Thread: Playing music in LDs

They would sound exactly like a recording of themselves, that you had heard. The visuals would be edited to fit the sound, but the sound would be either the same as you had heard them, or would be similar to how you "hear" it in your head when remembering one of their songs.

As for music in my dreams, I've never had live music, and rarely had digetic music, but commonly have background music playing, particularly in those scenes that are arranged in a way similar to television or movie sequences. It's actually pretty cool.

One thing i never thought to do before i came here was try and play
my guitar while LDing. It's very big on my 'to try while LDing' list now!
I would be freaked if i actually could play it, or even play like Dave
Gilmour or something.....that would be too much!!

I've played in a normal dream before but it was very strange. Like no sound came out but i heard exactly what I wanted to play. It was just all in my head.

I really wanna try inventing effect pedals in my dream but thats way too ambitious for right now.

Another thing I wanna do is compose sound freely in dreams. I once had a very heavy acid trip were I would hear a sound and my brain would make like a song out of that sound. It would just take the sound and alter it making it rhymiclly interesting. Like a truck revved it's engine maybe ten times and my mind made about a half an hour song out of it. Though it really only lasted 20 seconds, I was just completely in my head at that point. I didn't even no it was a truck a just thought damn this song is funky. That was deffinetly the cleanest acid I've ever gotten.

I've been playing guitar in my dreams a lot lately. First some simple progressions with melodies as I don't remember the lyrics well and the second time I remember jamming to the techno rhythmy section part at the end of the Thom Yorke song "The Eraser". That dream was amazing because I got about forty two people together for the same cause under me and we all understood the meaning of life or something like that (!)

If you play or hear music in your dreams I think it will only be of songs and melodies you have heard in reality, that, or it will be incredibly similar. I have never heard entirely new music in dreams before.

Originally Posted by stonedape

I've heard alot of crazy things about playing music in your dreams. One guy claimed he could jam with any rhythm section he wanted just by conjuring these dream characters. But since these characters would be of your own mind, then how would they sound like themselves?

I personally haven't even gotten a chance to just play by myself in dreams yet. Yesterday I got close though. I had my guitar in hand but something distracted me and I woke up.

Any thoughts on music or sound in dreams would be a great help.

i have done this a lot not lucid though! i have been playing my guitar at a much greater level than "real" life! lately i have been playing the piano! also at a greater level then "real" life...i have also seen the piano play 4 itself...at a very intense level...it soundet extremely great...but it was almost like it was trying to make me look bad i think that 4 musicians, lucid dreaming can do things 4 ya, that is beyond most peoples realety!!

Eh, I've played music in regular dreams, but even when I stop playing an instrument or stop the CD player or something, the music keeps going.

I'm a guitar player in real life. So far I've only tried playing guitar in regular dreams, all of which is songs I can play. Each time it have been really realistic and overall it's just awesome ^^ hehe. For me even the sound of the notes emits realistically.

I've written two songs during dreams, but i've only remembered one upon waking. (Not sure if I was even lucid either time now that i think about it) The second i woke up from the second one, instead of writing anything down, i ran over to my guitar, grabbed it, and started playing. The song didn't turn out that great though, so i'm not sure if i kept it

I remember once playing guitar in a dream (non-lucid). I felt like a prodigy, the music just flowed out of my head, I was so creative, and, unlike in reality, had a really good relative pitch, could play everything that came to me head immediately, without hesitating. After I woke up I really regreted that it had been only a dream.
And I sometimes hear melodies when I'm in SP, or close to it, anyway, when I'm half-asleep. And they are ALWAYS original, I mean, created by my mind, not anything I have hard before.

I've always wondered What would happen if you play a cd while lucid.
Would it sound exactly like what you remember or close.

Like the lyrics what would happen once you passed how far you knew?
would it just go into the beat or would your mind make up new lyrics?

I dunno about music and instruments... everytime I try to play something it goes as bad as RL... sometimes worse <.<

Lately I've been playing this song I'm working on in almost all my dreams. This has been happening for about a week. I'm somehow able to add extra parts while I'm playing the chords. So basically I'm taking a solo guitar type song and adding polyphonic melodies to it.

The problem is I barely remember how they go when I wake up, and I need someone else there when I wake up to play the chords so I can figure the other parts out. I'm gonna record part of this soon and try to figure it out, but I'm afraid the dreams will stop before I get the chance.

I'm gonna start doing RCs before I wrok on that song from now on, and hopefully I'll have a lucid and be able to figure out how I'm playing multiple parts at the same time in my dreams.

Originally Posted by stonedape

Lately I've been playing this song I'm working on in almost all my dreams. This has been happening for about a week. I'm somehow able to add extra parts while I'm playing the chords. So basically I'm taking a solo guitar type song and adding polyphonic melodies to it.

The problem is I barely remember how they go when I wake up, and I need someone else there when I wake up to play the chords so I can figure the other parts out. I'm gonna record part of this soon and try to figure it out, but I'm afraid the dreams will stop before I get the chance.

I'm gonna start doing RCs before I wrok on that song from now on, and hopefully I'll have a lucid and be able to figure out how I'm playing multiple parts at the same time in my dreams.

Good luck with the dream music. I've often wondered if I could play music while lucid(I play no instrument but used to play the violin).
Make sure you upload it for us It might have a sort of dreamyness to it.

