This dream was very creativity oriented. Felicia Day was visiting at a house/apartment where Peg and I lived. I asked her if she could recommend any good new video games to play. I mentioned that Peg was becoming bored with World of Warcraft. Felicia answered, “Oh anything.” Which I did not find helpful and which made me feel less connected with her, like she was aloof. The three of us were sitting on a big white couch watching something on TV. I was sitting in the middle. At one point Felicia re-positioned herself so that her head was resting on my knee. This made me feel more connected with her. But I was concerned that Peg would thing she was being overly familiar with her husband. Felicia shared that she had been feeling creatively blocked. I suggested that she tear up slips of paper, write down names of things on half of them and musical styles on the other half. Then pick one slip randomly from each half. This would produce results like ketchup and reggae. Then she should go and make herself write a song about ketchup in a reggae style. I think she liked the idea. I started considering using the idea myself. Then I was experimenting with art techniques like using static electricity to create patterns of strands of hair or fabric on a canvas. And I was walking through an art gallery where the paintings were large soft pastel-ish caricatures of rock musicians and I was thinking about doing a painting in a similar style.
Early Evening of July 11, 2015. Saturday. I had been working on a project with a large set of new music tracks and got stuck at trying to create the rather low-pitched cuíca-like sound from Peter Tosh’s “Rock With Me” (though I was able to copy most of the percussion rhythms otherwise in the way I wanted) and have become frustrated since nothing I can find, no sample, no actual instrumentation attempts, sounds anything quite like it. I lower the pitch of the MIDI cuíca (as my main otherwise very realistic drum kit in SFZ sounds nothing like a proper cuíca sound and is too smooth - and there is no feasible way to control note lengths, up or down stroke, pitch variation, or other important dynamics - thus a cuíca sample or MIDI format or even an audio loop for that matter, is mostly useless) and sequence it to match the organ bubble rhythm, but it just is not suitable and does not have a viable feel in the track. I have it set to exactly 86 bpm and do not feel like taking the sound out of the actual track, which is probably not very feasible because of how much it blends in. (In my dream, it seems that a yellow grape tomato is also called a “cuíca” for some reason.) Even though it is rather low-pitched, I somehow am able to duplicate the sound in-dream with a small yellow grape tomato (“Sun Drop”) by holding it between my index and middle fingers and rubbing it with my thumb. This seems a bit unusual to get a low-pitched cuíca sound by rubbing a small tomato as such, but it works. I become aware of the plan to integrate it into a musical recording. More than one little yellow tomato is required, as once the eighth snare hit occurs on some verses, it needs to be popped to create the very light splashy cymbal sound, which is almost inaudible in the original track other than the intro pattern of the kick, snare, and cymbal prior to the start of the song. At one point, I eventually seem to be in a classroom setting (though no one else is around) with relevant algorithms written on the green chalkboard. This is the kind of rather ridiculous non-lucid dream I get when taking a nap earlier in the evening, especially when eating something I am mildly allergic to (in this case, chicken and peanut butter sandwiches, one of my favorite snacks, though an older brother was more allergic to peanut butter than I am). I still have not solved the cuíca issue, even after watching about a dozen videos with experts and performers, mostly in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. It is probably something in the back of my mind but has yet to emerge. I also seem to recall a “Fat Boys” cassette from the 1980s where they copied a very similar low-pitched cuíca rhythm, though vocally. By some strange coincidence, “cuíca” is Portuguese for a type of small opossum which is known to make a high-pitched sound. How amusing.
Dream Date: 9/9/10 (morning of) I had woken up and gone back to bed several times. I don't remember what I was dreaming directly before this, but I remember I was in a nightclub, and there were people all around me. I felt like I was about to black out, so I (presumably thinking I had drank too much in my dream) immediately went into "Don't black out!" mode. This seems to have woken me up consciously, so I became aware that I was sleeping. When I was partially awake, I could hear reggae music very vividly, and I thought I had fallen asleep with headphones on. I don't listen to reggae, and I didn't recognize the song, so I'm not sure where the music was coming from. I began to slip back into slumber, and was *immediately* torn from my body, to the far corner of the room, near the ceiling. It happened very quickly, but I was able to turn and "see" myself and my fiance. (I put "see" in quotes because it was still dark in the room so it was hard to see). It was really cool, but as soon as I was on the far side of the room, I had the feeling of "cool...sooo...now what?" .....and then it was over.
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