder if it's harder for classical musicians in lots of ways that's a great question i imagine if you've got the hyperactive subtype of adhd so the three types of adhd hyperactive inattentive and combined type if you've got the hyperactive subtype absolutely i can imagine that being very challenging you're sitting there for a long period of time not able to actively engage in playing or talking to people and you can chat to those people around you but that you will be having to regulate emotionally physically which is going to be a much harder space to do that same regulation compared to the studio example you gave where you're jumping around talking to people all of those sorts of things and so yeah i imagine for people playing within an orchestra that that is potentially one of the greatest challenges they face and what about music itself i mean both with the people you've worked with and your own experience in the music industry we've talked about our reaction to music do you find music is something that helps you work do you find for example if you've got an admin task to do i for example cannot listen to music at all if i've got to focus on something as katie very much is different to that do you find music is something that helps you work do you find it a distraction how does music play a part in actually encouraging you to work if that makes sense it depends very much on the music and it depends very much on the person so i like you sam don't listen to music when i'm working i like total silence i like to listen to music when i'm choosing to listen to music and enjoy it but if i'm working i like total silence now some people think like things like brown noise or binaural beats brown noise can help tamp down the distracting parts of the adhd brain where they can focus more easily on the work that they're doing binaural beats can do a similar sort of thing playing sort of two different slightly two different frequencies in either ear music like uh actually classical music that has a sort of even tempo cadence to it sort of medium medium tempo things like the valby actually that for a lot of people can be really helpful whether there's strings where there's nothing to contrasting or shifting around the the tempo and genre a lot of people find that sort of music and very helpful conversely i know people that will listen to the most esoteric sort of classical or thrash metal or dance music or whatever it might be the sort of things that maybe a lot of other people would find very distracting indeed but for them that works because it's creating sufficient arousal in their adhd brain adhd brains are chronically under aroused they're chronically deprived of the neurotransmitter neuromodulator dopamine which means that they can't focus on a regular basis and have the same emotional regulation that other people might have but that's with the greatest stimulation of some music that hyper that increased arousal in the brain actually enables them to focus and concentrate better so it really depends on the individual there's a wide range of different music out there of course to see everyone it's about finding what works for you or not as we said before some people it's just silence always can i ask one more question and it's a subject that sam and i talk about a lot um ultimately do you see adhd is a good thing or a bad thing for me personally i wouldn't be who i am today without it when i talk to people in the industry artists performers music executives almost across the board they all say the same thing it can be an incredibly challenging condition to manage but with the right supports you can thrive and that's the key thing about getting the right support and that creative mind can be harnessed and you can absolutely excite what you're doing i completely agree with them i completely agree thank you so much for joining us today it's been a pleasure to talk to you very welcome thanks very much jacy thank you sam i find that really interesting like so many of our guests i suppose who made me think particularly when he was talking about practicing a musical instrument when he was talking about putting in routine and having to do the hard work and overcoming that desire to say i don't want to do it and actually i think that's something that all of us with adhd can think about whether we're you know doing it in an area of learning a musical instrument whether we're doing in the workplace whether it's something we do at home and maybe maybe i can use some of that and finally learn a piano i think that's a really good idea and i think it will be a journey that you will probably enjoy for the rest of your life also we want to hear from you we are collecting your stories about christmas just days to go if you've had any nightmares or maybe you have some tips to share we'd like to hear those too email us at adhdpodcast at global.com and also get in touch on our socials we're on insta and tiktok at you're wrong about adhd you can listen to you're wrong about adhd for free on global player download it from the app store or go to globalplayer.com see you next time this is a global player original podcast