Compose music in your sleep?

YES!!!! YES, YES, (crescendo) YES!!!!!!

I was fully asleep once and i was dreaming that I was a finalist in a composition competition that I had been looking forward to for forever.... (turns out, I missed the deadline....dang). But, I watched piece by piece getting completely destroyed by the most beautiful unearthly music I had ever heard. I found myself taking mental notes about what the cellos were doing, how that melody went with that harmony, and general stuff. When I woke up I realized that I had never heard that music before, so I wrote it while sleeping.

About three weeks ago, I heard my newest piece in my head, but then it kept getting louder and louder until I swear I heard it in my ears.... And it kept me up. I stayed up until 3 A.M. because it kept repeating.

-Jon

wow this thread is cool!

well as myself i had only 2 "abnormal" musical experiences. once i conducted a serenade for strings in my dream and it was by far the best thing i have ever composed, but to my despair i forgot everything when i wake up, anyway probably i wouldn't be able to write all that complex music down......... pity........

other time when i used to smoke marijuana :happy: i heard a so powerful, magnificent and sublime choir of voices singing that it seemed to me that all the celestial hosts came down to sing that into my ears, and it was a so powerful experience that i had to run and hid myself under a blanket because i was so scared and my body was shaking so strongly that i thinked i was about to die! but i have never heard any music more beautiful in all my life. i still remember its dazzling first bars but every time i try to write it down the music vanishes from my memory! very strange!

You know, a MIDI just doesn't do it justice. You'd have to have heard these two little slave children in my dreaming mind, singing their little hearts out, dirty and half-naked in a cage, softly accompanied by strings (which I've never been able to duplicate adequately, for some reason, and I usually don't have much trouble anymore reproducing what I hear in my mind). Here it is, though. I'm a classicist even in my dreams, so it doesn't seem very impassioned...but in my dream, it was heartrending.

hi Lee! i couldn't resist........... :)

CANZ2.MID

Yes I compose in my sleep on occasion. I only remember it about half the time and when I do, I usually remember a melody and some basic harmony that goes with it in context. All the really cool countermelodies and anything complicated is usually gone the minute I wake up no matter how hard I try to remember it. Although sometimes I'll forget a melody and remember it at a later point. This is a concept that I have found comforting in recent years where I create a good melody, forget it and at a later date (anywhere between a few hours and a few years), I re-compose it. If you came up with it at one point, I guess you can come up with it again.

hi Lee! i couldn't resist........... :)

I wonder if any composers in the past have done this...

I happen to know that Yasunori Mitsuda [allthough relatively new game music composer] has literally dreamed up his music.[some of it is amazing i think, especially the chrono cross sound track]

Unfortunately, all of my "musical" dreams so far have involved me being in my old high school orchestra, usually in some awkward/uncomfortable situation, probably due to the strained relationship between the conductor and myself that never got resolved before I left.

something must be wrong with me.... i don't dream in music =( if i do i just don't remember it.

Then train yourself to it.

I believe that an unconscious mind can create better things, than a conscious mind.

Yes. Free your mind from all the disrurbances of the outside world and the motives will start to come on their own. Dream is one of the ways and it provodes, at least in my case, excellent replacement for any kind of sound playing medium. What I dream sometimes, is a really good music in the background of dream plot. Sometimes it is delivered from the music I hear every day but sometimes it isn't. It's mine product. Pity that i can remember just the last few motives in the first minutes after I woke up.

Unfortunately, I'm mostly too lazy to write that stuff.

Hi, All! Today I decided to attempt writing something polyphonic and ended up attempting a fugue of which I had recently read:) Let me know if I remotely succeeded. Note that I have no musical education whatsoever, so please be patient if I made errors in fugue form or counterpoint. TIA

Fugue a 3

I have dreamed music.... but.... I have never really written it down for 1 of 2 reasons---

1. I hated it and it sounded really bad...

2. Or... I have already written it.

ITS YOUR LIFE , WEAK UP AND WRITE IT DOWN FOR GOD'S SAKE!

greetings.

ITS YOUR LIFE , WEAK UP AND WRITE IT DOWN FOR GOD'S SAKE!

greetings.

Weak up? :blink:

I dreamed of part of a psychedelic/religious parody full scale musical... There was a funny duet with a very catchy tune, and when I woke up I couldn't remember it!!! :P

I'm always either humming some weird tune that I made up or daydreaming something of that same thing...

I have dreamed music that I swear must have been written by God. It was hauntingly beautiful that when I woke up I was crying. It scared the crap out of me. I'm still to afrad to write it down.

Or can't :thumbsup:....can you clearly recall the full piece? Sorry if I'm a bit skeptical, but, well, I am :o.

Yuck, you sound like an adult. :w00t: It's actually a common thing to experience- though most people are awed by the music in the context of the dream, not the music itself. When written down it doesen't sound as magnificent (though there are exceptions!)

Expert on dreams?

Not really..;) But I want to be!

If you want yo rember what you herd in your dream (and I have herd of a man who did this when he had a musicle in his dreams) keep a tape recorder right next to your bed and when you wake up the next morning, sing what you herd into the tape recorder.

While I was downunder in australia last month visiting some friends I met in Chat, I came up with some good musical ideas for a Symphonic poem. I'm just ashamed now I didn't bring some staff paper along to jot them down on the flight home.

Wow, I've been looking into this stuff and I didn't realise that so many people could do it.

Those of you who have trouble remembering the music in their dreams should try reading this: Developing Dream Recall

It should probaly help to keep a 'musical' dream journal aswell, a pad of manuscript paper.

I'm looking forward to trying this stuff...

I hear beautiful music when I'm awake. My problem is learning HOW to write it down. Knowing what it sounds like, and writing it out in score are two entirely differnet things for me.

I mean, I can sit here with a CD playing an orchestration. I can hear it, I can replay it as often as I like. It's right at my fingertips. Yet I can't write it down in score!

I WISH I COULD!

My problem isn't in hearing the music. My problem is learning how to write score so that it sounds like what I hear in my head.

Maybe I should practice by trying to write out a symphony from a CD. If I can accomplish that feat then I should be able to write out what I hear in my mind too.