[Serotonin]

When I lie down in bed at night my mind effortlessly imagines countless melodies. But when I puck up my guitar it's all gone. Does this happen to anyone else? It's so incredibly frustrating to hear beautiful songs as I go to sleep and then have them vanish by the morning. Is there any way to avoid forgetting something in your head, or better yet, to be able to imagine melodies out of thin air at a less inconvenient time? Or am I the only one who has this issue?

Whether people can help or not, I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this, it's as intriguing as it is infuriating...

[adamfarr]

Totally normal tortured genius stuff! You've got to record it somehow. Sing into your phone; if there are other people around can you silently play an unplugged electric guitar?; or just write on paper - even if you don't do musical notation you can write the number of beats and little up and down arrows to give an idea of the melody. Even if no lyrics, putting down some words that fit can remind you of the rhythm.

Some quotes:

"I have a little corner where nobody can hear me in the middle of the night, and that's where I spend most of the night times. I wake up the next morning and find these strange notes to myself." (Chris Martin)

“there was always the risk that we’d just forget it. If the next morning you couldn’t remember it, it was gone. In actual fact, you had to write songs that were memorable, because you had to remember them or they were lost! There must have been dozens lost this way. … So you would have to form the thing, have it all finished, remember it all, go in pretty quickly and record it.” (Paul McCartney)

Keep on going - there's only one thing worse than forgetting ideas and that's not having any in the first place...

[Doodles]

I'm really pleased you started this thread Serotonin.

I get this from time to time... I'm asleep dreaming and there is some music playing that sounds amazing. It has all sorts of layers and complexities and instrumental parts that I can hear with real clarity. I'm listening thinking 'wow, whoever came up with that must be a genuis... I wish I could write like that'.

Then I realise I'm dreaming, and the music is in my head... it dawns on me that its original and its mine. So I wake up desparately trying to keep it in my head - but at best by the time I get to my guitar or a voice recorder the most I can retain and capture is the basic melody. When it happens I usually end up late for work, or driving with my phone recording in my pocket singing over the engine noise. 

If I was a lot more musically adept - like a music graduate or something, its not impossible that I could capture all of what I hear in my dream. But generally I pick up my guitar and what I play sounds nothing like what I hear in my head. I keep learning in hope anyway.

One bizarre coincidence is that it only seems to happen when the window is open, almost like the inspiration floats in on the eddies, scents and frequencies in the morning breeze. I think its also a relaxation thing. I can bang my head against a brick wall and come up with nothing but rubbish when I'm consciously trying to write around a busy working week. But when I come back home after a relaxing weekend away, or wake up after a good night's sleep what comes out is much better. 

[Serotonin]

One bizarre coincidence is that it only seems to happen when the window is open, almost like the inspiration floats in on the eddies, scents and frequencies in the morning breeze.

Interesting. Have you considered the possibility of a magical song fairy? 

Seriously though, it is a bizarre occurrence. It's like I can lie down in the dark at 1 in the morning and within seconds there'll be a song fully-formed in my head.

I think its also a relaxation thing. I can bang my head against a brick wall and come up with nothing but rubbish when I'm consciously trying to write around a busy working week. But when I come back home after a relaxing weekend away, or wake up after a good night's sleep what comes out is much better. 

Personally, I think it's best to deprive your senses of sound and visual stimulus until your mind gets bored and starts jamming.

[Doodles]

Haha way too much coffee this morning I think... 

You need to do your best to capture them when they happen. Like Adamfarr says, even if its singing the melody quietly into your phone. If you leave it, it will be gone forever, but even if you capture just a bit of it, theres a chance it will start flowing back... or at least build into something else based on the essence of what came into your head.

[Doodles]

I'm not sure if this is your thing.. but if you try meditation that might be a way or mining your subconscious. It could be easier to capture the melodies when you're meditating than when your suconscious is taking over because you're falling asleep. Not really delved into it myself, but I imagine it could work. Didn't the Beatles use meditation?

[Serotonin]

I'm not sure if this is your thing.. but if you try meditation that might be a way or mining your subconscious. It could be easier to capture the melodies when you're meditating than when your suconscious is taking over because you're falling asleep. Not really delved into it myself, but I imagine it could work. Didn't the Beatles use meditation?

