Dreams

[Bernardswatch]

Does anyone on here ever have piano playing dreams where either they or someone else is playing the piano.

I sometimes get dreams where im playing my own compositions.  They sound really good in my dreams.

If only I had a way to remember then and write them down  

Does anyone else dream like this or am I just odd.

[Peachy_Keen]

I had a dream a few days ago about playing the piano, but I can't say what it sounded like. Now that I think about it, it probably sounded a lot better. *sigh* If I only I could record dream music.

Kinda off topic, but I had a dream one night during high school (conked out after finishing a paper night before it was due) where someone helped me revise a paper, and when I woke up I remembered most of the revisions and actually made them before class. Weird huh?

[belvoce]

Interesting.

I've had dreams involving the piano at my piano teacher's house. Those are always strange.

[Hmoll]

I sometimes get dreams where im playing my own compositions.  They sound really good in my dreams.

If only I had a way to remember then and write them down  

Sounds like the story of Tartini and the "Devil's Trill" sonata.

You should keep a manuscript notebook on your bedside table, and write down musical ideas as much as you remember them.

I have a recurring dream that I'm supposed to play a recital the next day, and I just start learning the music the day before. The dream always ends right before I walk out on stage.

[Spatula]

I remember one night that I dreamt about playing for a test class before a recital.  I remember the piece I tried to "preform" was Chopin Fan Impromptu however I only knew the RH at that point for about the first page or so.  During that time in reality, I did not do HT yet so it definately reflected that aspect into my dreams.  The recital in my dream was supposed to be held 2 days later!  And seeing my teacher's disapproving look, I played chopsticks instead (even though I only know maybe the first three bars).

Now that was a nightmare  

[donjuan]

Whenever I have dreams about playing piano, I am either trying to play stuff I know very well, but for some reason I cant remember, or I am improvising REALLY well, unrealistically well, where the music sounds great no matter what random stuff I do on the piano.

Once, I had a dream that I was playing piano on the computer keyboard.  Now, THAT was weird!!

[faulty_damper]

You know what's even funnier about people talking about their dreams?  The fact that it is impossible to remember them.  The only part of the dream you remember is right before you wake up as the substance that allows your brain to remember anything moves back to the brain.  So when you get mad at someone for waking you up in the middle of your dream, don't blame them - you were already starting to wake up.

So this has been a reoccuring dream of mine.  I'm sitting in front of the piano and I'm improvising like crazy.  And I sound good.  Unfortunately, when I awake and try this on the real piano, I sound like sh*t.

[willcowskitz]

faulty_Damper, what do you mean by impossible to remember them? Do you know what lucid dreaming is?

Here's an example I wrote in another thread earlier, it is well suitable for this thread also:


"There was this bit in a piece I was practicing that I couldn't get together for some reason, I played it clumsily. One night I was dreaming and I became aware of it and remembered a "technique" I had come up with previous night: if you're dreaming and you want to bring a person or an object into the dream, you mustn't try forcefully picture it in front of you, but be aware of the fact that the environment is actually a library of your thoughts and things that keep your mind busy - so if you come to think of something, it certainly exists in this library. So the trick was not to "create" anything in the manner you do in what we call reality (or waking state here), but to go look for whatever you're thinking about. Behind one of those corners in the dream environment, you're gonna find just what you were looking for. Of course its there, in your mind, somewhere. So I was dreaming and wanted to play piano. I started walking and looking behind corners and there it was, a piano. I sat down and started playing, and I played through this part I had had problems with, and I played through it again and my hands became one with the note progression. Next day when I went to play the piano, I just played through the part with success. Its amazing and ironic how unconscious we are of the biggest events actually taking place in our minds."

[faulty_damper]

I meant exactly what I said.  

For memory to occur, there must be a chemical substance in the brain (can't remember what it's called).  When you sleep, this substance moves out of your brain and into your muscle tissues (if I remember correctly).  And since this substance is required for memory and in no longer in your brain, it is impossible to remember your dreams except until you begin to wake up and this chemical moves back into your brain.  That's why you wake up and remember the last part of the dream.  But you do not remember how it started or what happened in the middle of it, just the part right before you woke up.

