Relative / Perfect Musical Pitch in Dreams

Hello all!

It has been some time since my last post. I have returned after noticing some very interesting phenomenon in a few of my recent lucid dreams: musical instruments work in lucid dreams. This may not seem interesting, but it raises a very important question, which will be the topic of the research here:

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Do people have relative and/or perfect musical pitch when dreaming?

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First, I will define some terms. For those well-versed in musical terminology, please feel free to skip the following section.

Spoiler for Terminology:

For those who are unfamiliar with the terms, relative pitch and perfect pitch refer to a person's ability to determine the pitch of a musical note. Very few people can accurately and reliably recreate a musical note from memory. For example, if you were to attempt to sing a "C" without hearing any other note, you most likely could not. If you can, please consider a career in music!

Those with good relative pitch are able to determine a note in relation to another note. In order to accurately recreate a specific note, they must first hear and know another note. For example, a cappella singers typically require a predetermined note to be played before singing, often by a pitch pipe. Good relative pitch can be learned through ear training. (Further information: Relative pitch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Those with perfect pitch (also known as absolute pitch) are able to determine a note independent of any other note. They are able to accurately recreate a frequency simply by memory. Such a condition is extremely rare, and many theories exist regarding why some individuals have it. To date, no adult has ever acquired perfect pitch through training. Those who do possess perfect pitch were either born with the ability are acquired it in very early, critical stages of development. (Note: this is not the same as being able to remember a song in the correct key. Perfect pitch is the ability to determine the frequency of a note, and vice versa.) (Further information: Absolute pitch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Both conditions are highly sought-after in the musical community.

BACKGROUND

Before beginning my background, it is extremely important to note that I do not have perfect pitch. I play and listen to a great deal of music, but do not have outstanding relative pitch either.

I happened upon the notion in a non-lucid dream, in which I played a song on a piano, accompanied by a band. Upon awaking, I recalled both the key and melody of the piece. I realized I had never heard the song in my waking life, and so endeavored to transcribe it from my dream. Shortly after rising from bed, I sat down at my piano. The melody still vivid in my memory, I hummed an "A," the first note. I played an "A" on the piano, and was surprised to find the note I hummed and the note I played matched almost exactly.

Several nights later, I realized this could be tested empirically.

First, I tested my relative pitch by playing a piano while lucid. I found the instrument was very reliable in its ability to produce notes relative to each other; the keys could play a scale and sound perfectly in tune to one another. Harmonies and octaves sounded in tune, as well.

This established, I tested my perfect pitch 3 times. In each instance, I went lucid, sat at a piano, played a note, and hummed it. Immediately upon awakening, I recorded myself humming the same note, being sure to mention what note I played. (Note: I did have to hum one octave below the "middle C" range, as the bass range of my voice would not permit me to hum in a high register so soon after sleeping.) After waking for the day, I compared the recordings to actual, predetermined notes. In each of 3 trials, the recordings matched.

While such findings are promising, much more data is required before any trends can be observed or conclusions made. If people are, indeed, able to recreate notes in a dream, it may be suggested that dreamers could write complex compositions within lucid dreams, and perhaps improve relative pitch. With the collection of data, I ask for assistance of the Dreamviews community! I hope that any oneironauts interested in the relationship between music and dreams participate in this study. Once enough data is present, I will begin to compile it for convenient observation.

THE EXPERIMENT

To participate in the study, one need only do the following:

• Become lucid
• Play a note in your dream
• Record the note upon waking
• Compare the recorded note to the actual note
• Report upon your experience here

Note: Please be careful to record your note soon after playing it in the dream, as to avoiding distorting the pitch in memory. I need not tell this community the difficulty of remembering details from dreams! I recommend keeping a recording device, such as your cellphone, next to your bed.

I would be extremely grateful for any who participate in or contribute to the study! Anyone capable of becoming lucid can easily contribute. If you happen to play and remember a note from a non-lucid dream, feel free to report upon that as well! Alongside your results, it would be beneficial to include any musical background you may have, such as instruments played, experience with singing, and known pitch recognition abilities.

