Sing songs to me, O my cerebellum

[Olentzero]

OK, I’m going to try to keep this GQ material but it may not happen. Forgive me.

Last night I had a fairly involved dream that shifted focus a number of times. At the end, just before I awoke, I was listening to a record album.

Of completely original music.

This has happened to me before, albeit rarely. What kind of processes in the brain churn this stuff out?! I’m fairly musically talented - I can pick out a tune after listening to it a few times and I’m good on the violin. Haven’t composed anything save maybe one or two fiddle tunes. So where is my brain getting the ability to throw out complete songs off the cuff, so to speak? It’s cool, but nonetheless puzzling…

[ren]

I have no idea but I feel relieved somehow that I Am Not Alone.

I’ve “written” complete songs that I never really “composed”. I just woke up from a dream and then played what I was dreaming. This is not infrequent.

Needless to say this has gotten me thinking a lot about your question and the creative process in general.

It seems to me that there’s not a whole lot of difference between chord and melody sequences suggesting themselves to me when I’m awake vs. when I’m dreaming.

I’ve also considered the fact that you can have a dream about something that ends up making a pretty good piece of fiction (provided it’s not one o’ them dreams that makes NO SENSE when you wake up). So that’s the same as writing fiction in your sleep, isn’t it? (I’ve also composed entire poems while sleeping). I guess maybe dreaming music is not much different. We just tend not to consider it.

I frequently feel that the creative process is more an issue of chanelling than of conscious practice.

[Balance]

I’ve done things like that–I had a whole score for a game (an RPG) turn up in a dream. I’ve managed to get some of it into my Noteworthy Composer files, but I couldn’t remember all of it.
We’ve been discussing music and memory over in the “song in your head” thread. How well do you remember the music from your dream?

[ren]

Yeah, I read the “song in my head” thread, I think this is different. As Olentzero stated, this is completely original music. Seems to come out of nowhere.

Not to hijack your thread, Olent, but here are some of symptoms for me:

I sometimes get, spontaneously, complete arrangements in my head, which I can remember in detail for several hours. These can occur while sleeping or while awake. The ones I get while sleeping are usually much more vivid. They also tend to be not-as-good-as-I-thought-they-were when I finally paly them. Dreams. Go Figure. The ones I get while awake are more “reliable”. Sometimes I can remember an individual line for days or weeks. These arrangements might be orchestral or they might be for a four-piece rock band.

Occasionally some of that music seems to get “stuck” a la the other thread. It seems like the only way to dislodge it is to actually play or sing or hum the damn thing. Hence my SO is starting to get used to me crawling out of bed in the middle of the night to go down to my little in-home recording studio…This can be maddening though because sometimes I need to get a certain guitar effect or drum gate JUST RIGHT before it leaves me alone.

For simpler arrangements, eg rock band stuff, I can sometimes manipulate the material in my mind and then “audition” is to see how it sounds, before actually “committing it to tape”.

At this point in my life I have several friends who know that when my eyes glaze over and I leave the conversation I’m “working on my music” as they put it.

[Demo]

I’ve had plenty of dreams in which I’ve spoken perfect French or Spanish when I never really had the ability to. What I think you’re experiencing is a dream in which you think you are listening to a bunch of original music. From what I recall (psych 101), the average dream is just a few minutes long, so even listening to, not to mention composing, a full album of music is highly improbable.

[ren]

dream in which you think you are listening to a bunch of original music

Well, I’ve never heard the music anywhere else. So I’m pretty damn sure it’s original.

full album of music is highly improbable

where did I say full album?

I’ve had plenty of dreams in which I’ve spoken perfect French or Spanish when I never really had the ability to

That’s non-sequitur. If I hear music in my dream, and when I wake up and hum what I heard in my dream, and it’s melodic, that’s music.

What that has to do with you imagining you spoke French I don’t know.

[TheNerd]

I’ve had similar experiences. But I am not musically talented in real life. I played the trombone for a few years, but would describe my skill level as “mediocre”.

Original music in my head is a very rare phenomena. It never happens when I’m awake, and never when I’m actually asleep either. Only in that little almost-conscious period just as I’m drifting off.

I remember the last time that it happened to me, I was in control enough to think “Is this coming from me? Well, let me add some trumpets and a crescendo.” Then the trumpets came in. It’s odd, the music was Swing, which while I find nice sometimes, I rarely listen to. I certainly hadn’t anytime just before that.

[Demo]

ren, aren’t we being a bit touchy? Calm down, most of my reply was directed at the OP.

dream in which you think you are listening to a bunch of original music

“Well, I’ve never heard the music anywhere else. So I’m pretty damn sure it’s original.”

Replying to the OP, who made no mention of being able to recreate the music after the dream.

full album of music is highly improbable

“where did I say full album?”

Again, replying to the OP:

At the end, just before I awoke, I was listening to a record album. Of completely original music

I’ve had plenty of dreams in which I’ve spoken perfect French or Spanish when I never really had the ability to

“That’s non-sequitur. If I hear music in my dream, and when I wake up and hum what I heard in my dream, and it’s melodic, that’s music.”

No, it wasn’t non-sequitur, other than being unclear as to who I was replying to. See above.

“What that has to do with you imagining you spoke French I don’t know.”

