Thread: Unreal's Dreams In Mp3

For a long time I would write notes about my dreams on paper when I woke up from a dream so I wouldn't forget it. I would type it up more fully on my computer later. A few days ago I was reading a book where one of the characters used a digital voice recorder to record his thoughts. I decided I wanted to try that for recording my dreams. I did a bit of research on digital voice recorders on the internet and went out and bought one yesterday. I've never used one before. I had two dreams last night that I recorded on the device. I had no intention of posting it anywhere. I was considering making a post on one of the forums here to just talk about the subject of voice recorders, which I had seen discussed in some threads. Then I remembered the dream journal section here and wondered if I should just post the sound file for my dream. So I figured, why not?

I have two dreams recorded so far. I will post one of the dreams in a reply after this post. The other one I don't want to post. There is nothing special about the one I am posting. Actually my recall of the dream was more confused than it usually has been in the past, but I've just restarted keeping track of my dreams again a few days ago. But I was able to remember enough details to amount to a full dream. My routine before recording a dream is pretty much the same before taking notes on one. Right after waking up from the dream I sit quietly for a while, maybe 30 seconds to 2 minutes, trying to remember the dream, piece it together. One of the main differences I see in the recording I make versus written notes is that the recording isn't as organized. When writing, you can sit there just thinking long enough to formulate your thoughts and put together structured sentences. When speaking, you just have to keep talking and hope your memory can keep up with you. So forgive me the ummms, and uhhhs. Oh, and also the yaaawns, I was just waking up you know. Another difference is that it is easier to include a lot more details without having to hand write long long paragraphs of information, which can be tedious at 3 O'Clock in the morning. And I've always been someone who did write in all the details in my notes, so I'd remember it. I've tried just writing key words and phrases and important points, and then filling in the details the next morning with those as a reminder, but that didn't work very well for me, I'd still forget the details.

Later in the day I review the recordings and type it up into the dream journal on my computer. I don't type it word for word, I edit and organize it a bit. Speaking of the dream journal on my computer, I use some software called Life Journal 2.0. I have 334 dream entries going back to January 2004, including 49 lucid dreams. I keep track of my dreams off and on. Sometimes I'll do it for 2 or 3 months, then maybe stop for as long as 4 months. Hopefully I stick with it a bit longer this time. I like this software I use a lot. Now that I've started recording my dreams onto a sound file (at least my initial notes for them) I find that I can insert a link into my dream entry directly to the sound file. So when reading the entry, I can click on the sound file link and have it automatically start playing on my audio software (Winamp.) When reviewing past dreams, if I have the choice of reading them, or listening to my voice telling them, I find that it is kind of more enjoyable to listen to it (at least from my one day of experience with it.) The dream journal software isn't free but if you want to read about it I wrote a pretty comprehensive review of it about a year ago in this thread:
http://www.dreamviews.com/forum/index.php?...c=20449&hl=

Anyway, I don't even know if anyone would even want to bother to listen to my recorded dreams. My voice isn't great and my dreams might be boring but I thought it was kind of funny to try. Also, I wanted to raise the idea for this possibility in case others might want to try it. I know some other people on this forum use voice recorders. Maybe you could do a better and more interesting job. I actually thought of adding some sound effects to the file with wavs from the internet but I couldn't find what I was looking for and it seemed I was just adding too much work to it. Someone could even add background music to their recording, but I'm just trying to keep it simple for now. I thought about including the text version of the dream along with the recording. Then I decided that after reading the dream a person probably wouldn't want to listen to it, everything was already given away.

The digital voice recorder I bought is called the Olympus DS-2. I never even heard of any of the brands until I started searching yesterday. This one might be more expensive than necessary, you can get cheaper ones. Some things I liked about this one is that it has a backlit screen so I can operate it in the dark in my room, never even having to turn on my lights or get up from bed. Some cheaper ones don't have that. Using this is much nicer than having to write on paper. I don't have to turn on the lights, get the paper and pencil, I don't even have to sit up, I can just continue laying on my pillow and talk. The other thing about this model in particular is that it has a docking station which is convenient for transferring the files to my computer. It works very well. I was kind of worried about if it would be a hassle to listen to the recording and try to type it up on my computer. Could I keep up with the speed? I didn't think I could, normally, but I knew it came with some software. And the software works pretty good. Some of what it does is lets me adjust the playback speed, down to 50% speed. So I can still understand it clearly, but it goes slow, giving me more time to keep up. Also, it lets you control the playback, with pause and play, and even rewind, using the control buttons, like f4 and f2, you can use those buttons even while you are in your text editor, you don't have to switch back to the dictation software. If you wanted to go so far as to have voice recognition that creates the text version from your recording, you'd have to upgrade the software for more money, and also buy some voice recognition software, I don't know how much that would cost. Well my point is that it turned out pretty easy to use the audio file to then type it up into a computer version. My recorder creates the audio files in the WMA format. That works fine with with the audio software I use to listen to them but I've converted them to MP3 for uploading since it is a bit more universally recognized and supported.

Here are two links with reviews on the digital voice recorder I have, the Olympus DS-2, but I would recommend you do your own research and see what device better suits your needs and budget. One of my criterias was that I wanted to be able to find it in a store nearby, I didn't want to wait for a delivery. You can also consider finding one on Ebay.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-...p;s=electronics
http://www.epinions.com/Olympus_DS_2_Voice...isplay_~reviews

I don't have any online storage of my own for sharing files so I had to find a free site. I considered using rapidshare.de. Then I found another site that seemed a bit faster and easier to use, www.fastdump.net. Both of them have similar limitations on downloaders, meaning that after you download one file, you have to wait a while before downloading a second file, 30 minutes it seems for the one I'm using. To download the file, go to the bottom of the page. There will be a timer that counts down about 25 seconds, then a button appears that you click to actually start the download. If anyone has a recommendation for a better free file sharing site please let me know.

If anyone has any comments on the idea of posting recorded dream entries or comments on my dreams, feel free to reply or pm. If not that is fine because I just like to find new approaches for attaining, recording, saving, changing, experiencing, influencing, etc, my dreams and lucid dreams, to keep me interested in the activity.