Feel very free to respond with any questions or comments! All input is welcome. Good luck, and I look forward to reading your results! :)

This sounds pretty interesting. But I'm not a musical person, so I can't do much. I have been wanting to remember any lyrics I hear from my dream though :)

Thanks for the response!

Actually, I suspect the results of less musical people may be just as important as those of musicians. It is entirely possible relative pitch is inherent in every person, regardless of musical background. Such would be certainly more intriguing to find in someone who has never played a note, than to find in a virtuoso. Either way, anyone who can dream of a musical note can participate in this study.

I have always wondered whether one could find writing and lyrics in dreams. It's very refreshing to hear of someone who has! Who knows what wonders we hide, left dormant in forgotten dreams? :)

This sounds like a very interesting experiment. I make electronic dance music, so while I don't have a traditional piano or instrument for that matter, I will try and replicate what I see/hear in my dream to my DAW - maybe even end up creating an amazing track :) I'm not sure if this will make it harder though as in my lucids so far I have yet to interact with my computer, maybe I can find myself a hardware synth or something in a LD.

By the way I had a dream once where I was at my home "studio" and an incredibly beautiful track was playing and I was adding lyrics to it. Everything was sounding so good I wish I could have been able to see some of the MIDI notes and try to recreate it.

Fantastic! I look forward to reading any results you may have. Also, I would be very interested in hearing any tracks that you retrieve from the depths of dreaming! Something in the subconscious makes impossibly beautiful music.

Any manner in which you can produce a note and know the note name in a dream will be perfect. Funnily enough, when I try to play a piano in a lucid dream, often it will function like a funky arpeggiator. It makes for some very interesting sounds, but makes it difficult to isolate a note.

Good luck! I hope to hear some of those beautiful tracks sometime soon. :)

Hmm... I play the piano and maybe I should test this. I have actually already set a lucid dream goal of playing something that I can't play awake in a dream. I decided to do this after I played a bit of Rachmaninov's prelude op. 23 no. 5 in a non-lucid dream (I know that it begins with a octave G1-G in the left hand and a g in the right hand, followed by g1-Bb1 or something like that). I'm also practising a nice little etude which is mostly chromatic scale, which would be perfect means to test how the dream instrument is tuned. I can already play the etude pretty fast but I could try how fast I can play it in a dream.

I am so on board for this study! I have 8 years of experience playing the clarinet and 1 year playing the piano behind me, and I can still do both. I currently sing every week in a choir. I have decent relative pitch, but I would love to improve it. This study sounds fascinating, and I think contributing to it makes a wonderful lucid dream goal for me. I don't have great dream control yet, but I'll see what I can do. :)

I've been thinking about pieces to play in a dream and I came to the conclusion that it is best to play a piece that I could learn, a piece of my level. I decided to try Chopin's nocturne op. 55 no. 1 or op 72. no. 1 or Beethoven's pathetique sonata, second movement. My plan is to memorize the notes with actually playing them and then playing the piece in a dream.

^ That sounds like a lot of fun. If I get really ambitious, maybe I'll try that, too. :)

No lucid dreams last night, but I did have one dream in which I was with my choir friends, and we were singing a song that I don't think I've ever heard in reality. I managed to remember enough to record a couple of phrases onto my phone when I woke up, and I'm planning to work with them and compose an original melody.

Excellent! Glad to have you on board, Recidul and Emiko. :)

Those are some very intriguing goals! If a musical instrument can, indeed, be correctly tuned in Lucid Dreams, an entirely new level of learning could be available. The relative pitch of the instruments will be fairly evident once you begin playing, though it could easily vary based on the particular dream. Playing anything chromatic would make the results even clearer; thanks for pointing that out, Recidul! Also, I believe our musical memory may be more than sufficient to recreate a composition in a dream. I hope you find success playing your material! Let us know how it goes, I'm rather curious.

That's extremely promising, Emiko. I had feared the songs we hear in our dreams may often not translate to our waking lives, but you certainly helped to disprove that. I hope you find some inspiration for that melody!

