Writing songs in dreams?

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ChickenStomp

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Has anyone ever written a song in their dreams, or woken up with an idea just randomly? HAha, I wrote a song in my dream last night but the only thing I could remember waking up was one line of the lyrics which was: "*something something* when we're next door to Gaddafi(sp?)" Lol, just had to share

*inb4 'cool story bro'
 
It has happened to me on a several occasions. The first few times I allowed the information to escape me because I was not prepared when the muse hit.

I finally got smart and started to keep a pen and pad next to the bed. Now if inspiration hits in the night, I can quickly make some quick notes and then allow myself to fall back to sleep.

I've read that many writers keep writing materials next to the bed to allow them to capture those late night visits by the muse
 
Awesome, so I'm not crazy haha. I will start doing that
 
happened to me on 1 occasion and remembered everything! Sadly the song sounded like a hit but had no studio or equipment to nail it.. soooooo yeah lol
 
Quite a few times I've come up with songs or parts of songs in dreams but I like my sleep so rarely have I done anything about it and by the time I wake up, I've forgotten them. Sometimes, I've forced myself out of bed and headed to my dictaphone and hummed what I had. I'd like to add that they were among the most spectacular songs I've come up with................but I can't. Some were OK but to be honest none of them would take you to the vast outer reaches of infinity and back ! They were just songs or bits of songs.
 
I also noticed that I find awesome chords and great sounding riffs when I drink a little bit
 
I've had a few times when an idea for a song (usually a story) came to me in a dream. I've never had any good riffs or melodies appear that way though.
 
Definitely had a few lines pop into my head during a dream, as someone has already said here - I keep a pen and my lyric book next to my bed so at all hours i can scrawl down what I thought up although pitch black 4am scrawls are very hard to decipher come the next day!
 
Paul McCartney has said that his song "(Not Such A) Bad Boy" came to him in a dream. But in the dream, he thought it was a Rolling Stones song! And I believe he also says that the tune for "Yesterday" was something he dreamt, too.

I've dreamt that I was playing, jamming, and had some great stuff going on musically, but I never remember what it sounded like. I just wake up in a great mood, and inspired to play.
 
I once dreamed a song, all the melody for the verse and chorus, and the lyrics for one verse and one chorus. I woke up, jumped out of bed and sang it into a tape recorder. Later I recorded the whole song properly on the computer, and it's one of my best things.
Another time I dreamed an incredibly beautiful and complex piece of music, but couldn't recall it when I woke up.

Apparantly Stravinski dreamed the whole of Petruschka.

I think it was Shostokovitch who had a piece of metal from a shell lodged in his head, and every time he moved his head fast, the bit of metal rubbed on his brain and he heard beautiful original music, which he sometimes used in his compositions !
 
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I've had so many times when I've come up with a great idea and just forgotten it (including waking up from a dream) so I wisened up and now keep a pencil and notebook very close to me whenever. I find it's one of the best things to do if you're trying to find good material but struggle to write when you sit down formally to try and write something.
 
I have gotten in the habit of not trying to post comments on every thread I come across and since this one has began to lose it's appeal, I will cut short my remarks relating to my experiences with this subject. There may be many of you that are aware of the potential creative power of dreams and the real world proof of it's exsisteince and that proof is in many more disciplines than just music. I will also share with you that with determination and perseverance that it is possible to control and retain the knowledge of those experiences. The last thing I would incourage those of you using paper and a pencil to do is to come on up to speed and obtain a small digital recorder to capture those moments with and if you have to leave one by your bed, then you need to buy a second one to keep with you. Speaking from my own personal experience, when that moment comes and I am blessed with that moment of creativity, I do not want to loose one minute of it because I can not write or keep up with it. Just my humble opinion.....................................Ozlee
 
I agree. The dictaphone is your friend.
Bloody useless when you're dreaming though ! :D
 
I think there are other, very similar, threads here somewhere...

My best stuff comes to me in my dreams, but if I don't write it down RIGHT AWAY, after waking up, it is gone, Daddy, gone, in half an hour or less- all I am left with is the memory that I HAD a good song. Jotting down the lyrics is enough for me to recall the rest of it- melody, etc. stays with me then.

So, I have learned my lesson- when I literally "dream up a song," I get up and write it down, right away.

One song came to me FULLY FORMED in a dream- when I woke up, I was able to write down, with only pencil and paper at my bedside, all the lyrics, the melody, even chord diagrams, which I later researched via a "1,500 Guitar Chords" book. Even researching the chord names was easy- it was if I already knew them, just needed confirmation. There were some pretty strange chords in that song, too- many I had NEVER played before. I have no idea how that happened, but the song works quite well, and needed no editing or revision from the original notes.

Just last week, I dreamed up a song, but it faded completely, before my head was off the pillow. I decided to be philosophical about it- if it was that mecurial, it was not ready to be written, yet- if it comes back to me when it is ready, I'll write it, then.

I find songwriting to be about the most mystical thing I do. Lots about it I can not explain, and no longer try. On that note, let me leave you with this- Rumi expresses it much better than I:

Don’t Go Back To Sleep

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 between the

door sill where the two worlds touch.

the door is round and open.

don’t go back to sleep.

-rumi
 
Reading this thread reminded me of a dream last night where I wrote a great song. But its one of those dreams where you can remember it happened but you dont know what happened
 
|ronically, a song came to me in a dream this morning. Then later a second part came in a sort of dream state. I hummed it very croakilly into the dictaphone. Whether it becomes a piece before the end of the year or in ten years remains to be seen.
 
I've had a dream come to me in a song!

What has happened to me on countless times is that whole songs will appear to me at once ..... all instrumentation of the song, just not bits and pieces, melody line, keyboard work or guitar. Everything! Bit scary at times.
 
I've had a couple of dreams where I've wrote songs for my friend's band, and I wake up with no recollection of how the songs went :(

I need to keep a pen and some paper handy in future haha
 
I wrote an entire song in a dream...in the dream I was playing it live in a tunnel where my mom used to take me in Albuquerque to hear a flute busker back then. People were filling my guitar case up with money as I played this song, and I would pause and bow and say "Thank you" which was part of the song. I woke up and recorded the whole thing on my voice recorder, lyrics, melody, guitar I knew all these from the dream. I later recorded it in Chapel Hill, NC. It's called Sugar Slack and it's on my album Blood On Snow, exactly as it was in the dream. Here's the video we did for it years later: https://youtu.be/TBok0whCOKY
 
I not only dreamed about writing songs as I well about having ingenuous ideas or creating revolutionary things that virtually could change the world. The problem with dream things is that they seem to be too much more cool than they really are (because in dreams we have a twisted perception). In my case I remember at least a couple times to have dreamed of awesome ideas and right after to wake up I could recall them and notice that in fact they didn't make any sense or were completely absurd. LoL.

:laughings:
 
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