I know what lucid dreaming is.  Where you are both consciously aware of your dreams, if in fact these are real dreams that would normally take place, and you are asleep.  I say that IF these are real dreams because they seem like imaginations than dreams because you can control the dream.

The topic of dreaming is far out of our current understanding as there is no way to figure out how our brains work and why we dream at all.  Who knows, maybe when we go to sleep, our dreams are the ones that actually do the practice on problems we have when awake, like Bernhard has said that sleeping is the way we absorb and learn things.  Then when we awake, we've spent the entire night practicing the problem in our piano technique or something like it and we are then able to play it better.

[willcowskitz]

I meant exactly what I said.  

For memory to occur, there must be a chemical substance in the brain (can't remember what it's called).  When you sleep, this substance moves out of your brain and into your muscle tissues (if I remember correctly).  And since this substance is required for memory and in no longer in your brain, it is impossible to remember your dreams except until you begin to wake up and this chemical moves back into your brain.  That's why you wake up and remember the last part of the dream.  But you do not remember how it started or what happened in the middle of it, just the part right before you woke up.

I remember a lot of my dreams, something every night, and there can be bits from the beginning (when I fell asleep), middle and the end, and sometimes I softly wake up sliding from dream to reality. But I always remember something, sometimes a LOT, and it isn't necessarily from the last moments of my dreaming.

I know what lucid dreaming is.  Where you are both consciously aware of your dreams, if in fact these are real dreams that would normally take place, and you are asleep.  I say that IF these are real dreams because they seem like imaginations than dreams because you can control the dream.

And what is imagination if not something that comes from intuition, just like dreams. Even though I can control my dreams (yes, very often), it doesn't mean I'm consciously taking action to create the dream world - in fact the world lives it's own life and I can adjust my part in forming it. The dreams create themselves but I take part in them, and though I can change the 'storytelling' by my conscious actions, the subconscious is constantly present and trying to take over. So, how can I be conscious of the dreams while I'm dreaming them, and remember them in huge detail afterwards?

The topic of dreaming is far out of our current understanding as there is no way to figure out how our brains work and why we dream at all.  Who knows, maybe when we go to sleep, our dreams are the ones that actually do the practice on problems we have when awake, like Bernhard has said that sleeping is the way we absorb and learn things.  Then when we awake, we've spent the entire night practicing the problem in our piano technique or something like it and we are then able to play it better.

Actually, dreams were "above comprehension" maybe when The Nightmare On Elm Street came out, but today we at least know what you mentioned; dreams are a process where we go through what we have recently encountered and let the subconsciousness put the pieces of the puzzle in their places. Our brainwaves (electric impulses between the brain surface and the interior of our skull) frequency drops down which makes us more easily exposed to new ideas and things to learn, and we subconsciously teach ourselves what others have taught to us during the day. It is like repetition but more effective than conscious wake state mechanic repetition. There's a phenomen called "photo reading", which claims that if you meditate (take conscious actions to drop your brainwave frequency to those lower levels where you're more sensitive and directly connected to the subtle) you can reach a state of mind where you can read a book by just scanning through it's pages and let the subconscious do the exact same job to you as it does in dreams. Though I don't know if this particular technique works, its a good example. Synaesthesiacs have provingly better memory than the average person, which is due to the fact that they combine multiple prints of different senses to form a memory picture of that situation; when they see a word, they directly associate it with sound and as the word is in written form they also see it's shape. They can also associate the sounds with certain colours and so a single word can have so many characteristics in it that "The word just remembers itself.", as a Russian synaesthesiac, a man referred to as "S" said. "S" had supposely what most people know as "photographic" memory but which would now rather be called "eidetic" memory. I have gotten the impression that your idol Bernhard might have this ability to recall things eidetically. All children have it in early stages of their lives, that's how they learn to recognize the world in the beginnings of their lives, then the brain learns "more sophisticated" ways to organize information to rely on words and concepts and sketches of the real thing rather than the exact, eidetic, print of it. On the other hand, "S" also said he had trouble understanding poetry because his brain took everything literally - each single word had some exact shape and meaning in his head and it would instantly summon itself into mental imagery and distract him from seeing the possible abstract meanings and connections that the words together created. Why I brought in synaesthesia and memory, is because the "space" that connects the different sensations together is like a good base for "Tabula rasa" (John Locke desbribed human mind to be a 'blank tablet' in it's birth, implying that all information and knowledge comes from the outside and is engraved in our minds rather than coming from an 'inner' or 'spiritual' source, therefore there not being a "me" but something that reflects the world but gathers information from it to this central point called brain), which is also what the subtle state of mind is pre-requisite for in learning effectively;  When my mind is open, free of chains of words and concepts, it creates an effect similar to synaesthesia - boundless association between the REAL basis for all: the shapes, colours, sound, tactile sensations, smells, - all kinds of figures we see the world in when we break through the limits of lingual communication. This is why children learn so quick, they have the "blank tablet" or synaesthesiac mind or the dreaming-awake state of mind.

