The Technology of Transcendence: What Gospel Singers Knew Before Neuroscience Caught Up

A deep dive into the phenomenon that makes singing together feel like "magic"

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Photo by Haley Rivera on Unsplash‍

In my Vocal Technique class, my international students collectively witnessed something extraordinary unfold that shaped how singers from different backgrounds and cultures can connect in across language. Two students (one a gospel-raised singer from Memphis - the other a metalcore vocalist from Orange County) were partnered for a harmony exercise. Within seconds of singing together, their bodies had shifted: their shoulders dropped, their breaths deepened, and their eyes locked. Suddenly, they weren’t just singing the same notes - they were inhibiting the same rhythmic universe.

“I felt like I could read their mind,” the metalcore singer said afterward, clearly unsettled by the intimacy of the experience.

What she’d experienced wasn’t telepathy - it was entrainment.

What Entrainment Is + Why Your Voice Wants It

Entrainment describes what happens when independent rhythmic systems begin to synchronize with each other. The term comes from physics and biology, but it’s become crucial to understanding how we connect through music. As researchers Martin Clayton, Rebecca Sager, and Udo Will explain, entrainment is “a factor in any interpersonal interaction and communication,” which means it’s fundamental to every time you sing with or for another person.

Think about fireflies flashing in unison, or how women living together often sync their menstrual cycles. These are biological examples of entrainment: when we bring this concept into music, something deeper emerges. According to social scientists Joseph McGrath and Janice Kelly, who coined the term “social entrainment” in 1986, this synchronization happens at physiological, psychological, and interpersonal levels simultaneously.

Here’s what this means for vocalists: each time you sing, your body is actively negotiating multiple layers of entrainment. Your breath entrains to the musical pulse. Your heartbeat may shift to align with the tempo. If you’re singing with others, your nervous systems begin communicating through rhythm, creating what neuroscientist Ani Patel calls “beat-based rhythm processing” - a fundamental aspect of music cognition that appears to be uniquely human.

Photo by Tiago Felipe Ferreira on Unsplash

The Gospel: Entrainment Through Transcendence

Let’s talk about why gospel music hits differently.

When our enslaved ancestors created Negro Spirituals (which became the foundation for gospel music, that 20th century flowering of contemporary sacred music in the Black American church), they weren’t just making music - they were engineering collective entrainment as a survival mechanism. Those early ring shouts, with their call-and-response patterns, clapping, and foot stomping, created what researcher Jeremy Begbie describes as “the synchronization of one rhythmic process with another.” Our ancestors would shuffle in a circle, clap together, stomp together, breathe together. “Feeling the spirit” wasn’t metaphorical - it was also neurological.

Recent research shows that when congregations sing together at full volume (think of a Black church on Sunday morning during the Doxology), there’s measurable neural activation across key emotion areas: the amygdala, anterior hippocampus, auditory cortex, and structures of the reward network. Scientists have documented surges of endorphins and releases of oxytocin during collective worship music. As one study notes, this creates a heightened sense of “fellow feeling,” a deepening of social bonds, and an increased capacity for empathy across the human experience.

This is the technology that gospel music refined over centuries. The “Father of Gospel” Thomas A. Dorsey understood this when he blended Negro Spiritual singing with jazz and blues harmonies. He wasn’t diluting what was sacred - he was amplifying the entrainment mechanism. Those blue notes, that swing, the polyrhythms borrowed from jazz - all of it created more opportunities for your nervous system to lock into the groove.

The African-American church tradition knew what neuroscience is only now confirming: synchronized singing literally wires brains together. To quote the neuroscience axiom that’s become foundational to understanding collective music-making: “neurons that fire together wire together.”

Contemporary Songs: Gospel Music in Disguise

Here’s what many contemporary vocalists don’t realize: nearly every emotional, groove-based American popular music style (from R&B to soul, from rock to hip-hop) is built on gospel’s entrainment architecture.

