This gives rise to elements which would not be present if you were to hear the same pitches in isolation – these elements are therefore emergent properties. In the waking world, whenever two or more frequencies are played together, vibrating through the same air space, they will interact. Any combination of notes will give rise to some form of these interactions, and so they are present in virtually all music you ever hear. the various harmonic tensions that create its distinct colours and moods. This might sound like a technical term, but is essentially just describing the ‘character’ of a chord – i.e. One of the most distinctive elements of all these musical dreams (microtonal or otherwise) is the rich layer of harmonic frequency interaction present in the sound. I think we all already understand a lot more about music’s fundamentals than we might think. It was a surprise to realise I had intuitively improvised with it in polyphony while asleep. It was distinctly microtonal – I have some familiarity with microtones through studying Hindustani sruti and listening to North African music, but am certainly no expert and would struggle to compose microtonal music while awake. The restlessly floating music sounded a little like this, but with a slower ebb and flow. In sound and appearance it was somewhere between an Indian santoor and a Malian kora, but mounted on the wall with long strings facing vertically. One striking example involved walking into an unfamiliar room decorated with ornamental Arabesque writing, and seeing a veiled woman facing the far wall with her back to me, playing some imagined harp-like instrument.
The complexity and quality of the harmony often far outstrips what I can manage while awake – I’ve dreamed a quartet of jazz horns playing melodies with suspended chord counterpoint, and ghostly piano-like instruments modulating through extensions far beyond what my (pretty average) waking harmonic ear is familiar with.
I can guide the direction of the music to some degree, although the orchestration of all lines apart from the main melody seems to just happen, without any meaningful conscious intention. This phenomenon isn’t uncommon among musicians or non-musicians, but does raise some very interesting questions around how our dreaming minds model frequency interactions – the emergent properties that give all chords their colour and tension. Typically I’ll come across an unknown character who will be playing new music – there may be familiar fragments of melody, but the overall compositions seem unique.
Recently I’ve had several dreams which involve largely automatic musical composition. “Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation”
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