I had a dream that I was on a bus going to a Beach Boys convention somewhere in the US. The bus stopped and picked up a crowd of beautiful, blonde, sun-tanned Californian types who, after they had all got seated and while the bus was at the stop, stood up and launched into this: an imaginary coda to a Beach Boys song."

As an illustration of how Falkirk-born composer, pianist and bass player Bill Wells's mind works, the anecdote above to On The Beach Boys Bus, recorded by Wells and Japanese band Maher Shalal Hash Baz for their joint Osaka Bridge album, is perfect. This gem and others can be found in The Loathsome Reel Book, a gorgeously packaged collection of 61 musical scores by Wells, each one no more than a page long.

With illustrations by former Pastel Annabel Wright, this leaves room for footnotes outlining each piece's recording history alongside assorted scrapbook cuttings of bad reviews, sketches and dedications to a who's who of left-field music, from jazz trombonist Annie Whitehead, Barbara Morgenstern and To Rococco Rot's Stefan Schneider, with whom Wells recorded Pick Up Sticks for Leaf Records in 2004, to Future Pilot AKA's Sushil K Dade, V-Twin's Jason MacPhail and The Pastels themselves. The result rounds up a kind of musical diary cum autobiography of Wells's development from solitary jazz sound-scaper to off-kilter collaborator of choice "I always felt like I was having to catch up in some way," Wells reflects. "Starting off in the jazz scene, it was difficult to get records out. Now with this book I feel I'm getting there. But with this as well, I wanted it to be the kind of thing people can just pick up, put on a music stand and play without rehearsing. You don't have to be able to read music well to play it."

Published by Wells in an edition of 300 and launched with a performance by Wells and viola player Aby Vulliamy at Stirling's Le Weekend festival, The Loathsome Reel Book cheekily nods to The Real Book, the semi-legal volume of sheet music for jazz standards that first appeared in the 1970s. That collection allowed players unfamiliar with each other to find a common starting point before veering off beyond the transcribed melodies to invest it with their own personality. As Wells observes, long before recorded music took over, sheet music was the only way of disseminating the latest sounds.

"There was no sense of anything being definitive," Wells says. "Everything was open to interpretation, and even a lot of records are made by brilliant performances, but you can't write down that performance."

Beyond his own work, it's a busy time for Wells. Last year he spent four days with various Teenage Fanclub types recording Kevin Ayers's album, and he's just returned from touring with Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan. Wells is preparing for a two-month trip to Japan, where he'll be recording with assorted artists with whom he toured on the most adventurous of the Tune Up tours a couple of years back. Wells will also be hooking up with former Sonic Youth guitarist and emigre Jim O'Rourke.

It's all a far cry from the Falkirk social clubs in which Wells cut his musical teeth.