Sleep Writing

[MochaFiend]

Sometimes I will wake up with a musical idea in my head. I'll grab some instrument and make a crude recording. I suspect I am far from unique in this.

Thereafter, I am plagued by this problem:

Did I write this riff in my sleep, or did I subconsciously absorb something I heard elsewhere? Is this even original?

How do you go about determining if something you've composed is truly original, or if you've just not been able to recognize its source?

I get this weird anxiety when I want to demo a riff for someone that they'll know the source, right off the top of their head, while it was completely unknown to me. "Oh yeah, that's Primus."

How do you figure out whose lick you've accidentally ripped off in your sleep?

 

[JonathanPDX]

It depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to immediately record it and put it up for sale then you probably want some people to give it a listen first and alert you to any similarities to pre-existing material.

However, if you workshop it, evolve it over time, and shape it into a final product then that process is likely stripping away the original inspiration, if there is one, and the final product won't sound like a duplicate.

 

[MochaFiend]

It depends on what you want to do with it. If you want to immediately record it and put it up for sale then you probably want some people to give it a listen first and alert you to any similarities to pre-existing material.

However, if you workshop it, evolve it over time, and shape it into a final product then that process is likely stripping away the original inspiration, if there is one, and the final product won't sound like a duplicate.

Thank you for replying. I'm in no danger of having a platinum record.

I was thinking more in the context of Ed Sheeran / Marvin Gaye. Or Katie Perry / Darkhorse.

There is SO MUCH content in the world, and we're always influenced (not necessarily derivative) by what we consume. It's almost inevitable that you'll trip over something that someone wrote, even 100 years ago or yesterday, whether or not you've heard it.

Just kind of wondering if there isn't yet an "AI" bot that you can upload an original song or riff, and it'll tell you who / what you're running afoul of.

 

[JonathanPDX]

There are only 12 notes. Someone else has already played all of them.

 

[JRA]

How do you figure out whose lick you've accidentally ripped off in your sleep?

i assume i'm ripping off something/someone when i'm fully awake --- but i do it unselfconsciously, so there's that!

 

[HvyBlvy]

Hey @MochaFiend I totally get what you’re torturing yourself over. I’m slowly coming around to seeing music as essentially communication, with riffs and other musical ideas as words and phrases and memes that are effective because they are part of a shared language - not because they are original. Even if something comes to me that I think is original I know it’s at most an interesting recombination of things I’ve heard before, so I shouldn’t feel any true ownership if I’m honest. And really, I’m noticing a lot more now, thanks to the possibility of streaming every song that’s ever been recorded, that nearly everything is quoting, referencing or pointing to other stuff that came before. The artists may not have been aware of it; doesn’t matter; it’s what makes this common language. Originality is overrated- obviously there used to be money in rights to recorded songs, but with 100K new songs uploaded to Spotify every day that’s over. I think now as musicians it’s just about communicating with other musicians and with an audience and in this case we shouldn’t avoid riffs just because we fear they may have already been used before; just let the ocean wash up seashells and if you find a pretty one show it to your musician friends and audience. Doesn’t matter if you created the seashell, you can be proud you found it and shared it with others.

 

[JazznFunk]

I have come up with some of my best ideas without the instrument in my hands, though not while sleeping. Usually I get a lot of ideas when I'm out running. The hard part is not forgetting it so that I can sing it into my phone when I'm done!

 

[James Flowers]

Working IT have I experienced the same phenomenon all my life, without the doubts and worries. Wake up in the middle of the night with the answer to a thorny problem I am been trying to resolve or a completely new design idea for something I am working on. I think its just your concious mind getting out of the way and your subconcious mind putting the pieces together.

If the riffs fits the need, go with it.

 

[buldog5151bass]

Nothing is truly original -we all have influences. Don't sweat it and just develop it. If it's a true rip off, someone (hopefully a fellow musician with whom you play) will let you know.

 

[JKos]

You could play it to Shazam and see what its algorithm comes up with. It would be an interesting test to play known material and see if it can work with single instruments from a song. I’m guessing it works more on a “full mix” level.

 

[wintremute]

I don't worry about it, because people have no problem telling me if something I wrote is ripping off someone else.

 

[KellyC]

I don't worry about it, because people have no problem telling me if something I wrote is ripping off someone else.

Exactly. When you present your killer new riff at rehearsal, and your bandmates just kind of look at you with incredulous expressions, and the silence goes on too long until one of them says, "you ever hear that song by so-and-so?"

And then you get pissed off that you've been obsessing for 72 hours over a riff you stole from an episode of the Brady Bunch.

 

[Turnaround]

There's the story of the sax player back in the 1960's that had a recurring dream of writing a song in his sleep, a really beautiful and haunting tune. Each time it was the same tune, but when he woke in the morning, he couldn't remember his composition. It happened again and again - the same beautiful melody.

One of his cohorts suggested that he keep sone staff paper on his bedside table, and before he went to bed to tell himself over and over that when the tune came to him he would wake up and write it down. It worked! One night he had the dream, woke up and quickly wrote it down, and went back to sleep knowing that the tune would be there in the morning.

The next morning when he awakened he quickly grabbed the sheet, took it to the piano and played his elusive tune. He was crestfallen to discover that it was Stardust - written in 1927 by Hoagy Carmichael.

 

[Old_Noob]

Butch Walker--a prolific songwriter (has written for tons of outfits including Pink, Bowling for Soup, Weezer, Fallout Boy, inter alia) and musician wrote the song "Summer of 89," as kind of an homage to Brian Adams' "Summer of 69" for one of his solo albums. After it was released, he was informed by one of "The Chicks" (f/k/a "Dixie Chicks") that he had ripped off the verse riff of "Goodbye Earl."

 

[Old_Noob]

Also, as someone who used to do copyright law, I always found the fine line between a musical "homage" vs ripping off interesting.

 

[GrayGoesBlack]

It happens to us a lot during rehearsals. We jam a bit, someone comes up with a cool riff or rhythm, we tag along and later realise it's already done by Bolt Thrower or Morbid Angel or something. Changing speed or a few notes goes a long way, sandwich it between a few original riffs.

 

[5aP]

Welcome to the club!

As far as originality goes - I use Shazam and I also bother to a lot of people to try to recognize it.

 

[MCS4]

I don't think it matters if it is "truly original" as long as you like it and it is not copying something else so closely as to generate copyright concerns. If you are afraid that it might be that close to something else, odds are you might be able to figure it out, and if not I suppose you could just modify the idea a bit for safety's sake.

 

[micguy]

Whether you came up with something in your sleep or while awake has no bearing on this - pretty much everyone that comes up with new music faces this dilemna.

 

[micguy]

If you are afraid that it might be that close to something else, odds are you might be able to figure it out, and if not I suppose you could just modify the idea a bit for safety's sake.

Changing something that you're not sure about has no bearing on making it less likely that you're copying - making changes could take it towards copying or away from it - if you don't know, you don't know.