Thanks for the contributions! We're definitely making progress. :)

^ Thank you very much! :)

I read this thread yesterday. I've only just recently started LDing, but this sounds really interesting. I play a bunch of different instruments (some poorly): recorders, flute, melodica, piano, ukulele, guitar, bass, singing -- and I like to think that I have pretty decent relative pitch, but not absolute pitch.

I didn't have a LD last night, but I was trying to visualize one this morning (while hoping to WILD), so I visualized a piano and I played a middle C, then I tried visualizing other things. When I finally realized I wasn't anywhere near actually dreaming and decided it was time to wake up, I tried humming the note that I had visualized playing, then checked it against my keyboard. Even without the piano, I could tell it wasn't high enough to be middle C. Turns out it was actually an F.

Maybe when I get a proper LD, and don't do a bunch of other stuff in between...

In my dreams the music is very clear and beautiful.
I will try it, if I go lucid tonight. (A one in a million chance.)
I have noticed this about music and would be delighted to test it out.

I don't have perfect pitch, but if I hear a note my intuition will guide me to that note on the guitar or piano with about 70% accuracy if I really think about it. I have extremely good relative pitch. I think I don't need to hear a note first because I am in music school and spend a lot of time playing music or thinking about it. There are certain notes that I just know, like C, A etc.

When I've played music in dreams before it usually sounds different, like I just have a musical idea in my head and am banging away just to get the feeling, but all the LDs I've played music in have been very fuzzy. I did try to recreate a song I played in a dream once by playing the same frets and it didn't sound anything like the song in my dream, completely different intervals and everything.

I'll give this a try, but I might not do it for a few days, I am going to be busy this weekend.

I absolutely love this idea! Even though I can't get lucid whenever I want (all my LDs happened purely by chance), I'll try to remember to play something the next time I do it.

There's a bit of info I's like to add to this topic, as I think it would be interesting. Just as a little background, I play the acoustic guitar since I was 6 (I'm 22 now), and also play electric guitar, a little piano, and can do something on a bass. I have started learning classical guitar by myself a few years ago, but unfortunately I'm not very good yet with relative pitch.

At some point last year (or was it the previous? I don't know) I dreamt I was playing my guitar. It was a 3rd person dream, I could see myself like face-to-face, yet I knew it was me. I could hear the song and I could see the chords I was making: it was "Don't Panic", from Coldplay's first album (Parachutes). When I woke up I grabbed the fisrt guitar I saw and played the chords I remembered. Guess what? I played the whole song at first try.

I had never played that song before, and had never had any interest in learning it either. It was not even one of my favorites from them, but now it has a special meaning to me :)

Another interesting (and opposing) dream was me singing with my sister in her bedroom, along with a CD. All I remember is that when we tried to sing "Hands Clean", by Alanis Morissette, we couldn't get the words right, and found it really strange (we know the lyrics).

And I'm sure you all have heard The Beatles' "Yesterday", right? Paul McCartney had a dream and woke up with the entire song in his mind (but he changed the title, it was first called "Scrambled Eggs" :cheeky: ).

I absolutely can't help you with the music thing, because I never learned a single note; + my LDs for now are very short; so not much control. But that is one of the goals that I have set for myself.
The reason is that my primary goal for learning Lucid Dreaming is to develop abilities that I can't do in the waking life; like savant-like abilities. And also to enhance abilities that I do possess.
In one of my first LDs, I saw a toy-like train. I zoomed-in to one of the wheels, and it was perfectly round; and had a few totally symmetrically placed bolts.
In reality it would be different from music because we perceive Light and Sound signals with different senses; and these are different signals. But in a LD, it's coming from the memory and is built with imagination. So there shouldn't be a difference.
So I don't know if you really need to separate music from other recreations of life in LDs to answer your question; scientifically speaking; as strangely as it may sound.
So my conclusion is that our brain can recreate and imagine reality (seemingly) perfectly in LDs.

How is the study coming along? Sounds interesting. Are you still doing it?
bob syr