In every culture and nation music has been mentioned as a sort of natural language. While the existence of dreams including music in musicians has been anecdotally reported, music in dreams have been rarely studied empirically. In the present study, 425 participants, mostly psychology students, reported their dreams in a dream diary for 14 days as well as the intensity of their dream emotions and answered a questionnaire about whether they play existing music or compose new music during the day. As expected, for persons playing an instrument in their leisure time, there was a direct link between playing an instrument during the day and having more dreams including music, thus confirming the continuity hypothesis of dreaming. In addition, dreams including music were more positively-toned regarding emotions than dreams in general. Further research might investigate, for example, whether dreams including music play a role in improving music performance skills.

A connection between music and dreams has been reported in many cultures. Although inspirations by dreams were reported for famous musicians, there are few studies investigating the occurrence of music dreams in the general population. In the present online study, 1,966 participants filled out an online questionnaire concerning their involvement in music in waking and the occurrence of music in dreams. The basic framework for the study was the continuity hypothesis of dreaming; that is, more musical activity during waking should be related to a higher amount of music dreams. About 6% of all remembered dreams contained music, and the frequency was significantly higher when the participants spent time with music activities in waking like singing, playing an instrument, or listening actively to music-supporting the continuity hypothesis. In addition, music dreams were associated with more positive emotions. Future research should study the effects of music in waking on music in dreams over a longer period of time (dream diaries), as well as the dreams of professional musicians.