[Spatula]

Dreaming is part of REM, Rapid Eye Movement, sleep and usually occurs during the hours of 3 am to 5 am, sometimes even leading up to 6 am and dissipating into "nothing", most likely what faulty was talking about when the chemicals leave the memory part of the lobe of the brain.  From what I understand, much of the images are just recollections of random things you see during the day, and your brain is trying to sort out what's going on.  

And for some very strange reason, when ever I do something in a dream I manage to do it fast, but when I want to sucker punch a bad guy, my fist goes so slow like it's going thru super thick syrup and MISSES the guy.... how embarrasing !

[willcowskitz]

And for some very strange reason, when ever I do something in a dream I manage to do it fast, but when I want to sucker punch a bad guy, my fist goes so slow like it's going thru super thick syrup and MISSES the guy.... how embarrasing !

Haha yes I have that sometimes too. Its when I'm frustrated and/or angry at something or somebody and I just want to beat the sh*t out of them instead of going through the ineffective verbal hassle to turn them around and try see things from my view. When I'm lucid dreaming its different though, then I'll be landing blows.  

[Antnee]

I have weird dreams too. Usually, when I'm entering the stage of sleep where images start to involuntarily pop into your head, I start to hear random thoughts out loud (in my head), except to classical music. I distinctly remember one time (out of the many like this) where I was hearing involuntary speech thoughts in my head, except it was right along with the music of Chopin's first Ballade. It was very specific too. It was almost as if the music and my thoughts were combined into one, and my thoughts instantly melded into music. I get this almost every time I have a long practice session on the day...

-Tony-

[Spatula]

Haha yes I have that sometimes too. Its when I'm frustrated and/or angry at something or somebody and I just want to beat the sh*t out of them instead of going through the ineffective verbal hassle to turn them around and try see things from my view. When I'm lucid dreaming its different though, then I'll be landing blows.  

This is a stupid question but what is lucid dreaming?  It's not a wet dream right?  

[faulty_damper]

Where you dream and you realize you are dreaming and can then control the direction of it.  Most people are never aware they are dreaming.  In fact, dreaming is reality as you can't tell the difference between a dream and reality.  They are both equally real.  THe only difference is that you are aware of your dreams after you wake but you aren't aware that you were awake in a dream.

[Spatula]

Where you dream and you realize you are dreaming and can then control the direction of it.  Most people are never aware they are dreaming.  In fact, dreaming is reality as you can't tell the difference between a dream and reality.  They are both equally real.  THe only difference is that you are aware of your dreams after you wake but you aren't aware that you were awake in a dream.

I've never been able to know that I'm dreaming.   I'm ignorant as a monkey playing the piano smoking weed upsidedown.  Man that's just about as freaky as sleep walking or sleeping with your eyes open!    

[willcowskitz]

The difference between dreams and reality is that in the former the brain is the God whereas in the latter the brain is a child in it's womb.

