Yesterday I woke up with an unusually detailed and vivid dream stuck in my head. Aside from the general dream, there was a Victrola with wood-grained sides, off-white surface, and vividly shiny brass horn/amplifier. There was one line of music that was crystal clear; I heard orchestral music with wind and stringed instruments, 3 female voices singing the words in gorgeous harmony, the words "These wonderful broken years, wonderful broken years, these wonderful broken years." It was the ending line of a song I'd never heard before, and when I got up, could not find the song existing online.
Having such a short track made me curious in the dream, so I picked up the album and examined it. Most of the tracks were of normal width, but that last track had a very small grooved section. The record label wasn't entirely clear, but had the song title, "These Wonderful Broken Years". The title was in an elegant cursive script, and I could clearly read it in the dream. When I woke, I still had the vision of the album and the melody of that final line in my memory.
After writing the (much longer) blog about the dream, I spent most of yesterday trying to get that track into mp3 form on my computer. It took hours, because I've had a Hammer 88 for a couple of years, along with Ableton Live 10 Lite, but only learned enough back then to play live piano. Then I set the whole thing aside for over a year, and only recently felt inspired to get it all running again. Even the little I used to know was long gone, and the day was a long learning session.
The most frustrating part was exporting the saved melody from Ableton. Since the input method was MIDI, I thought the export method had to be MIDI. It took an embarrassingly long time to realize the output was not MIDI, but the other option. I don't have that computer running at the moment, but I think it was titled "Audio", or "Song"... something like that, but NOT MIDI.
After all that, here's the musical phrase in mp3 format, repeated 3 times, for a total file length of 28 seconds. Really short. The record album in the video is pretty close to how I saw it in my dream, including the cursive font... but it seemed larger and easier to read in the dream.
It also has Southern Gospel/Country & Western leanings. That's my fault - I play by ear, and this is how I play. In the dream, it was a much purer orchestral music, like Lawrence Welk would have played... These Wonderful Broken Years
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