Analysis of music dreams from a musical perspective

Abstract

Music dreams, and dream research in general, are understudied fields.  Though a growing body of recent literature exists on music dreams, it has generally not been undertaken by or in collaboration with music professionals, and lacks musical nuance.  This study uses both classical content analysis and qualitative techniques to examine a corpus of over 8500 dreams from a psychological and musical perspective, finding that dreamers are able to give detailed reports about musical activities undertaken in dreams (including hearing music, singing, playing instruments, musical celebrities, mixing, learning, improvising, teaching, composing, and general musical themes) and musical and sonic phenomena (including instrumentation, style, volume, timbre, pitch, mood, rhythm, theory, tempo, acoustic, and articulation), as well as differentiating real, altered, and novel songs and instruments.  Though most reports are fairly general or vague, the capacity for intense detail evidences the possible richness of dreamt musical phenomena.  In addition, new findings about the “Jasmine” dream series (DreamBank) are discussed, which had not been reported in any of the three prior studies of this series.  Consequently, a case is made for further study of music dreams by both those with psychological and musical expertise.