It has to do with experiencing something you heard, said, composed, etc… in a dream that you actually didn’t do. Was that unclear?

Sorry if I confused you.

[Cabbage]

Not necessarily a complete answer to the question, but I thought this well-known quote from Mozart was appropriate:

When I feel well and in a good humor, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me, I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself to the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint, the part of each intstrument, and all these melodic fragments at last produce the entire work. Then my soul is on fire with inspiration, if however nothing occurs to distract my attention. The work grows; I keep expanding it conceiving it more and more clearly until I have the entire composition finished in my head though it may be long. Then my mind seizes it at a glance of my eye a beautiful picture or a handsome youth. It does not come to me successively, with its various parts worked out in detail, as they will be later on, but it is in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear it.

Now, how does it happen, that, while I am at work, my compositions assume the form or the style which characterize Mozart and are not like anybody else’s? Just as it happens that my nose is big and hooked, Mozart’s nose and not another man’s. I do not aim at originality and I should be much at a loss to describe my style. It is quite natural that people who really have something particular about them should be different from each other on the outside as well as on the inside.

I lifted that quote from The Mathematician’s Mind: The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field by Jacques Hadamard. The book is a study of creativity (mathematical in particular, but also creativity in general) and its origin from the conscious and sub/semiconscious mind.

Part of Hadamard’s theory, as I basically remember it, was that the subconscious mind consists of a “bubbling up” of thoughts/ideas being randomly connected together, and evaluated by their beauty/symmetry. Ones that pass the evaluation (have a certain “nice” symmetry to them) are allowed to then pass into the conscious mind, whereupon we get the “Aha!” insight/experience.

I realize this leaves a lot of the question unanswered, but attempting to determine the origin of creativity in the mind is one of the more difficult things you can try to do.

[Olentzero]

*Originally posted by Balance *
**How well do you remember the music from your dream? **

Well, I half-remember one lyric:

Who are the pretty ones / in your…

it was either love’s life or town after that. Hey, I didn’t say the shit made any sense. I do remember it being a piano and voice kind of thing - James Taylor-style playing with a Bruce Springsteen edge to the voice.

Cabbage, that was a really cool quote but I’d give my left nut to have half the ability of Mozart. I don’t know enough musical theory to work stuff like that.

I can see how Democritus might think I was listening to a whole album but it was just the one song (and possibly fragments of another, now that I think about it) but it was definitely a vinyl LP we were listening to.

TheNerd, you may have something there - the music came to me just before I woke up out of what I thought was a sound sleep.

Overall I guess this comes a lot more frequently to those who compose music, and sometimes to people who just play. Looks like I may have to study music theory a little more and get back to noodling around on the violin a lot more often.

[ren]

Democritus:

Sorry if I confused you.

Confusion seems to be my natural state. Looks like I overreacted.

Cabbage:

and evaluated by their beauty/symmetry.

that’s the line that gets me. Evaluated on a subconscious level, if I understand correctly? This seems to tie in to something that was said in the “stuck songs” thread about the brain seeming to “wire” itself to recognize familiar scales as melodic and unfamiliar ones not. (RE the Asian pentatonic scale vs. the western scale in the other thread, I believe). This seems to argue that to a certain extent what is beautiful/symmetric is learned. Does the book discuss in more depth what is meant by “evaluated?” If so, I must find it…

[Demo]

Confusion seems to be my natural state. Looks like I overreacted.

No prob ren, that’s one of the things I hate about this method of communication. Some things always end up getting misinterpreted eventually. Trust me, my SO will back me up on this one!

[Cabbage]

ren:

Evaluated on a subconscious level, if I understand correctly? This seems to tie in to something that was said in the “stuck songs” thread about the brain seeming
to “wire” itself to recognize familiar scales as melodic and unfamiliar ones not. (RE the Asian pentatonic scale vs. the western scale in the other thread, I believe). This seems to argue that to a certain extent what is beautiful/symmetric is learned. Does the book discuss in more depth what is meant by “evaluated?”

Yeah, it’s on a subconscious level. The book doesn’t go into a lot of detail on what is meant by “evaluated”, just this:

How can such a choice be made? The rules which must guide it “are extremely fine and delicate. It is almost impossible to state them precisely; they are felt rather than formulated. Under these conditions, how can we imagine a sieve capable of applying them mechanically?”

Though we do not directly see this sieve at work, we can answer the question, because we are aware of the results it affords, i.e., the combinations of ideas which are perceived by our conscious mind. This result is not doubtful. "The privileged unconscious phenomena, those susceptible of becoming conscious, are those which, directly or indirectly, affect most profoundly our emotional sensibility.

“It may be surprising to see emotional sensibility invoked a propos of mathematical demonstrations which, it would seem, can interest only the intellect. This would be to forget the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. This is a true esthetic feeling that all real mathematicians know, and surely it belongs to emotional sensibility.”

The quotes within the above quote are due to Poincare, who also describes an instance of when he seemed to be conscious of the process:

One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable combination.

It seems, in such cases, that one is present at his own unconscious work, made partially perceptible to the over-excited consciousness, yet without having changed its nature. Then we vaguely comprehend what distinguishes the two mechanisms or, if you wish, the working methods of the two egos.