[faulty_damper]

Ever wake up but your body hasn't?  That's freaky!  Like you are completely paralyzed...

[willcowskitz]

Yes there's a term for it: sleep paralyzation.

I've had it a couple times:

Couple years ago I woke up at night and couldn't move, I tried to make a sound but I couldn't, it was like silent panic. I heard a growling sound behind me where I couldn't see, and some kind of steps or movement that I sensed. Time passed and I made a little sound after lot of struggle, but I didn't want to scream anymore so I just went back to sleep.

Another case was yeeaars ago when "I know what you did last summer" came out, I was at my grandparents' place and watched the movie at night, then I went to sleep. I woke up at some point and that guy in the raincoat was standing at the room's door, and I couldn't move. Hahah. Then it just took time to pass and I fell asleep again.

I'm not sure if this is the same kind of phenomen, but I have a couple times woken up and seen things like spiders hanging from the roof.

Once I woke up in the morning and got scared as sh*t for something and I jumped out of my bed and went to the kitchen, my parents were there drinking coffee and said something like "Whoa, you're up early today.", joking as I always sleep late.

I said,

"There's a shark in my room."
Mom: "What?"
"There's a horrible shark in my room."
Mom: "Where?", follows me -
"There.", I point my finger at my bed.

When I woke up I had seen a shark hanging from the bed above mine (it was a pair bed stocked on each other), it was probably because I had been reading this nicely illustrated book about sharks the night before.


Another thing was when I woke up and saw a glowing spiderweb just above my face. It was thick and it spread over my vision and there was a huge spider in the centre of it. I bent myself as flat as possible against the bed and slowly crawled off the bed so I wouldn't touch the web, then when I had pushed myself onto the floor I got up, ran to the light switch and turned lights on - the spiderweb started fading from my vision slowly, and finally it just had disappeared.

Yet another case was when I woke up at night and a spider was hanging from the roof and coming towards me slowly, I got freaked off and I jumped off the bed, went to the light switch and as the lights were turned on the spider started disappearing from my sight slowly. Oh well, back to sleep.

[donjuan]

willcowskitz, you have some traumatizing experiences.  poor guy...

Has anyone here ever been aware of themselves falling asleep?  I have.  It kind of feels like your eyes aregoing into the back of your head, and the whole body goes numb.  The next thing you know, you wake up.
donjuan

[squiggly_girl]

Traumatised Willcowskitz, yes, I agree. Little wonder you're so well read on the brain, states of consciousness, dreaming and the like.

On the subject of semi-conscious states, anyone seen "Waking Life" directed by Richard Linklater. Highly recommended!

[bernhard]

Consider this:

Much of this thread mentioned the fact that it is very difficult to remember what one has dreamed. No matter how vivid the dream might have been, as soon as when wakes up, the dream fades and vanishes.

Now what about the opposite? And can you see where such a way of thinking might lead?

What about memoreise of so called "real life" once you are dreaming? Once you start getting involved in your "dream life", how much do you recall (in the dream) of your "real life"?

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Spatula]

Consider this:

Much of this thread mentioned the fact that it is very difficult to remember what one has dreamed. No matter how vivid the dream might have been, as soon as when wakes up, the dream fades and vanishes.

Now what about the opposite? And can you see where such a way of thinking might lead?

What about memoreise of so called "real life" once you are dreaming? Once you start getting involved in your "dream life", how much do you recall (in the dream) of your "real life"?

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

Whoa....you must be from the Matrix

[squiggly_girl]

My dream life is heavily referential to my real life. I don't dream anything that cannot in some way be related back to an experience from my conscious state. This one-way referentialism is what so clearly defines my real life as "real". If instead my real life began to draw more upon experiences in my semi-conscious state, my dream life, then I guess I would have to redefine my "real" life as my "dream" life and perhaps even my semi-conscious state as my conscious state.

