Alcohol, Dreams, and Piano

[steveie986]

1) When I'm in that state between wake and dream, I find that I can compose music in my head. Brilliant melodies just form in my head. It's a great shame when I wake up and can't remember them.

2) While being semi-ebriated I can improvise at the keyboard with ease. This isn't as interesting or surprising as 1), however.

Anyone else had these experiences? What are some other ways to increase creativity using legal mind-altering substances and techniques?

[steve jones]

Mate, you wouldnt believe how many times Iv dreamed melodies and then lost them before totally regaining consciousness. This is happening to me all the time and its so frustrating.

In my experience, drugs are not very useful as a creating aid. Quite the opposite. Iv never taken anything that I think has helped me in anyway. A couple of ales helps me in performance, but not when trying to pen stuff.

[rc]

I've had some of those dream-state melodies. I think that in this state of mind sometimes things get mixed up with emotions in the brain.

What I mean is the melody will seem better in the dream because it's a mixture of melody + ecstacy, or some other emotion... If you were to hear that same melody awake, it would be just another melody.

Substances to help creativity? I think most of the time what happens is a drug/drink doesn't induce creativity, but will take down any barriers to your creativity.

Personally, I loath the loss of control that comes with substances. I'd rather just work out any fears, tensions, anxieties to let the creativity flow. I also imagine one could harness emotions like in a dream-state (though, waking life could never be so surreal as a dream).

[donjuan]

I remember reading that Rachmaninoff used hypnosis to compose his 2nd piano concerto, but dont ask me for references on that one..

alcohol is not a good one, imo.  You feel woozy and off balance because oxygen isnt getting to your tissues as fast as it should be.  I cant see how being in such a state would enhance any ability to do anything, except maybe socialize when you are nervous and need help to stop concentrating on everything.

legal 'mind-altering substances?' I was going to say marijuana, but I guess that depends on where you live.  But watch out for these things- in my high school, some art students used pot while doing artwork.  In the end, their work didnt make any sense unless the viewer was smoking it too.  It's kind of like watching '2001- a space odyssey'.  It's just boring if you dont have some serious hallucinogenic *** going on..

[krenske]

"a friend of mine" had a few cones last year... was the best phrased dante sonata ever!!!!!!!!!!!!

[henrah]

I find that when I'm stoned I can relate more to the music I am playing, and I can feel more 'at one with the music' as cannabis is a highly introrespective drug. I played Chopin's Prelude No.4 in Eminor on saturday evening after coming back from a smoke at a friends and it was bliss to my heart. I felt so elated after playing it that I went to bed a happy man

I wonder what playing the piano on magic mushrooms would be like....would be odd if all the black keys went white and all the white keys went black.....
Henrah

[lostinidlewonder]

1) When I'm in that state between wake and dream, I find that I can compose music in my head. Brilliant melodies just form in my head. It's a great shame when I wake up and can't remember them.

2) While being semi-ebriated I can improvise at the keyboard with ease. This isn't as interesting or surprising as 1), however.

Anyone else had these experiences? What are some other ways to increase creativity using legal mind-altering substances and techniques?

1) I have this experience, I see the notes move on a musical score and hear the music. I also read a lot of written letters, what I think becomes words in my minds eyes which scroll across or what I anticipate to think is written before I think it, so I see my thoughts visually. It is a really surreal plane to be in and I wish it lasted longer, but for me it only happens a couple of hours before I wake up in the morning. Dreamt sounds play a part in my improvisations because they are so etherial in my mind, I can only remember parts and then again I wonder if it really was that part. Fun anyway.

2) In my experience altering the mind by invading the body with artificial chemicals makes us THINK we are doing good and interesting music, but the reality is you can do better if you have your wits with you and control the music at will not rely on a distorted mind. It is also illogical to try and master playing in artificially induced mind-altered states because long term practice is more damaging than good.

[ted]

Having a few drinks does not improve any of my musical faculties, improvisation least of all. Dreams and visionary experiences certainly play a part in my creative process, but not in the sense of providing specific musical detail.

[contrapunctus]

When you are under the influence, I find that you think you are playing well, but really you are playing very slopolly, only it sounds nice to you.

[mikey6]

I know of a professional trumpet player who always plays half pissed becuase he actually does play better under those conditions.
When I'm in bed and my mind is wandering, I come up with some awesome compositions (generally orchestra) which I can never remember.

[timothy42b]

I think that creativity can sometimes come from introducing a randomizing function into the process.  It adds errors, which can break up a predictable uncreative effort and lead it into new directions.

