Thread: Using a voice recorder made a huge difference for me in recall!

I started using a voice recorder app on my smart phone halfway through the night before last (before I was using a written journal), and I used it entirely for last night. Boy what a difference! I had 4 awakenings (including the final one where I got up) and recorded 17 different dreams / fragments, way more than any other night! The benfits are:

• You can talk faster than you can write, getting detail out before your forget it and getting back to bed sooner
• No trying to read incomprehensible chicken scribbles in the morning
• You can keep your eyes closed and visualize/remember while you record
• A smart phone is way smaller than a pad & paper, no fumbling with a pen, turning pages, or getting into a comfortable position to write
• No fumbling with a light worried about a light bothering bed partner
• The recorder timestamps each entry so no fumbling around first with the phone / trying to determine the time.
• You can also record your intended induction technique and how long you stay awake and when you try to go back to sleep.

About the only downside is worry about bothering bed partner with your voice. I tried speaking really quietly and the recorder still picked up my voice quite well enough to transcribe in the morniong.

Congrats on finding way that worked for you!
Don't think it would work for me though, it's simpler for me to type or even write than talk and i don't really have any recorder even.

I see one issue with this... The things I write or type in the middle of the night are so funny when I wake up. I will just see swirls on the paper, or the tag for my dream will just be "Cheese" or "monocles". haha.

I wouldn't mind giving this a go. My recall is decent, but sometimes I'm writing for 15 mins, whereas if I was talking it out, you would think it would be a hell of a lot quicker.

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Originally Posted by CHiLLEN_AU

I wouldn't mind giving this a go. My recall is decent, but sometimes I'm writing for 15 mins, whereas if I was talking it out, you would think it would be a hell of a lot quicker.

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There is something on my phone that takes what I say and writes it down. Now I can just say it, and then send it to my comp and upload it. So I can take less time and share.

I also try this method using voice recorder and I must admit it's better than writing dreams on paper or keyboard in the middle of night or after wake up in the morning. Dreams are very easy to forget in short time and recording it is the fastest way of keeping it from losing forever from your memory You don't need to get up from bed, you just need grab voice recorder or phone and press one button and than you can tell what you remeber. Simple, easy, fast. But sometimes dreams are so ridicules that saying it aloud even when none is in the room feels pretty stupid.

Originally Posted by AbelMagwitch

But sometimes dreams are so ridicules that saying it aloud even when none is in the room feels pretty stupid.

lmao

Yea I'm thinking about trying this as well, I used to try to write whole dreams down in a physical dream journal but I would be writing like 3 pages and my hand would get tired and itd take forever to write down so I wrote down bulletpoints and notes in a tiny notepad and expand it for when I write my dream journal on here. But a voice recorder would work much better so i could say the whole dream without spending like half an hour writing it down.

Originally Posted by BrandonBoss

There is something on my phone that takes what I say and writes it down. Now I can just say it, and then send it to my comp and upload it. So I can take less time and share.

That's s great idea. What's the app called? I'd love to try it out.

I think that it is called "my journal" there are a few different free types. I use android, not iOS, but I am sure that it has something like that. Took me a few tries to find the one that fit my needs.

Big flaw:

If you are not alone in bed and got a wife/husband that wakes up with the sound from wings of a fly...

Originally Posted by PercyLucid

Big flaw:

If you are not alone in bed and got a wife/husband that wakes up with the sound from wings of a fly...

I don't see it as being more or less disturbing than writing in bed, which requires additional light, and adds a constantly slight jiggling movement with the writing, and the noise of turning pages. You can also take the voice recorder to the bathroom during a quick bathroom break if even that is an issue. Voice recording also takes less total time.

I do not write it either next to bed, but in a table in the living room, my wife wakes up with nothing lol... Tried the recorder in the past, I do not like it and writing has some advantages:


- You take longer to write everything down, so it can be a good WBTB opportunity... as visiting the bathroom, drinking some water, writing the dream down gives you some time to WBTB while you are 100% focus on LDing (to not forget your dream)

- Since you take longer to write, you can remember more stuff... happens to me a lot that when I write the dream, I remember at the end a previous segment and so I have more dream to recall.

- It promotes you to hold your dream longer in your mind, as you write slower than you speak, rather than just "vomiting the dream" you gotta focus on it, write stuff down and put behind your mind the other stuff to recall till you write it... this stretches your dream-recall muscle and helps you to recall more.

- An ideal WBTB is to go to write down the dream, spend at least 10 minutes, even if you finished writing, as more might come to you. You put pressure in your mind, and you know that when you try to remember something, it is hard, but when you go ahead and do other stuff it comes (it happens also with dreams) When you got nothing for a few minutes, focus on your next LD while you take some water and go pee... spend 5 minutes or so doing this. You will be amazed how more dream will come back to you (as while you stopped focusing on your previous dream but on your LD, your memory works in the background to recall what you have been struggling to remember.) Then go back to your notebook and write more stuff down. If you can avoid the notebook by the bed, better. You will probably remember a huge chunk of dream, and go back to bed excited with a 20 mins wbtb... YOU might even temporary forget to have a LD cuz you got a long nice dream, but once agian, you triggered the back of your memory and your memory is working on a LD... and woila...lucid dream coming uuuuuuuuuup!

Different strokes for different folks. You advantages are disadvantages to me, and vice versa apparently. I tend to wake up really fast, there's a time limit after which I just won't be able to go back to sleep for a long time. So journaling really fast is really important to me and those like me. I also recall a lot of detail, and with the voice recorder I can get that detail down without worrying about other dreams slipping away. Further, I can understand my voice a great deal better than my night time handwriting scribbles. I spent effort on recalling more and more of the dreams, and more details, up to a point where I need to get back asleep before I'm to awake. I can easily spend 15 minutes or more on recall with the voice recorder, noting detail, pausing for recall, recording more, etc. and that's (for me) already a solid WBTB.

I prefer to set WBTB times independently. So it's more advantageous to have a fast recording mechanism, and if you want to stay up longer, go right ahead. In that way it's more flexible.

In terms of remembering more, sometimes (not infrequently) I'll recall a fragment or even an entire dream in a subsequent waking. I'm pretty thorough, it is very rare for me to remember any more dreams or detail during the day.

Our brains are wired to forget dreams, so I think the fastest recording mechanism possible leads to the best recall. Just because you record faster doesn't mean you have to spend less time on trying to recall further and further back into the dream.

So if you don't like voice recording, no problem, just don't do it. For many, including me, it's been a huge boost to the number of scenes and the recalled detail, and I encourage those who've never tried it to do so. Then decide for yourself.

I am just giving the downs for voice recording... not technique is flawless, but it is not good to make sound it is Voice recording is good, but it is not the holy grail.