[Snappy Joe]

I mostly, when I wake up, remember the entire dream I had, but seconds later 85 % of it is gone.
Have you ever tried whirlpooling?
If not, it's when you dream that you're dreaming that you're dreaming etc..
and when you wake up, you might not wake up for real,
do that around 3-10 times and you're easily frightened when you finally wake up(for real)

How about dreaming that you're dying/dead..it's horrible...yet relaxing   ...actually it's quite sick, from what I can remember, I only dreamt it once(I was swallowed by a BIG sand worm!) ...yes, I had been playing Final Fantasy X that evening, heh  

Flying! I used to dream every night I was flying!
Now it's quite rare(well I wouldn't know, we dream...what is it 1 million different dreams a night? )
when I was dreaming and flying, sometimes I would fall to the ground, then I woke up! (odd..reverse death :p)
And sometimes I just couldn't fly even though I kept trying, hmpf.

A last thing:
Sometimes, albeit very rare for me now(time ago I had it every night) I would get paralyzed in my entire body when I was -about- to fall asleep, meaning that I -WAS- awake when it occured(yes, eyes open too), I couldn't even breathe when it happens, it lasts around 7-15 seconds and I had to struggle hard to snap out of it.

That's just a small portion on the subject of dreaming.

[donjuan]

I would fall to the ground, then I woke up! (odd..reverse death :p)

hey! I have had those!  In fact, I have had many dreams where I am falling, whether it be skydiving, or off a building, crashing into a wall, many things involving pain and death, I wake up right then, as I hit the ground.  It is the weirdest feeling ever!  I wish there was a way to harness the dreams and make it a virtual reality game..Now THAT would be cool!!
donjuan

[Spatula]

The worst dream I've had that effected me in real life was I dreamt I was in a shopping mall and I needed to go pee, but also in reality my bladder was telling my brain I needed to go to.!  So I dreamt I made it to the washroom and did what I needed to do...

when I woke up, what a stinky mess....

Have anyone of you had one of those dreams that when you fall asleep too fast, all assudden you dream about falling off a bike or something, but then just when you impact, your ENTIRE BODY jolts like lightning?  Now that is super freaky  
Perhaps Don Juan and I are talking about the same thing...

[faulty_damper]

Apparently, that's a reflex from when we were still living in trees.  Our limbs unconciously reach out  to grab a branch so that we wouldn't fall out of the tree while we were sleeping.  If monkeys do it, and we are descended from monkeys, then that would be the best explanation why we feel like we fall and just "jolt" and our arms reach out.  If we didn't, and I'm sure many didn't, then the Darwinian rule of extinction meant that those that didn't reach out fell and killed themselves, thereby removing them from the genepool.

[Snappy Joe]

Have anyone of you had one of those dreams that when you fall asleep too fast, all assudden you dream about falling off a bike or something, but then just when you impact, your ENTIRE BODY jolts like lightning?  Now that is super freaky  
Perhaps Don Juan and I are talking about the same thing...

Yes, I had those as well, they usually occur right when you've fallen asleep first time..Sometimes I bang my leg against the wall...that hurts  

[donjuan]

Yes, I had those as well, they usually occur right when you've fallen asleep first time..Sometimes I bang my leg against the wall...that hurts  

Yeah, those are them-> and it happens when I am still awake....Just, all of a sudden, it feels like you are losing balance...er..lying on your bed, and then you have the single convulsion..weird.

[willcowskitz]

Have you ever tried whirlpooling?
If not, it's when you dream that you're dreaming that you're dreaming etc..
and when you wake up, you might not wake up for real,
do that around 3-10 times and you're easily frightened when you finally wake up(for real)

I can't say if I know what you're talking about for sure, but I have had experience of dreaming that I wake up.

Once I dreamed that the big bad wolf was chasing me. I was running in the forest and he'd pop up from behind trees and start chasing me and I would jump over obstacles as I ran, trying to get to hide myself at same time. Then I found a fallen log I could hide under and I crawled under it, and the big bad wolf came to the spot and was circling around it, then I think he saw me and then I woke up at my grandparents' place. I got up from the bed and started walking to the door, then the door opened by itself and the wolf rushed in.    Then I woke up for real. Or... did I?    

