The Patterns in Music– and How They Shape Our Lives
Opening: The Hidden Order We All Feel
Music comes in all types and forms. Some you like, some you don’t. But what we can all agree on is that music seems to have a remarkable ability to affect us in many different ways. Whether it brings up memories of a past time, changes our moods and emotions, or brings us into new kinds of collective experience– music has been central to cultures all over the world for time immemorial, not only as a form of entertainment and storytelling, but as a way to shift identity, strengthen cultural beliefs and bonds, and evolve us spiritually.
For over 25 years, I’ve been involved with music– creating it, performing it, studying it, and watching what it does to people. But I wanted to go even deeper and understand how music impacts us, so I undertook a PhD that explored music in religious initiations, to see how it was used to alter people’s states of being.
What struck me was that music in these rituals followed specific patterns that mirrored how humans transform. In other words, this music is intricately linked to our psychology, and its patterns are embedded within the fabric of the music itself. We see these patterns all over the world, from music used in religious rituals, to electronic music festivals, and rock concerts.
Once we understand these patterns, we start to see them everywhere. It’s like a key that unlocks how we see the world. These patterns are not only in music; they appear in films, stories, myths, and legends, as well as in the arcs of our own lives. This is because they are universal psychological patterns embedded within music, and also, within us.
In this article, I’ll introduce you to the patterns that underlie the most powerful types of music– what I callTransformation Music. It’s used by religions, shamans, and cultures that seek transformation in their audiences. But it is not just limited to ancient forms, we see these patterns in many modern types of music, such as electronica. We will explore how these patterns relate to your own daily life, so you may see the world in a different way.
Pattern Recognition: Why Music Feels Meaningful
Humans are pattern-detecting organisms, it is embedded within our biology. This is due to entrainment– which is how our brains and nervous systems detect and synchronise to music.
Studies by Háden et.al. (2024) found that we are biologically attuned to detect and synchronise to rhythmic beats from as early as birth. An earlier paper by Henkjan Honing (2018), argues that this musical capacity may help humans to learn language, making beat detection important for our development.
This inherent biological ability to detect beats forms the basis of many of the world’s most ancient ritual practices, where drums and instruments are used to synchronise people to rhythm. Because of this deep biological link, music can take us journeys that shift our state of consciousness.
Musical elements such as repetition, variation, and anticipation are crucial to this process. It works like this:
Repetitive rhythms condition us into synchronisation.
Variations in rhythm begin to shift our consciousness.
As anticipation builds, we predict what will happen next, which is known as ‘predictive coding’ (Weigmann 2017). Anticipation activates the release of dopamine – the neurotransmitter of reward–producing heightened emotional responses. The longer the anticipation, the greater the impact of musical resolution.
Many cultures attribute these altered states to supernatural deities– but similar experiences occur in secular music such as Electronica and Psychedelic rock music. We experience this effect at rock concerts or electronic music festivals when we are carried by the music and transported into a new realm of experience. At this point, many factors coalesce at the same time. Entrainment isn’t a strict science– it’s an art form, mastered by musicians and shaped by many contextual factors.
In electronic house music, the drop sequence demonstrates this pattern. It consists of:
a repetitive groove,
followed by breakdown that brings variation in pitch and rhythm,
this leads to anticipation of the drop– which is the climactic moment when the beat is reintroduced.
Finally, the beat is reintroduced, which produces a sense of resolution.
This moment often produces a sense of euphoria and loss of control. Yet this same pattern can be traced back to ancient rituals in Africa and Latin America, based on the expert use of tension and release.
Tension & Release: The Engine of Change
Transformation music expertly uses tension and release– a dynamic that is connected to our psychology. Tension draws us into the music and compels us to seek resolution, having a powerful effect on our mind and emotions.
In the rituals of many cultures, tension is crucial and extends beyond music into the ritual itself. For example, among the Wagogo people of Tanzania, circumcision rituals use intensified polyphonic singing to override the senses and alleviate pain (Vallejo 2007, p.12). While in other cultures, ordeals of fasting and sensory deprivation trigger tension leading to altered states and visions consistent with cultural beliefs and traditions.
These patterns of tension are mirrored, not only in music, but also in other art forms such as visual art and mythologies, which augment the ritual experience. The combination increases tension and presents a culturally meaningful resolution.
In music, tension can be created in many ways, varying across cultures. This may include dissonance, polyrhythms, repetition, density, immersive environments, and crescendos involving increased pace, pitch, or complexity. Due to our biological attunement to rhythm, these elements have cognitive and physical effects, altering our brain and nervous system chemistry and shaping emotional experience.
Resolution occurs when this tension is released, producing a sense of ecstasy and pleasure. Resolution is determined by balancing the opposites: high pitch resolves into lower pitch, dissonance into consonance, complexity into simplicity, or increasing pace into regularity. Interestingly, we find that this pattern of tension and release is found in both ritual, music, art, and in the natural cycles of life.
Hence, these patterns are not only central to music, but to human experience itself. They play a crucial role in transformation, both in small moments of growth and in major life transitions, and hence, why they appear in cultural forms of art worldwide.
Joseph Campbell (1949) described this process as a Hero’s Journey, which includes: a call to action, an ordeal, and a return transformed. Arnold van Gennep (1909) had identified this structure earlier in his study of tribal rituals, outlining a consistent pattern of separation, ordeal, and reintegration, which was later elaborated by Victor Turner.
These models show that tension without structure leads to problems. When there is a container to hold tension– whether ritual, music, or a guiding life philosophy– tension and resolution gain meaning and can transform us positively. Without such structure, tension can become destabilising or even dangerous.
