Perhaps a variation of the "I'm in school and I suddenly remember there's an important exam I neglected to study for."

I was in some sort of classroom and in order to be promoted we all had to pass a sight reading test. I could kind of see the music from my seat and realized the test was easy, but when it was my turn at the piano, I couldn't read a note. I protested that I was improving all the time, and that I was playing material much more advanced than that in the test, and even named a few pieces by Chopin I was working on. But all to no avail.

I'm 58 years old and it's been a good decade since I was last in a classroom. But in a way, every day when I sit down at the piano I'm entering my own little private class. Since I'm self-taught at this point, I'm both teacher and student. Viewed from that perspective, it's likely I was telling myself I'm not happy with my progress, which over the last few weeks has been true.

Anyone else dream about playing?

I dreamed the other night that I went back to college for my doctorate. I've been under a huge amount of stress lately and I can't really understand why. For the heck of it I googled my dream and these are two explanations I came up with:

"To dream of a college, denotes you are soon to advance to a position long sought after. To dream that you are back in college, foretells you will receive distinction through some well favored work."

" To dream that you are in college, indicates that you are going through some social or cultural changes. You want to expand your knowledge and awareness. It also suggests that now is a good time for you to experiment and try new things. If you had gone to college in your past, then also consider your personal experiences and memories of your college days. However, if you are currently in college, then it may be a reflection of your current surroundings. Alternatively, it suggests that you will achieve your goals through perseverance and hard work. The dream may be brought on by some stress in your life."

My husband thinks they sound like Chinese restaurant placemats .

I don't dream of going back to college but I do rehearse my pieces in my head before falling alseep.
rada

I play a lot in my sleep. The oddest dream/nightmare I had was one in which the keys were rippling and swapping places as I tried to play. I usually get up quite early (4 am) to practice a couple of hours before I go to work - on the occasional mornings when I sleep in I usually dream I'm at the keyboard practicing. I wonder if this sleep practice actually does me any good - - - -

I occasionally dream that I'm about to perform, but for whatever reason, realize I've never studied the piece I'm supposed to play. Funny that my reaction to this scenario has varied from 1) trying to memorize the score in the minutes before walking out to perform, to 2) plotting how I can sneak the score on stage without anyone in the audience seeing, to 3) being in a state of frozen pitiful panic... the worst feeling!

I don't think about it too much after waking up...

I think the first one especially belongs in a fortune cookie.

Daniel

Morodiene, your husband is a very wise man.

I have been having a lot of dreams just like Cardguy's lately. I think it's a reaction to stress; they involve playing the piano because my pianistic abilities are part of who I am and how I define myself.

A recent review about dreams in a Neuroscience journal concluded that dreams are most likely the brain's way of tuning up..
"The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking".


Here is a quote from the psychiatrist and researcher (sleep studies)who wrote the review:

It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Dr. Hobson said in an interview. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tuned up. It’s the same idea here: dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”

The orginial article by Allan Hobson appeared in Nature Reviews Neuroscience. The gist of it shows up on various websites . The journal website is not free access I think.

LOL. It was a joke. I don't put much faith in those things anyways. I know I've been under a ton of stress, I just don't know what the source is.

It's strange that I've been remembering my dreams in unusual detail lately. Andro, I've read about that study and find it very interesting. But I only buy it to a point. My dreams are too full of obvious and sometimes quite elegant metaphor for me to believe there's not some "dream work" happening in a psychological sense.

I have this old friend who's in poor health. He'll likely die soon. I dreamt he was telling me he was late for an appointment with the "field director." I woke up with that feeling of resonance one often has when remembering a dream,that made me positive if I thought about it for a minute, the significance of "field director" would come to me.

Then it hit me. Field director of course is quite close to funeral director, and is also suggestive of a "field" or cemetary. "Director" can also easily be seen as a substitute for "God."

Endelessly amazing how the mind works.

My most recurring piano dream is that I am performing for someone - usually only one or two people - but I am not seated at a piano; I'm playing on a table-top or some similar hard surface. The lack of instrument doesn't seem totally abnormal in the dream, although I often have trouble finding the right notes to play because the location of the "notes" (which can't be seen) are often distributed all over the table in random arrangement. Interestingly, much of the time I hear the sound of what I am playing.

Dream interpreters : Could this be a manifestation of a subconscious desire to play "tafelmusik"?!

Cheers!

The first thing that popped into my mind when I read that was that you feel you are playing "on the surface". Whatever that might mean to you...

I've never been a "surface skimmer" when I play, so I doubt that, even subconsciously, that is in the back of my mind.

Regards,

For a further Freudian analysis I need to know...
Do you play your repertoire pieces in these dreams?

Ja, Herr Doktor; they seem to be pieces I know.

Regards,

I don't recall ever dreaming about playing the piano, but I have had very vivid aural dreams, where I hear an entire orchestra playing in my sleep. It's never a piece I recognize, but I hear every nuance in dynamics and instrumentation. Sometimes I lie in bed half asleep thinking, "Who turned on the radio?"

The funny part is, I'm not really a big fan of orchestral pieces. I listen almost exclusively to solo piano works (when I'm awake, that is!)

I typically only dream about piano when I have a performance coming up that I'm nervous about. I once had a dream that I was performing at a recital to a bunch of other piano students and they all played better than me. When I finished my terrible performance, everyone started pointing and whispering. Then I got really mad and told them, "let's see you do better!" And then they did. The nice thing about these dreams is that you wake up being really glad that it wasn't real.

BruceD,
I have had this same dream, more than once.

I have no recollection of dreaming about the piano but my dreams often have background music which I sometimes recognize and other times wish I could write down. I always wake up with music playing in my head. Actually, I have music playing in my head all the time. I sometimes wish I could plug other people into my brain to enjoy the music! (At this moment it is a Bach fugue).

I often dream of being able to make myself float and the other night I grabbed my son and husband by their shirts and hoisted them up with me...I got up pretty high this time and of course there was music playing in the background.

table and all?

Yes.

I got a new piano this summer, and a few weeks after it was delivered, I had a dream I was playing it, and it was making horrible sounds. So I looked inside, and there was a cat walking across the strings. So that explained it. Except I don't have a cat, and my piano is an upright. Go figure.

In my other piano dream, I was playing a piece that I had been working on for several months. I could see the music in front of me, and was watching my hands as I played. And I was playing it perfectly! Now that's a dream.

If in the dream you are playing the actual music you would have been working on if you were awake, then I don't see how it could NOT help! In fact, it might help a lot. To test whether it helps or not, don't sleep for a week and see if you get worse.

I totally understand this. But I get dreams about playing the role of Marcello in Puccini's Boheme. Okay, I'm a baritone -fair enough- but there I am on stage and don't properly know the role! Repeating dreams... it keeps happening.

And why always this opera? If I were a bonifide operatic baritone I would prefer to appear in Strauss's Die Frau ohne Shatten, but I never get that chance.

It's because of the piano. The piano is your Musetta, always glittering and always flirting with the other pianists.

Or... it's because you're fated to discover and record the lost piano concerto of Puccini.

Or... you want to be Marcello because you've noticed that his girlfriend doesn't die right away, and he gets to keep his coat.

I do dream quite literally of pieces I'm actually working on. Awake I'm a sightreader not a memorizer but I can accurately picture the actual scores in my dreams.

It sounds as if your dreams may be helping you learn in ways you don't use while awake. Excellent!

Ferdinand,

That's really fascinating. I don't know what to make of it. Easy to posit coincidence, but the content of the dream seem so idiosyncratic.