Strange dreamwriting experience

[Bristol Posse]

Just wanted to share this to see if anyone has ever had a similar experience

Last night I was having a rather odd dream, the details of which are unimportant, except that there was a radio playing a song in the background. I woke up at 3 am and could still hear that song so I grabbed my guitar and ran down stairs (to the great surprise of my wife) and played it and got the complete chord progression and the lyrics for all of the chorus and most of the first verse down in one shot.

Since getting back up this morning I've been able to sketch out most of the lyric structure for the rest of the song

I've googled the lyrics and possible titles, checked my play history on Jango and Pandora and played the song into one of those song finding apps and so far nothing shows up that is even remotely like what I have written down.

Now I am in writing mode at present and am certainly thinking a lot about lyrics and chord progressions and melodies and such, infact I am putting the finishing touches on two new original songs but neither of these is anything like what I heard playing in my dream so it doesn't feel like an offshoot idea of one of those songs.

So I appear to have dreamed myself a completely original song in a time signature I have never worked in before.

Very bizarre and rather cool. I hope it happens again because it's way easier than actually thinking stuff up consciously

Any similar experiences out there?

 

[ykarkason]

yesterday by the beatles was written like that by paul mccartney.
mabye your song will be that famous and coverd!

 

[louisv]

once i dreamed of a song and it was released by my favorite band a couple days later. probably something psychological but i really felt like it was the same..

 

[grimtraveller]

A number of times songs have come in dreams, but most of the time I couldn't be bothered to get up and hum it into a dictaphone which I rather stupidly keep downstairs. But whenever I've acted on it, they've been what I consider to be good songs. Over the last year, a number of songs or parts of songs have come to me while I'm in the shower. I was working on one today, actually, that I wrote about my wife. I'd wanted to write a nice sounding tune about her for years but I can't force it. My stuff's too off the wall. Then one came in one fell swoop in the shower. I had to keep humming it so that I'd remember it long enough to get to the dictaphone. That shower was lovely and warm !
I had a weird dream a while back though. I was in a rehearsal room full of musical instruments and John Lennon and Keith Richards were there, holding guitars. There was also this black jazz drummer but I don't know who he was. Anyway, after jamming this song, Lennon or Richards left their guitar leaning against this amp and it was feeding back. It was making this really weird siren like sound and the drummer commented that either Lennon or Richards "had really got this sound down.....". It went on for ages and when I woke up, I could still hear it. It was my alarm clock !
Weird.

 

[SEDstar]

...

I had heard that when you "read" something in your dream, say, a newspaper headline... the "part" of your brain that is responsible for reading and writing isn't in use... and though your brain can imagine something on the headlines, and you "read" the headlines, and "know" what they are... its really "gibberish"

Naturally, I sit around wondering how anyone could know this, LMAO. Enter the concept of "lucid" dreaming. Not very often, if I am woke up and IMMEDIATELY fall back asleep, i can enter the last dream where I left off... and for a brief tie, I KNOW I am dreaming. For this short time, it is *quite cool*

ANYhoo, I woke up once, and something written was in the dream just as I was waking up, and lo and behold... it was all loops and whorls and stuff, and unreadable as I opened my eyes to wake up.

SO... I concur the idea that "reading and writing" part of the brain is turned off, and while you can dream of what the headlines ARE, you cant actually read it, or for that matter "write" words in your dream.



Question: is the part of the brain that does music "on" or "off" ? I was a drummer, and the last several years taught myself music theory. I highly value the humble PC for "playing" pitched music "for" me... as I dont play any pitched instruments, not really.

Oh, in 4th and 5th grade I played simple songs on the damned flutophone, because we all HAD to... and I can name and plunk al the chords I want... and while I use a "piano view" to compose on the computer... I dont have the deterity to play what I write.

Guitar? LMAO... far too much time and deterity required to play the live instrument, when I can just write music scores, and have the song idea played for me. I want to write muysic, not learn to play instruments... as I nevcer had any "aim" to perform anything anyhow...

THAT said, I have had a NUMBER of dreams where I was "plunking" slowly and fumblingly like I do at a grand piano... and gradually started playing some of the "lines" I was "working" on... but, upon awakening? I dont have the skill required to hear a piece of complex melody and immediately write it down from memory/ear to computer. Pooh for me, some of it sounded half decent, LMAO

Now, i cant do ANYthing with a guitar in real life ecept strum a power chord (and badly, LMAO), but... in similar dreams, I am "noodling" making lines on a guitar I am playing, just like I would on my computer.

I am fingering ONE line on the acoustic with my left hand... and picking individual strrings with a pick in my right hand, to work on both simultaneous lines at once on a nice sounding acoustic. (about half of my compositions rely on a proper counterpoint system, where 2 independent lines are meant to be played together, and at regular intervals the note lines coincide to form partial chords)

I know I was using my precious pent minor, because I was counting the semitone intervals and only fingering pen min notes off of one damn string at a time with my left hand, LMAO... my right only "picked" notes off of the other 5 strings

I remember this "one string only fingering" line was going from I to IV by moving "down" one string. ( the only time my left hand fingers moved off of the string which was the "chord" I was in at the moment... was to hold down one of the other strings to force the picked string to be in pent min, and to be in either I or IV)



I remember thinking it sounded pretty cool, but... I have yet to even use that "technique" on my computer effectively to come up with anything remotely usseful.

I have to say I think the part of the brain that does music is "alive and well" while dreaming, and, must be different part than does reading and writing words.

I lack the ear and perfect-pitch-note-memory to wake up and try to make a faithful reproduction.

"trying" my "guitar composing style" on the computer produced an odd, childish sound to anything I make on computer acoustic guitar, so, what my fingers were doing must not have been what I "heard" myself playing in my dream?

 

[cashcohen]

This has happened to me...full arrangements of unwritten songs playing in my head while I'm asleep...but the details of the dream (and thus the song) always fade within seconds of waking...

Darn brain.

 

[stevieb]

ABout 80 to 90% of my songs come to me right before I wake up, some fully formed. If I don't write them down RIGHT AWAY, when I wake up, by mid-morning all that is left is the memory that I dreamed up another song- but I can't remember ANYTHING else about it.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

-Rumi