How often do dreams inspire your music?

[Navron]

Given we get a lot of inspiration from various ideas, I was wondering how many of you get inspiration from dreams for their music?

Some of us don't dream often. Others dream frequently. The rest (like myself) probably have a mix where some days we have memorable dreams, and other days not so memorable or not at all.

Some of the dreams I've had that have given me some song ideas:

1. Apocalyptic Space Hadouken
- Pretty much what inspired this topic.

Started off as a normal dream, but rapidly developed towards the end. My coworkers and I were on a ship moored to the pier, and we were giving our final salutes to a coworker that was retiring and departing the ship.

Once they left, I went to where some of our pilots were chilling at the front of the ship, and as we were discussing the ceremony, suddenly a giant ray/beam comes down from the sky just beyond the horizon, just in front of the ocean sunset. There was a high frequency noise, and I could see the clouds slowly morphing out of the way from the immense heat that must have been produced.

Naturally, we try and run back inside and get down underground (I guess we were no longer on a ship) as fast as possible. News reports on TV were covering the event, talking about how these were isolated events, but those areas within range would heat up to insanely high temperatures.

Dream ended with the temperature soaring upwards as I contemplate rappelling deep into a cave to escape the heat.

- Possible song idea:
1. Gotta be epic.
2. Will have to create some kind of deep pulsing, high frequency bass that can revolve around a melody and/or theme.
3. Song would build up to a huge climax and end abruptly.

One other dream idea I've had resulted from having a section in my dream involving a huge power array with lots of wires. The array itself was outputting so much power, the electrical current was audible with a lot of deep bass pulses, alternating in frequency. This of course was very similar to some dubstep wubs, so there's another idea I've got floating around.

So, with that said, who here has gotten some good song ideas from dreams they've had? You don't necessarily have to share the dream if you don't want to, but considering my dreams occasionally give me some off the wall ideas, there's gotta be at least a few of you.

[Magnitude Zero]

I once had a dream about a giant fire-breathing Fluttershy terrorizing my school. Always thought that'd be an interesting thing to write a song about, although to be honest, I have no idea where I'd start with something like that. It'd have to be fast-paced and somewhat chaotic (because seriously wtf), maybe with some Flutterrage samples or something.

Yeah, I don't really dream that often, but when I do, they're absolutely off-the-wall. Unfortunately, I usually don't remember my them after a day or two. The fire-breathing Fluttershy one is an exception, but even with that one the details are shaky at best. If I made a song based on a dream, I'd have to do it right after waking up from it, or at least sometime that day.

[colortwelve]

Oddly enough, I get more random inspiration when I'm awake than from my dreams, possibly because I never remember my dreams (I could count the ones I do remember on one hand). But I would think that the experience is similar, save for the fact that dreams flood you with details, while an idea pops into your head on its lonesome.

Hm, now I want to try making a track about one of the dreams I remember... Time to learn soundscaping and sampling.

[TheSunAndTheRainfall]

I'm not as inspired as the dreams themselves as much as the feelings they leave as I wake up. It's happened many times to me that a dream has left me feeling in such a way that I have to pick up the guitar and put that feeling into a melody right after I wake up, or try to convey it through lyrics, so I just start writing the first things that come to mind.

[Legion]

Only once have I really had a dream that's stuck with me enough to warrant music about it. A month or two ago (maybe even more), I had this incredibly mellow, almost grayscale dream that took place in the playground from when I was in kindergarden during the middle of winter. Celestia, Twilight, and Luna were there, but all as geese. They were seemingly doing nothing, but I could feel the hate Luna felt for Celestia when Twilight showed up. Ignoring the absurdity of it, the dream really impacted me (I've always been fascinated by Luna and Celestia), and I'm waiting for when I'll have the musical ability to express it.

[Gray Ham]

Once. XD

I am not a romantic person (at all), but I was placed inside a romantic movie-type story that my head just thought up. I was apparently going out with a classmate and then she said that she was a fairy or something (Now I think about it, I think I was reading an Artemis Fowl before I went to bed, which would've influenced the dream a lot).
Then some guy with magic powers that is trying to cause the extinction of fairies walks up onto the scene and creates a force field around my school during day hours so me and all my classmates were trapped inside.
I don't remember what happened next but I apparently defeated said villain and then my classmate said something about fate taking her away in a dramatic moment. I never saw her again. The End.
The best part it, that through this entire dream, a lovely bittersweet song with an alto (I think?) opera singer and string orchestra was in the background the whole time.

