Was my piano playing really that beautiful?

[ovenbakedskittles]

Hey...

First let me start off by saying that im 20 years old and i never smoked weed until a couple months ago. This thread is a question i have about my first time smoking weed. It might seem kind of trivial compared to some of the other problems that people share on this forum such anxiety and things to do with harm reduction and such but i am very curious about this and i hope that you guys will be able to help me understand...

So the first time i smoked weed i went to guitar center. I was parked outside and took a few hits within a time frame of like 20-30 minutes. I must be fuckin light weight or something because it felt extremely mind altering to the point where it felt uncomfortable. It almost felt like i was on a light dose of shrooms or something similar to that. The amount i smoked couldnt have been more than a quarter of a gram though. maybe less.

Its difficult to explain the complexities of a mind altering experience such as this. I found it very interesting that i wasnt able to comprehend the effects that the drug had on my consciousness when my pre conceived notion of the drug was that it was a very mild hallucinogen with subtle effects. Its very hard to describe a weed experience because i cant fuckin remember so much of it. My thoughts and emotions were a bit amplified and exaggerated and at one point had this vague feeling that my thoughts werent mine. I felt like the way i percieved my surroundings was a bit different and peoples voices sounded a bit strange. It was very similar to my experiences with magic mushrooms a couple years back.

And my body just felt heavy and i had a relaxing feeling but i wasnt able to enjoy it much. I felt like my body wasnt reacting too well with it. It felt kind of uncomfortable like my body was gonna go into seizure mode.

Anyways i waited for a while before i walked into guitar center because it was kind of intense the way i was feeling... Once i walked inside i started playing the piano. Im still very stoned at this point. I wasnt trying to play anything i know. I was just messing around playing whatever. But i noticed that the way i was playing the piano sounded strangely beautiful to me. I wasnt really making a real effort to play something good. I was mostly just messing around with the keys but i did it with a certain rhythm. But i noticed that anything i played sounded like i was constantly creating alternative ways of playing the piano. It sounded unique and creative and i was really intrigued by it even though i knew there was a large possibility that it might have been just because i was stoned out of my mind. It proly sounded like crap to other people.

But to be honest, i cant help but wonder if maybe just maybe the weed actually did enhance my ability to be more creative and affected the way i play the piano.

Im hoping that people who are more experienced with weed can tell me what was going on. what do you guys think?

 

[theGirlWithBlueHair]

Yes. Psychedelics are known to enhance creativity and alter perceptual cognition. This used to happen to me all the time with cannabinoids. The musician Ryan Adams used to write music while on opium and he said the experience and music he created was so complex and spiritual he couldn't duplicate it sober.

The THC in the weed and the way it works on the cannabinoid type 1 receptor - similar to other psychedelic allows the conscious mind to access, so to speak, locked and hidden aspects of the subconscious mind, and keep in mind that the CB1 receptor also forms a heterodimer with the 5-ht2a receptor which is the serotonergic receptor that classical psychedelics work on such as LSD and psilocybin, which enhances neural connections and glutamatergic neurotransmission in the prefrontal cortex, affecting perception, cognition, memory, creativity, thought patterns, etc.

THC induces striatal and mesocortical dopamine release, which has been implicated in the cognitive properties of marijuana. Although long-term has the opposite effect, and dopamine levels diminish.

 

[avcpl]

Any time I've recorded something I thought was amazing on weed, I've been profoundly disappointed when hearing it later...

 

[spacejunk]

^ i on the other hand, always smoke a bit during recording sessions.
recording stoned song ideas - yeah, doesn't always work out so good. but i can't think of any records i've made or tracks i've recorded where i haven't had weed onhand.
For me, it enhances my musical creativity and focus - and i can get lost in nailing a take if i have a mild weed haze keeping me relaxed. not really stoned like the OP, mind you.
Savour that experience, because if you continue smoking weed regularly, you come to realise how unique those early experiences are.

Cannabis can be very intense. Some of the first times i smoked, it really altered my perception and consciousness profoundly.
It heightens your senses, absolutely. I'm a guitarist, and there are times when the tone of my guitar + amp just sound so perfect. when i experience things like this on drugs, i experiment, in an effort to learn things (songs, ways of playing, chords, picking styles, amp settings etc etc) that i can take back to my non-wasted musical palette.
I learned how to this amazing thing on acid where i would play a chord with the volume knob right down low, then as quickly as i could after striking the chord, turning the sound up - then back down again.
It's hard to explain the sound it made, or why it made it (something to do with my beautiful Gretsch and lovely valve amp) but the synaesthesia i got from this sound was amazing if i got the timing right. it sounded....fluffy and golden (to me, at the time).
i tried doing it a few days later, sober, and realised i'd found a cool way to get a trippy sound out of my guitar without using any effect pedals or gimmicks.

I have had similar experiences with cannabis-induced 'revelations' which have been a result of the heightened senses. if you don't smoke weed regularly, it can work well for this.
but the more regularly i smoke, the less psychedelic dreamy-type effects i get from cannabis. still a great mod enhancer though, and i personally find weed really useful as a musician.
it can really make rehearsals and tedious recording sessions feel instantly inspired.
not that i find it hard to get into the mood to play music - but sometime a joint break can be the perfect way to loosen up a recording session and get me back to feeling fresh - even if i've been the same couple of songs for the last 7 hours.
so yeah, weed can make a lot of things seem beautiful - or at least heightened. playing a nice quality instrument when you're profoundly stoned can be a most divine thing...even if what you're playing is fairly uninspiring. instead, you become aware of things like resonance and sustain; elements of music you'd probably not pay much attention to if you were straight.
i "pretend" i can play piano sometimes (with mixed results, in terms of how convincing it is) - but i still love tinkling the keys of a nice grand piano, just experimenting with the sound, the feel and the auditory textures it produces...especially high