Dawn is the friend of the muses. I dreamed of a massive tune last night and, realising I was in a dream and wanted to pull it out, subsequently dreamed that I jumped out of bed in search of a pencil and paper. In reality, I got up and recorded a voice memo on my phone.
But muses notwithstanding, this nocturnal serenades must come from somewhere. The fact that, as someone who produces music, naturally listening to a lot of it is surely an antecedent to the dreaming. That which I experience during the day, murmerates around my preconscious and takes REM cycles as an opportunity to assemble novel compositions – that’s my theory.
Probably most art is a remix of exposure. I would be surprised if I suddenly started composing ancient middle eastern rhythems as opposed to those encountered in my own culture. Like letters of the alphabet or chemical elements, the building blocks of music: beats and notes, are finite. Although they can be rearranged in a seemingly endless number of ways, only a small proportion of these arrangements are viable. Similar results can emerge from convergent evolutionary paths.
Deep familiarity with a particular genre may unveil subtle nuances that others think just sound the same. Conscious composition within a genre usually requires a deep and wide understanding, thereby allowing one to know what is stale and what is fresh, what works and what doesn’t, what is innovative and what is copied. To compose from the heart is one thing, but commercial pop consumers, and the network of dependent industries, want more of the same, but a little bit different. Copywrite infringement is also an issue. Experimental Avant-garde never achieves heavy rotation on drive time radio. It is the producer’s art to have some formula that keeps the hits rolling; to gauge and anticipate the level of difference that meets the consumer’s perceptions in the Goldylocks zone between passe and unstomachable noise. Such a formula is my aspiration.
But in dredging ditties from my unconscious dreaming mind, it is not as easy to apprehend the source of inspiration. Why songs arise in dreams remains a total mystery. Perhaps they are resolving deep conflicts in the psyche, but that doesn’t necessarily align with banging out a smash hit. It could be that I heard some song qute some time ago and it is replaying in my dreams albeit with some adaptation to lyrics or melody. The problem though is that it might not have registered in my conscious catalogue of tunes. Commercially that would spell trouble, possibly leading to a Copywrite infringement suite. I’m working on how to assess this, but my best bet so far is to try and remember if I’ve been listening to anything recently that could sound a little similar.
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