In one dream I was thinking, I wonder what would happen if I fell asleep when I already was asleep, would I go into an even deeper dream state or enter some other level of reality? I walked into a white chamber, set myself down and "fell asleep". Surprisingly, that's as much as I remember from it.  

"Whirlpooling" also reminds me of the technique that helps you maintain vividity in lucid dreams if you're losing control or the dream starts vanishing (for example when you start waking up).  When you notice the dream starts vanishing, you start spinning around. This gives you the sensations of motion and it attaches your mind to the dream world body rather than the wake state one, giving you a more solid connection to the dream world again. Tested on many occasions, it works.

[Tash]

back when i was about 13 i did an experiment on dreaming and tested about 3 people from various age ranges and made them write down what they did that day and what they ate and stuff and then made them what they dreamt about if they remembered. very fascinating  but i think i made a lot of assumptions that chances are weren't true! can't remember what the conclusion of it was but my science teacher thought it was great!

i go through phases of remembering my dreams, so if i remember having a dream i can remember quite a lot of it which freaks my friends out cos they can never really remember theirs (but then again i have a great memory for rememberin pointless events in my life).

i had a few freaky dreams before performances last year like i forgot the piece or completely changed what i was going to play and stuff. not good i was incredibly nervous before the recital. oh and also before piano exams i'd dream i'd get a C or something and then in the actual exam i wouldn't get that (thank god) so i'm thinking my dreams like to reflect the worst possible situation for whatever is coming up...

oh i had a dream i played the violin once and sucked at it. nothing new there

[Antnee]

Dreams can be cool, but also wierd. I also have many dreams of the ending of the world or a mass extinction.

For instance... one was extrememly realistic and freaked the Sh*t out of me. It was all normal. I was in my house just sitting at the kitchen counter. My mom asks me to take out my dogs. So I do. I Walked out the front door, and let my dogs do their business.. when suddenly something made me look upwards. The sun was shining bright. When all of a sudden... It got dark out. The sun stopped. The there was this sudden glow of light, and the sun started to burn like flame. It was a huge ball of flame in the sky and it got bigger and bigger. I ran inside to tell my parents, who were in front of the TV. I started to flip through the channels and happened to come across the weather channel which was showing an empty screen except for NO FORECAST. I went to the news and just as I read a scrolling bar talking about the event  there was a sudden brightness, more like an orange burning light and then...Nothing. It all ws silent but loud and it ended with a distant echo of just noise and as the noise fafed and echoed, I awoke.

I've had many like this and they are so real, that I am surprised when I awake to find myself still there.

-Tony-

[donjuan]

Dreams can be cool, but also wierd. I also have many dreams of the ending of the world or a mass extinction.

For instance... one was extrememly realistic and freaked the Sh*t out of me. It was all normal. I was in my house just sitting at the kitchen counter. My mom asks me to take out my dogs. So I do. I Walked out the front door, and let my dogs do their business.. when suddenly something made me look upwards. The sun was shining bright. When all of a sudden... It got dark out. The sun stopped. The there was this sudden glow of light, and the sun started to burn like flame. It was a huge ball of flame in the sky and it got bigger and bigger. I ran inside to tell my parents, who were in front of the TV. I started to flip through the channels and happened to come across the weather channel which was showing an empty screen except for NO FORECAST. I went to the news and just as I read a scrolling bar talking about the event  there was a sudden brightness, more like an orange burning light and then...Nothing. It all ws silent but loud and it ended with a distant echo of just noise and as the noise fafed and echoed, I awoke.

I've had many like this and they are so real, that I am surprised when I awake to find myself still there.

-Tony-

whoa... so you are afaid of the earth being pulled into the sun...
I usually have dreams where something really embarassing happens, like I lose my pants at school or something....I feel so angry and depressed, so miserable, and when I awake it can take a while to understand the dream wasnt real.  

[Saturn]

So do any of these dreams actually MEAN anything?

[drooxy]

Hey guys ! Why don't you just sleep at night ?