My mind is f**ked.

[CommandSpry]

Eh, my dreams usually inspire me to wake up ^^

[SoaringFlight]

Dreams usually don't inspire me.. i get inspiration just before i fall asleep though, often a lot of good ideas, melodies, whatever, go through my head at that time, i wish that would happen when im actually in front of FL.

[North Kozar]

I was paying a lot of attention to my dreams for awhile, but haven't been doing that lately. I should start doing it again, it could be a lot of help, it's (unfortunately) an easy thing to forget to do and I just need to get in the habit of doing it. I'm starting to "look around" and be more alert to inspiration because of how subtle it can be sometimes, I might just ignore it as a passing thought.

[Mundius]

I make ambient music based off my dreams, export it as a wave file, and then never look at it again. I'm actually playing one back and it's like a reel of my dream.

[Fimbulin]

I don't always dream, but when I do it's in full length epic movies.
I'm now composing a long movie score track for a dream I had last night in which a pirate changes his ways and does some pretty heroic feats to save the family of a young girl and rescue a city.

[Magnitude Zero]

I don't always dream, but when I do it's in full length epic movies.
I'm now composing a long movie score track for a dream I had last night in which a pirate changes his ways and does some pretty heroic feats to save the family of a young girl and rescue a city.

Oh wow, that sounds really epic. Genuinely looking forward to seeing how you can tell that story through music.

[prettiestPony]

I haven't had dreams inspire my music often at all in that sense. But over the last few months, I've had two dreams that featured melodies with lyrics playing right before I woke up, after which I transcribed them as best I could remember. That's with with some modification, no doubt; especially with respect to the lyrics, since my dream lyrics were probably a little incoherent, and I don't remember them very well. They were both short choruses for somewhat pop-like tunes.

I'm intrigued by the idea of using dreams as a more metaphorical inspiration, however; I may try to remember that the next time I'm half-awake and groggy.

[CWeissRun]

It's not usually the dreams that do it for me, it's while I'm showering in the morning.

Note to self, buy a waterproof notepad/pen...

[MiuMiuChuu]

Usually if I dream it becomes a story project instead. Which sometimes I make a soundtrack for it. I occasionally hear music I've never heard before in my dream, but when I wake up, it's sorta hard to remember the exact melody.

[vladnuke]

I'm going to use this topic as an excuse to post my fucked up dreams. And you've inspired my next project, NavyBrony. So in the dream, I woke up in the middle of the night after dreaming about falling into a volcano, ran into the pool in my backyard and just swam around, still in my clothes. It's night during the spring, so the water is still freezing cold, but I didn't seem to mind. My mom ended up walking outside and catchig me, but she didn't seem to mind. I noticed the sun come up, and laid back to relax, and then i woke up for realsies. OR DID I? Yeah, I ended up scrambling around my room looking for wet clothes.

Dream 2: the recurring dream. Currently has happend 4 times, each time being exactly the same.
I wake up in an Harrier jump-jet, which I know is a harrier, but my mind keeps refering to it as an F-14. I land it in a parking lot in an alley and meet up with a bunch of people I've met before, and climb up a 4 story parking structure across a street, where at the top leads down into some sort of arena that doesn't seem to fit in the parking structure, where me and all my friends jump into atvs and begin going up the ramp that leads into the arena itself. And just as the doors leading to the arena itself are opened, I wake up. Each time, I get a little closer to seeing the arena.

[Fimbulin]

I don't always dream, but when I do it's in full length epic movies.
I'm now composing a long movie score track for a dream I had last night in which a pirate changes his ways and does some pretty heroic feats to save the family of a young girl and rescue a city.

Oh wow, that sounds really epic. Genuinely looking forward to seeing how you can tell that story through music.

I think I'm actually going to write the soundtrack and then ponify my dream and record it kindof like MictheMic does with fanfic readings, only with my soundtrack playing in the background. Of course, I'll provide download links to the songs themselves too.

[Navron]

That original dream I had inspired (IMO) my best piece of music to date.

Picture, "the calm before the storm." The end of the world is just about to begin:
http://soundcloud.com/navy-brony/wip

Here's a picture I made from a different dream that had a post-apocalyptic feel that should compliment the music:

[Stars In Autumn]

Sadly, never. Unless daydreams count. Sometimes I can just hear a song in my head and I like scramble to get it down somehow.