Dreams are so weird. I just woke up from one wherein I was apparently a college music composition instructor, and one of my students (who, funnily, was a real-life friend named Rob Rempher) had submitted some compositions for me to grade.
He asked if he could play them for me, to which I heartily agreed, since I can hear music that's written on the page, but it's a lot less mental effort to just hear someone playing it. And so here's the part about dreams: I listened to this guy play three short two-part inventions (à la J.S. Bach) in a row (or…Bach to Bach), and I was mentally noting places where I would advise the student on improving the compositions.
My brain was both composing the music and analyzing and critiquing it, at the same time. That just blows my mind. I'm sure things will change, but at this point, try asking GPT-5 or Bard or Llama to write music that is in keeping with the storyline that it is a student-written piece (or three of them) that has certain amateurish elements to it that a trained ear would perceive and communicate some enhancements.
We were in a salon-like room in a pretty Victorian mansion that served as the music department (ahem), and Rob was playing a clavichord, or some such member of the modern piano's family tree. At one point, because dreams can do this, there was a second upper keyboard on the thing (like an organ manual) that controlled, instead of hammered strings, a sort of pre-electricity steampunk synthesizer. And my mind just went along with that, and I could hear the sound produced by this other voice, and was musing that it was an "interesting" choice for him to wander to in this otherwise strictly pianistic work.
And that was just part of the dream, and I earlier the same morning had another dream in which I was listening to part of a country song, with Gatlin-style harmonies (or even approaching CSNY)—and again, my brain was concocting/assembling all of it.
I wish I could have written it all down, because all of it, but especially the student-composed piano inventions, would be useful in telling some story someday in theatre or film. But I know my brain is capable of confecting it, should the time and need come. I just need to find a way to tap into that source.
Fun final fact: in real life, Mr. Rempher played violin with me on my undergraduate senior recital, supporting me on the one recital piece that I composed (for violin, horn, and piano).
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