I play the bass and in the last year I have had a lot of dreams where I am playing bass and the really weird thing is they are almost quasi-lucid where the notes I am playing are actually the right notes and I’ll play songs I’ve made up. They seem to be especially more frequent if I forget to practice or am busy and don’t have time for a few days. Another odd thing was I remembered a song I had made up a while ago and forgotten about in the dream…also I made up a cool riff in the dream and remembered it and played it when I woke up.
Semi-pro guitarist in a gigging mid-life crisis band here. No, that doesn’t happen to me that way - I dream about gigs and being on stage and locking into a groove with my band and or rocking with crowd. In other words, more about performance than composition…
Years ago I was working on a guitar piece, but there was one voicing that had me baffled. There was simply no way to work it out that was not stupid and clunky. Then I had a dream where I was playing it and I’d come up with a very elegant and workable solution. I woke up and tried it out, and hey! It worked!
I have dreams where unfinished bits of songs that I can’t find another part for while I’m awake, merge into whole songs. That’s always handy, especially when I remember them.
I had a dream where I was told to go up on stage and play the cello and I came up with something pretty good. (I play piano in real life). Unfortunately, I forgot all of it.
Yeah, I have dreams where I’m playing really great blues solos, but if I don’t grab the guitar as soon as I get up everything I was thinking about quickly fades away. I have indeed figured out some songs in my sleep too. Now if I could only figure out how to do that all the time…
Much more like what Wordman said, and on a fairly frequent basis.
My band is going on 6 years old and in the last year we’ve lost two of our most regular venues, so I make up for it by having dreams about performing, I guess.
I once wrote an entire song in my sleep. Well, it was that half-sleep you get in the morning when you know you should be up. I developed it later, when I was awake. Then I showed it to my friend Mark. We decided to produce a tape together, and we put that song on it. Dang if it wasn’t the big hit of the tape. A fan favorite.
It was a real garage-band head-slammin’ ass-kickin’ ass-lickin’ bonnie of a loud time, full of guitar dementia. It was called Get Up. Here are the lyrics:
Get Up! Time to face the new day
Get Up! You’re sleeping your life away
Get Up! You lazy bum
Get Up! You’ve slept too long!
(cool riff goes here)
Get Up! You sleepy head
Get Up! Get out of bed
Get Up! You stupid jerk
Get Up! And go to work!
I often dream I’m playing instruments that I can’t, or that I used to play. I was a drummer when I was in high school, playing for a couple local bands and every now and then on weekends at a studio to do tracks for solo musicians that wanted drums on their cds…
I dream about drumsets a lot, like I have a blank check to buy a set and I’m walking through the store. It’s kind of like drum porn. Also, I dream sometimes that I play mandolin or banjo, but those are more musical than porno-ish.