This is the reason sleep deprivation, drugs, and illnesses have sometimes produced interesting works of art, and part of what leads artists to use those methods.

I think that this differs from other types of creativity but I can't really support that with any evidence.  I would like to say the error method is not true creativity, but that may not be accurate at all.  It may just feel different. 

As far as execution goes, all drugs seem to make performance worse, with some anecdotal evidence that Diet Coke is the worst. 

[henrah]

As far as execution goes, all drugs seem to make performance worse, with some anecdotal evidence that Diet Coke is the worst.

Well I'll have to record myself playing next Friday as I'm having a biiiig partee, and I shall post it on here. From my view, being stoned helps me perform, as cannabis is a highly introrespective drug. But, as someone said about alcohol, it might sound awesome to me but sloppy and crap to someone else.

[musicsdarkangel]

When I get tipsy, I can loosen up and play very well, but when I'm drunk, I'm aweful.


The strangest thing happened to me in my dorm last year.


I woke up to an amazing jazz tune, which had jazz flute, similar to the style of Chick Corea off of Light As A Feather, but I liked this tune even more!

I thought it was my alarm clock, but I noticed my alarm was unplugged.  The music continued for 30 seconds, and then stopped.

I was so confused and scared, because the music was in the room with me, but there was nothing that could have created it, and I realized that it was my head.

[ted]

Timothy42b said:

"I think that creativity can sometimes come from introducing a randomizing function into the process.  It adds errors, which can break up a predictable uncreative effort and lead it into new directions.

This is the reason sleep deprivation, drugs, and illnesses have sometimes produced interesting works of art, and part of what leads artists to use those methods.

I think that this differs from other types of creativity but I can't really support that with any evidence.  I would like to say the error method is not true creativity, but that may not be accurate at all.  It may just feel different. 

As far as execution goes, all drugs seem to make performance worse, with some anecdotal evidence that Diet Coke is the worst. "

Yes, I think this is the case. I am at times desperately inclined to wish it were not so but I rather think it is. I usually fall foul of it with respect to time. I frequently assert that I need more time to play, practice and improvise. Yet when I enjoy many free days in succession I frequently produce nothing - except possibly an improved physical technique. Many things in life do behave in proportion to time and effort but experience tells me that creative ideas in music do not. 

Unfortunately, neither is it simply a matter of total caprice and serendipity. I do need periods of pedestrian work, reason and concentration. As with most things in life, there is a critical state of balance which, while containing reason as an essential component, is itself permanently elusive to ratiocination and planning. The whole business probably goes right to the heart of how our minds work.

In the meantime, we would perhaps do well to follow J.B. Priestley, and "start paying attention to the crackpot in ourselves" - the dreams, the visions, those transient peculiar convictions which the "nothing but" men tell us to ignore. Speaking for myself, I am both mystic and rationalist. I suppress neither, because somehow I think their interaction lies at the heart of my music. 

[steveie986]

Good posts. Thanks, Ted & Tim.

[henrah]

Very good post Ted. Very insightful.

[bartolomeo_]

I used to think that I played better after a few beers.  The tape tells a different story.

Alcohol and probably most other drugs will increase your perception of how well you're playing, usually enough to overcome the fact that your actual playing has probably gotten worse.  Make a tape and it will tell the tale.

[prometheus]

You have to be careful with dreams; I don't know if this is true but from my experience it seems that dreams are often illusions. The experience of hearing a divine melody does not require a melody at all, only the concept that you think you hear one. The melody in your dreams may not exist at all. This explains why you don't remember it.

This also explains why you can make up things in dreams, or under influence of mind alerting drugs, that stop making sense when you are awake/normal again. They never made any sense in the first place but in dreams/under drugs that just doesn't come into the picture.

[timothy42b]

A few decades ago we talked about the three B's of creativity:  bed, bath, and bus.  Ideas appear to us there that seem better because they are different from what we would have come up when our attention was focused on the problem, and following our usual straightline approach.

Sorry about the Diet Coke line, that was supposed to be humor.  It goes back to a night I had with an oompah band.  I'd played several gigs with them that summer, normally free beer jobs, and we sounded awesome.  But that night I was driving, and stuck to Diet Coke.  We sounded awful:  mistakes, bad counting, lack of precision everywhere, tuning probles, etc, and it all got worse the more Diet Coke I drank.  So I got to thinking, if two of us had been drinking Diet Coke, it probably would have destroyed the whole band. <grin>  One might suspect the band sounded the same, and my perceptions were different - who knows?