do you ever hear disembodied voices when you play?

I have one of those drummers in my head. I hear it whenever I tell a lame joke.
trouble is...no one else hears the ba dum bum.

You can make it audible for them with Instant Rimshot.

Wow, interesting thread.

When I was very little, maybe 3 or 4 years old, I used to lie in bed when it was quiet before I went to sleep and used to hear a little voice. It definitely sounded like a voice, but I could never quite hear what it was saying. I don't know when, but shortly after the voice stopped. Who knows, maybe it was an inner ear problem, but it stopped. But to me it was real, not imaginary. So, you don't have to be on medication for something like this to occur.

And playing too loud can absolutely damage your hearing and cause you to hear noises, or cause you to go deaf. So that is a possibility as well.

And lastly, there is even the possibility of a supernatural explanation. People laugh at this, and I used to also until there were some very strange occurances in my house about 12-13 years ago. People will always make fun of you if you try to tell them of experiences like this. I used to believe that people that told strange stories were either liars, people with very active imaginations, or people that mistook natural occurances for the supernatural. But after the experiences my family had, now I have come to believe that in some instances these things are real. I am not kidding either. If people want to call me crazy, I don't care, I am a very sensible and practical person, not a wacko. Sometimes these things are real. My advice is never to experiment in this area.

If people want to call me crazy ...

I wouldn't call you crazy! To quote the Monkees .... "I'm a believer...."

I have two great 'spirit experience' stories.
you all are not crazy. I'm testifying.
can I git a witness?

I have some experiences along that line, myself. And I definitely agree with Wes' advice.

To start with psychosis seems extremely unlikely to me, I've never heared of anyone who can be triggered into a psychotic phase so consequently by such an act as playing guitar. More lkely seems to me that when you play your auditory cortex is much more active and as such your musical imagination is. Sounds will sound sooner like voices (we have a natural tendency to hear voices easily, like we can see a face in a lot of things) and your subconciousness will try to turn it into something that makes sense, or somewhat. It's very much like dreaming, all kinds of random neurological activity hapens and your brain tries to turn it into a sensible story. That's why often the most bizarre dreams can appear perfectly logical while your sleeping but make increasingly less sense when you're awake.

Dream Theater "Voices"...my most favoritist song in the whoooOOOoole world...

'Love, just don't stare'
He used to say to me
every Sunday morning
The spider in the window
The angel in the pool
The old man takes the poison
Now the widow makes the rules

'So speak, I'm right here'
She used to say to me
not a word, not a word
Judas on the ceiling
the Devil in my bed
I guess Easter's never coming
So I'll just wait inside my head

Like a scream but sort of silent
living off my nightmares

Voices repeating me
'Feeling threatened?
We reflect your hopes and fears.'
Voices discussing me
'Others steal your thoughts
they're not confined
within your mind.'

Thought disorder
Dream control
Now they read my mind on the radio
But where was the Garden of Eden?

I feel elated
I feel depressed
Sex is death, Death is sex
Says it right here on my Crucifix

Like a scream but sort of silent
living off my nightmares

Voices protecting me
'Good behavior
brings the Savior
to his knees.'
Voices rejecting me
'Others steal your thoughts
they're not confined
to your own mind.'

[Dialogue by rap artist Prix-mo reading from the book "Cultural Revolution".]
"I don't wanna be here, 'cause of my
suffering, 'cause of my illness.
Only love is worth having, only
love is what matters, loving every
people on equal terms. "
"You've got to know who you're
dealin' with because, like a stranger,
a-heh, just might come in through
here with a gun... and then, what
would you do? (Heh.)"
"Everything is immaterial..."
"'n' you know that reality is immaterial."
"This is not reality..."

I'm kneeling on the floor
staring at the wall
like the spider in the window
I wish that I could speak
Is there fantasy in refuge?
God in politicians?
Should I turn on my religion?
These demons in my head tell me to

I'm lying here in bed
Swear my skin is inside out
Just another Sunday morning

Seen my diary on the newsstand
Seems we've lost the truth to quicksand
It's a shame no one is praying
'Cause these voices in my head
keep saying...

