Influencing dreams without LD

As I'm not fully capable to LD yet, I found two pretty good ways to influence my dreams in a certain way.

One - This is pretty much guaranteed to work, or at least it has many times with me.
If you want to dream about a place, person, a hobby, anything, grab a picture of it off the internet.. I put it as my desktop wallpaper, but you could print it off and place it as near to your bed as possible, as long as you can see it :) Make this picture the very last thing you see and the subject the very last thing you think of. I tend to really stare at the picture and try and imagine what being at that place or with that person would be like, get really caught up in the picture like that and it works pretty well :)

Two - Music. A lot of you may do this already, I have done my whole life, but it only really took effect when I began trying to control my dreams (any reasons why?) If you play music throughout you sleeping -even at a low volume it still works. If you're dreaming you're at a party or something the music will most likely to be what you're listening to.. this helps get rid of those annoying songs you get stuck in your head becuase it was in a dream the night before ;) lol.. but also, if you know about the band of the song thats playing, it is likely they will be in a dream or two, and of course the subject of the song may also be incorporated.
The mood and feel of the song/album/band etc will affect your dreams pretty strongly too.. I once had a dream I was in a big bus crash.. and on at that time was a song with crashing sound effects in it.
If you have nightmares frequently, you may find that classical and chilled out music might help you :)
I find that for a major musical influence on my dreams, as opposed to playing random songs or albums, repeating an album is a really good technique, but repetitive, so I play whole discographies.. personally, i use Dream Theater (no dream puns please :D hehe) Although thier discography is rather large, it brings the members frequently into my dreams, perhaps a few times a night if I'm lucky :D

Its a small contribution, but I hope it helps some of you :)

Cheers
Natalie

Its nothing I didn't already know, but others may find it helpful... I'd like to find a sure fire way to dream about anything without actually being in a LD.

very nice. I've done some of those unintentionally and ended up having dreams about those things. :). quite helpful

very interesting, toonite i will have classical music playing(classical music is the best :P ). i play cello already so that might have some interesting results. i tried dreaming with music before, but it was relaxation music and i forget what i dreamt, but i didnt see any change in my dreams really, except they were uneventful.