Paul McCartney did use meditation. But how much of that was real and how much was just hippie alternative lifestyle bullshit I don't know.

That said, meditation and mindfulness has been known to improve songwriting ability so I may as well give it a try.

[hardtwistmusic]

This might or might not work for  you. 

I find that if I just have a tune, I lose it by morning. 

But if I assign it a lyric (even a nonsensical lyric) I can get it back in the morning. 

Even if you need to sing it to a well known nursery rhyme, it might be worth trying. 

Good luck. 

[DevyE]

Some interesting thoughts on creativity investigated on the Horizon programme 'The creative brain, how insight works' on UK TV, it strongly suggested in one experiment (approx 47:30 mins) that creativity does not come when doing nothing, does not come when being busy concentrating on a task but happens when doing mindless easy tasks, such as walking the dog, meditating, mowing the lawn etc when the brain is active but still has bandwidth to wander to creative thoughts.

It's worth a watch, maybe this is what happens when you relax before sleeping? 

[Serotonin]

Success!
I just stared at myself in the mirror judgmentally in a mirror with guitar in hand with no distractions and eventually, my fingers invented something which I think is original. I might put it up here for confirmation though...

[Wicked Deeds]

I never hear melodies at bed-time, though I have dreamt about a number of completely new songs, never before heard. These songs are often immaculately produced and I sometimes see a performance of them in my dream. Seriously!  Songs flow very easily when I want to write. I cannot however recall the finished songs upon waking, just a feeling that I had a sneak preview of something rather beautiful that leaves me with a good feeling.

Paul

[Dan James]

Dunno about meditation. I keep a small (actually, not so small - it's a Zoom) digital recorder in the bedroom and do a "la-la-la" thing into it if an idea comes to me - doesn't always work, sometimes I end up wondering "What the hell was all that about?" when I wake up next day. But I've got enough decent stuff out of doing this to make it worthwhile.

As for words, I'm often thinking of phrases and what seem to me to be sonorous combinations and juxtapositions of words. On other occasions, something in the newspaper might catch my eye, or I might overhear an intriguing snippet of a conversation in the street. These all go into my diary, next to the shopping list for a couple of cartons of milk, a new computer mouse and a dozen 0.60 mm guitar picks - the things one needs on a daily basis. Eventually they become the title for a song, or maybe just a part of the second line in verse three.

Walking down the street at a fairly determined pace often gets the ideas flowing for me. Try singing "Don't Forget to Say Goodbye" when you've got a purposeful stride going, and you'll see what I mean.

The ones that always elude me are those that come to me with such apparent clarity just as I'm waking up. No amount of "la-la-la"-ing or frantic reaching for the guitar ever seems to be able to recapture those ones; if I'm lucky, something quite different might come out instead, and that ends up being a result in itself.

[Serotonin]

The ones that always elude me are those that come to me with such apparent clarity just as I'm waking up. No amount of "la-la-la"-ing or frantic reaching for the guitar ever seems to be able to recapture those ones; if I'm lucky, something quite different might come out instead, and that ends up being a result in itself.

I can relate to this. It's very hard to la-la-la it when the song in your head is a fully formed complex composition with harmonies and melodies from multiple instruments.

[Jahn]

That musical blurb or phrase pops up at the most inconvenient times, doesn't it?  In the subway station, in the shower, just not conducive places to get an idea down fully formed.

So what I do is whip out a recording app on my smartphone, since that's most likely the recording device closest to me when inspiration hits.  Then I just hum or sing it in, badly.  Later on I revisit it and hopefully it provides the clue to remember - or even inspire something better!

[Jada_Hayes]

I am a year late for this post  but just wanted to say I get exactly the same way I allocate times to do voice work and writing and sit chewing my pencil and staring at lines, but when the house is quiet and i have 4 hours until the alarm is going to go off I am flooded with hooks. Incidentally i had trouble finishing songs when i first started i would have a verse and chorus  and nothing else the first song i ever finished began with the line I wish that I could finish just one of my songs! The bridge or break section describes exactly the frustration in this thread shameless plug ? https://soundcloud.com/jade-xuereb/norush-1