'Love, just don't stare.'
'Reveal the Word when you're
supposed to'
Withdrawn and introverted
Infectiously perverted
'Being laughed at and confused
keeps us pleasantly amused
enough to stay.'

Maybe I'm just Cassandra fleeting
Twentieth century Icon bleeding
Willing to risk Salvation
to escape from isolation

I'm witness to redemption
heard you speak but never listened
Can you rid me of my secrets?
Deliver us from Darkness?

Voices repeating me
'Feeling threatened?
We reflect your hopes and fears.'
Voices discussing me
Don't expect your own Messiah
This neverworld which you desire
is only in your mind.

Those lyrics are definitely cool.
I'll have to check out the song.

To start with psychosis seems extremely unlikely to me, I've never heared of anyone who can be triggered into a psychotic phase so consequently by such an act as playing guitar. More lkely seems to me that when you play your auditory cortex is much more active and as such your musical imagination is. Sounds will sound sooner like voices (we have a natural tendency to hear voices easily, like we can see a face in a lot of things) and your subconciousness will try to turn it into something that makes sense, or somewhat. It's very much like dreaming, all kinds of random neurological activity hapens and your brain tries to turn it into a sensible story. That's why often the most bizarre dreams can appear perfectly logical while your sleeping but make increasingly less sense when you're awake.

Arjen, what I am describing is not psychosis. It is great to try to understand everything in a scientific way, but there are lots of things that defy natural explanations. As you get older you will see, as some here have already attested. To only accept pure scientific explanations for all experiences is not open minded.

Now, most likely there is a purely natural explanation for these occurances. Loud music can damage the ears and make a person hear things. I have had a ringing in my ears after playing very loud for hours. There are also many noises in a house a person is not always aware of, like creaking wood you hear late at night when it is very quiet. If a person is using drugs or medications this can account for experiences like this.

I was brought up to see things in a very scientific and rational manner. I was a huge skeptic of anything "strange". But I have had quite a few very strange experiences in my life that have led me to be open-minded on this subject. Now, when I hear a strange story like a person hearing voices I will always first look to natural explanations, but I now also accept the reality that an other than natural explanation is possible. Live and learn.

.. so I ran across this statement in an article I read last week on strangeness in physics:

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/061108_strange_little.html

" [a] vacuum is ... not really empty, but instead filled with "virtual" particles that constantly blink in and out of existence.
This virtual reality follows from a quantum rule that says probable events influence real outcomes. More specifically, it is possible (though highly unlikely) for particles and anti-particles to pop out of nowhere and then quickly annihilate. Nobody ever sees this happen, but the sum of all this quantum probability is a real energy. "

Or, if I understand correctly, everything is possible and because this is possible, everything becomes possible. :lol:

OK, since the subject has turned to strangeness, I am going to relate one very strange occurance that happened to me in the late 70's. At that time I worked 2nd shift and would get off work around midnight. At that time I was driving about 40 miles to work, so I had a nice long ride everynight.

Well, one night as I was coming down this long straightaway on I-84 (major highway in Ct.), I looked over to my left. Directly across from me was a large metallic tube looking object. I am very familiar with aircraft, my father was an aircraft technician for the military, I grew up all my life by air-bases. I have seen just about everything out there. But this was unlike anything I have ever seen. It was probably about 100 feet long, and maybe 15 feet in height. It was shaped like a hot dog or cigar. I have seen blimps and balloons many times, this was nothing like that. It had no fins or stabilizers whatsoever, and no under-carriage as blimps and balloons have.

And this was not some far away distant light. This thing was flying just over the tree-tops (maybe 80 feet altitude) directly on the other side of the highway, I would estimate no more than 200 feet from me. I could see this object clearly as it was a beautiful cold clear night with a full moon.