Never had a LD playing an instrument, but I've had quite a few regular dreams playing guitar. It never stays consistent, sometimes changing from one instrument to another, or from electric to nylon or some other nonsense. Usually something happens that prevents me from playing at all.

But I'd love to have a lucid and try to play, although I'm afraid I'd loose focus too easily.

Interestingly, after posting this yesterday I had a guitar playing dream last night (see my dream journal) - I had my guitar and these guys asked me to play with them, but I was really sloppy, like I was drunk. And my guitar had a crack in the bridge area.

Not a very successful practice session....

Wow...this rarely happens in dreams I have...the last time I had a dream like this was March 22, 2004 - I was in this cool house and all of a sudden this hard-to-digest hard rock/metal music video plays in the key of D flat and normal F. In the video are vivid images of these three people that I thought were the Hardys and Lita in WWE (the abbreviation stands for "World Wrestling Entertainment"; an unknown band was singing about them).

Even now I have second thoughts of that dream I had back four years ago - I had thought three One Tree Hill cast members (young men in their 20s resembling actors Chad Michael Murray and James Lafferty played the two; a young woman in her 20s with a striking resemblance to one of the main actresses on the show, Sophia Bush, played Lita in the music video in this dream) were pretending to be the wrestling tag team duo and manager (known for unique clothing worn in the ring), and I had no idea who the cast of One Tree Hill was that half of 2004 - and I didn't watch the show until November 2006 (the WB was now the CW as of September 2006) when they were in their fourth season--and when I thought of the dream I had in 2004 nowadays, I thought that either a random person sent them, or if the random attack in the dream was botched.

Then there was one on December 7, 2005 where a song by the alternative rock band Trapt ("Headstrong" with completely different lyrics) was heard in the background and I was in this shopping mall not too far from the beach, and I thought I had unexpectedly ran into a young woman in her late teens-early 20s that looked like Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County and The Hills reality TV star Lauren Conrad, that looked really beautiful (both of these shows were on MTV; The Hills is still on this channel).

I rarely have any audio dreams when I'm asleep...most of the dreams I have are pretty silent. I'm just glad I remember these dreams that have audio to them from 3 to 4 years ago.

I've been having alot of non lucids where I play guitar and double bass lately. The guitar ones have been especially weird. IN one the neck only had 12 frets and I kept focusing on that and my playing sounded like shit. Some other guy tried playing and he had terrible rhythm(I think this guy represented a freind of mine). I also tried using some effect pedals, but I couldn't get a tone I liked(even though I thought it was real at the time). Everything either sounded like a guitar, or almost like a synth. Really wierd sounds like the kind of stuff you get in reason.

I still haven't been able to do this in a lucid. Lately I've been thinking more about effect pedals, and I'm wondering what would happen if I used an effect that I know of, but have never played with. I would have some kind of sound in my minds ear that I have in mind, though it would be different than the actual effect.

I also recorded that song I was talking about in earlier posts. It's called Flying through my mind

One of my first lucids since joining here was really, really cool. I went into this library type thing, with cool hip-high bookshelves and there was a cafe in the back (I really can't describe it... you understand). Anyway, I go over to this pedestal with this huge tome on it, and I look inside. It is FILLED with piano scores. Page after page after page of music. And there was a piano nearby, and so I played some of it (of course). *NOTE: I have perfect pitch, so playing music works really well in my dreams I just couldn't believe that my mind could come up with this... I swear that I hadn't heard any portion of it before, it was completely original, and it was SO BEAUTIFUL. So beautiful. I tried to memorize as much as I could - by the way, there were words too... like a cross between Latin and Japanese and French, such flowing words - but could barely remember a few notes when I woke up. It made me so sad.

Anyway, music in LD's is super awesome, and works really well for me. In fact, one of my current goals is to compose and memorize music within an LD, because theoretically I have all the power of my subconscious mind to generate some truly incredible pieces.

I've also had dreams about playing instruments. The weird thing here is that I play guitar in RL and everytime I've tried playing in rgular dreams or LD's I end up playing shit. It is like I try to focus too much..

The good thing is that when I play an instrument I dont know how to play in RL it works quite well and I've played some nice tunes. I once had a dream where I played the piano and I could jam in a bossa nova - jazzy feel with a bassist.
But the coolest one was an LD were I was in a rave party playing an instrument that doesnt really exist, it just had 2 knobs and did some really weird trance-like sounds at the same time, it formes a visual light pattern.

Whoever said you can't hear new music in dreams is completely wrong. I have heard new songs from my favorite bands tons of times.

Also last week as I was WILDing I heard a song playing in my head before I materialized and I orchestrated it as I wanted. It was really fuggin' cool.

I jam during both lucid and non-lucid dreams. Usually I have my bass but sometimes it's the violin...

You know Aphex Twin? Well that guy composed lots of music in his lucid dreams.

Really? I never heard that.

He's the man!

Originally Posted by Tarsier

Really? I never heard that.

He's the man!

I'm pretty sure he has an entire album dedication to his LD compositions... wait lemme check...


... Richard James (alias Aphex Twin, AFX, Polygon Window, etc.) claims he heard the compositions on Selected Ambient Works, Volume II in lucid dreams. ...

there we go, google's so handy.