In other words, when we are led into threshold moments, we need a context that gives them meaning in order for them to be useful.
Threshold Moments: When the Old Pattern Breaks
In music, a threshold moment occurs when one section is dissolving, but a new section has not yet emerged. For example, a musical bridge joins two sections and often varies in key, rhythm, or dynamics.
In electronic music, this threshold moment occurs during the build-up before the drop. The old groove is deconstructed, rhythm may fall away, and tension is suspended. Effects such as pitch risers, filters, delays, or reverbs enhance the atmosphere of transition. In salsa music, this threshold moment is called the mambo, and it is intimately related to African ritual music mechanisms of tension creation.
This threshold moment mirrors the ordeal or liminal phase in ritual– the stage where a person is being deconstructed, but the new sense of self has not yet emerged. It is an important part of the process of transformation, shifting a previous identity into a new culturally designated social status.
In our own lives, threshold moments may appear as:
burnout
loss of motivation
identity confusion
the feeling that “something isn’t working”.
What I want to emphasise is that while the length and intensity of these cycles vary, the underlying pattern remains the same.
In music, it may unfold within the timeframe of a song or set. In initiation rites, it may last hours or days during rituals. In life, it may take days, months, or years. The cycles vary, but the pattern is always the same: separation, ordeal, and return.
How we emerge from these threshold moments determines whether we sink or swim- both in music and in life.
Return with Difference: Why We’re Changed After Music
After a threshold moment, successful transformation involves return at a higher level.
In electronic music, this involves the return of a transformed groove, which has been deconstructed through the process of breakdown and anticipated drop. At this point, new elements may appear, such as a novel melody, sounds, or a renewed momentum.
Hence,music serves a dual purpose:
It represents an internal psychological shift,
While simultaneously facilitating that shift through entrainment.
Music acts upon us, while symbolically reflecting the transformation taking place. It is both facilitator and container that allows identity to be reformed. In transformation music, we witness the transformation pattern in the music artifact, which shapes our own inner transformation.
Integration: Why These Patterns Matter
But the question remains: Why do we want to change at all?
This question sits at the centre of many philosophical and psychological traditions, from Kierkegaard and Jung, to Maslow and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Across these traditions runs a shared insight: humans carry a deep drive to grow, develop, and transform.
Ritual cultures recognised this drive and created structured initiations at critical life moments. Today, many of these cultural containers have disappeared, yet life continues to throw us into initiations- through loss, disruption, burnout, or unexpected change- often without structure or meaning.
Music has long helped humans navigate this process. Through its embedded patterns of tension and release, breakdown and return, music provides a structured way of moving through change. When we experience these patterns, something in us settles. Tension resolves, perspective shifts, and coherence returns.
Music brings us back into rhythm with life.
This coherence may be felt as emotional release, a shift in outlook, or a renewed sense of connection. What matters is that the pattern completes. By moving through the cycle, tension finds resolution within a meaningful container.
At a collective level, music amplifies this process. When large groups move through these patterns together– at concerts, festivals, or communal events– rhythm synchronises individuals into shared experience, restoring connection and continuity that is often missing in modern life.
Closing: Seeing the Pattern Everywhere
Once you understand this pattern, you begin to see it everywhere- in film, mythology, art, literature, and in your own life transitions. The cycle may vary in length, duration, and intensity, but it is the same pattern: it’s the way we move from one level of being to another. It consists of separation – ordeal – and return, and it appears in many guises across various contexts– always facilitating transformation. It is the primordial pattern.
Humans have internalised this pattern throughout history, embedding it in ritual, myth, and culture. It is a map for transformation– one of the fundamental patterns of life itself.
Through music, we continue to participate in this pattern to facilitate real change in our lives– even if unconsciously. Once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it– and you start recognising it across life and within yourself.
References
Campbell, J. (1949/2008). The Hero with a Thousand Faces (3rd ed.). Novato, CA: New World Library.
Háden, G.P., Bouwer, F.L., Honing, H. and Winkler, I., (2024), Beat processing in newborn infants cannot be explained by statistical learning based on transition probabilities. Cognition, 243, p.105670
Honing, H. (2018). Musicality as an upbeat to music: Introduction and research agenda. In H. Honing (Ed.), The Origins of Musicality (pp. 3–20). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Merchant H, Honing H. (2014 )Are non-human primates capable of rhythmic entrainment? Evidence for the gradual audiomotor evolution hypothesis. Front Neurosci. Jan 17;7:274. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00274. PMID: 24478618; PMCID: PMC3894452
Weigmann, K. (2017).Feel the beat Music exploits our brain’s ability to predict and the dopamine-reward system to instill pleasure, Science and Society, EMBO reports.
Vallejo, P. (2007). Logic and music in Black Africa (II): Social function and musical technique in the Gogo heritage, Tanzania.TRANS: Revista Transcultural de Música / Transcultural Music Review, 11.
Van Gennep, A. (1909/1960). The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Glossary
Anticipation: is the cognitive and embodied process by which an individual predicts upcoming events based on learned patterns and temporal regularities.
Breakdown: refers to a disruption of expected patterns in music, typically associated with change in rhythm and introduction/extraction of elements.
Drop: The resolution point in House music or electronic Dance music (EDM) when tension is at its peak. It typically involves the re-introduction of drums, after a period of rhythmic deconstruction.
Entrainment: is the process by which musicians, listeners, or moving bodies synchronise their timing, rhythm, or periodic behaviour with an external musical beat or pulse.
Mambo: is a contrasting, high-energy passage– typically instrumental– that follows the verse and/or coro and features syncopated horn lines, rhythmic breaks, and heightened intensity. Structurally, it functions as a climactic expansion of the groove, creating tens