I rolled down my window to see if I could hear this object, but all I heard was the wind passing my windows. I left the window down and continued to look and carefully study this object. It had three perfectly round portholes on it's underside, they looked just like portholes on a ship. And I could actually see inside this craft! This is not a joke, I am telling you the truth.

This object was slowly gaining on me, I was probably going 65 miles per hour, so this thing was probably going about 80-90 miles per hour (faster than any known balloon or blimp). As it got ahead of me I saw that it also had a porthole on it's rear, and again I could see inside the craft.

As the craft approched a sharp curve in the highway it turned to follow the curve. I was amazed because it was following the highway. After that it got far ahead of me and got lost in the lights coming up from Waterbury as I was entering the city.

When I got home I told my wife and she thought I should call the police, but I thought they would just take me for a nut-case. So I never reported it but told a few close friends.

OK, that's the story. I saw this thing clearly and am a careful observer. No way even the military is going to fly some experimental craft 20 feet above the trees in the middle of the night.

I wondered about this object for many years. I gotta admit, it kind of scared me. I felt this object was observing me just like I was observing it. I felt it wanted me to see it. That kind of thing can really bother you, you would have to experience it to understand.

What was it? An object from outer space? I don't think so. Now you are really gonna think I am nuts, but after many years of considering this object I believe it was supernatural. And believe it or not, Rock N Roll has relation to this experience. Many Rockers like Ozzy and the Beatles have sung about Aleister Crowley.

What does Aleister Crowley have to do with UFOs??? Read and see. This article is very strange, but makes lots of sense.

http://www.boudillion.com/lam/lam.htm

Think what you will, I am not making up this story for attention or any other reason. It is what I saw, and I am sticking to my story.

Wes

Wes, I wasn't talking to you. Hallucinations caused by psychosis was mentioned earlier in the topic, Jason vaguely mentioned it in the opening post. I agree that very strange things can happen (and so have I experienced, by the way) but with my limited life-experience it makes sense to look at the most common explanaitions and see if they might be it. Jason already said he didn't believe it would be that and I agree with him. I'm not saying there has to be a well-documented answer I'm just saying that one suggested cause is, in my opinion, highly unlikely. A much milder form of hallucinations are sensory disturbances: hearing barely audible voices, seeing things move at the sides of your vision and such. It's very common and practically everyone will experience it a fair number of times in their lives. Until something more likely comes up I'll stick with this, auditory disturbances while making heavy use of the auditory cortex.

Now as for seeing huge things flying around in clear sight, that is something a little more bizarre. The stranger something is the less likely a 'common' answer will work and after the common answers indeed fail to explain it then it makes sense to consider less common theories. I don't know anything you don't about UFO's, aliens and the occult so I can't think of anything you haven't thought about already. But I do know a fair deal about psychosis, and I'm real sure this is not what's causing the voices.

By the way, I don't believe science knows all and contains all answers. All scientific theories are (asside from math and such, which is just something we all agreed upon) 'very likely' at best, theories get disproven, corrected or changed every day. But when it comes to fairly common phenomena like hearing voices I'm still convinced that the odds are science can give a good explaination. And as always, everyone is free to disagree with me on that. But I guess we are more or less saying the same anyway. :lol:

I don't want to hijack this thread,
(just consider this a small guitar topic offshoot)
but I was watching the Dream Theater "Voices" video and there's this guitar I'm very much interested in (in that video).
It's the green guitar. What I like about it is it has a very wide fretboard. Especially down by the bridge.
It was so wide, I thought it was a seven string guitar.
Does anyone know what that guitar is?
It's shown several times during 7-17 seconds of the video.
I have long fingers and I think I would like this guitar.

What's this guitar?

Dunno much about Dream Theater, but that looks very much like a 6-string bass at first glance to me, Ken......look at the way he's hitting the strings with his fingers, and look at the thickness of the strings.

:D :D :D

Vic

Dunno much about Dream Theater, but that looks very much like a 6-string bass at first glance to me, Ken......look at the way he's hitting the strings with his fingers, and look at the thickness of the strings.

It IS a 6-string bass. The guy's name is John Myung and here's a video.