When Aretha Franklin makes you feel something in your chest, she’s using gospel entrainment techniques: the melismatic runs that require singer and listener to breathe together, the call-and-response structure that creates neural synchrony, the rhythmic pocket that originated in those ring shouts. When Beyoncé builds a song to a collective climax, she’s following the same arc that gospel quartets perfected - the slow build, the mounting intensity, the moment when everyone in the room is breathing, swaying, clapping in sync.

The blues, which developed alongside gospel from the same African musical traditions, deployed entrainment for catharsis rather than transcendence. But the mechanism is identical: repetitive rhythmic structures, blue notes that create harmonic tension requiring resolution, lyrics built on call-and-response patterns. Blues musician Junior Kimbrough once said he could play the same groove for forty minutes and never get bored. That’s not repetition - that’s inducing entrainment deep enough to alter consciousness and deep enough to release what needs to be released.

Jazz took these principles and made them conversational - entrainment for co-creative innovation. When musicians talk about “being in the pocket” or achieving “swing,” they’re describing successful entrainment among players. Recent research on jazz trios shows that successful improvisation requires what scientists call “interpersonal musical entrainment” - musicians that are anticipating and predicting each other’s moves through synchronized neural activity. Your body learns to anticipate what your bandmate will do next because your nervous systems are coupled. This is entrainment as real-time negotiation, as democratic music-making, and as collective invention of something that’s never existed in that moment before.

The Lover’s Breath: Entrainment Beyond Music

One of the most striking research findings on entrainment comes from a 2017 University of Colorado study on romantic couples. Researchers Pavel Goldstein and his colleagues discovered that when romantic partners simply sit in the same room together without touching or speaking, their heart rates and breathing patterns begin to synchronize. When one partner experiences pain and the other holds their hand, this synchronization intensifies and the pain decreases. The more empathetic the partner, the stronger the entrainment, which also means the more effective the pain relief. As Goldstein notes, this might work through the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region associated with pain perception, empathy, AND respiratory and heart function.

The same brain region that processes empathy also regulates your breathing.

This is why singing a love song to someone creates genuine intimacy - your breath entrains theirs. A UC Davis study of 32 couples found that romantic partners unconsciously synchronize their breathing and heartbeats when in proximity. Interestingly, women tended to adjust their patterns to their partners more than men did, which demonstrates what researchers called “a strong link to their partners, perhaps more empathy.”

This has profound implications for vocalists. When you sing a ballad, you’re not just expressing emotion - you’re creating an entrainment opportunity. The slow tempo, the sustained phrases, the way you breathe at the ends of lines: all of this allows your audience’s nervous systems to synchronize with yours. They begin breathing with you. Their heart rates adjust toward your tempo. You’re not performing at them - you’re creating physiological coupling with them.

Entrainment + Integrative Vocal Wellness

Within the Integrative Vocal Wellness™ methodology, entrainment isn’t just an interesting phenomenon - it’s central to how we understand voice as a healing and connecting force. Three of the core pillars in the framework are:

1. The Voice as First Instrument: When we acknowledge that the voice is the primary human instrument, we’re recognizing that it evolved specifically to create entrainment. Before we had drums or flutes, we had rhythm in our bodies - heartbeat, breath, footsteps. The voice emerged to synchronize these rhythms between people. Your voice is not nor has it ever been an add-on - it’s the original entrainment device.

2. The Body-Mind-Spirit Integration: Entrainment explains why this integration isn’t metaphorical. When you sing, your physiological state (breath rate, heart rate, muscle tension) affects your psychological state (focus, emotion, presence) which affects your spiritual experience (connection, transcendence, meaning). These aren’t separate systems—they’re coupled oscillators constantly entraining to each other.

3. The Healing Capacity of Sound: Research on interpersonal synchronization shows that entrainment increases cooperation, helpfulness, empathy, and feelings of affiliation. When participants synchronize their movements to music (but not to a metronome), they show increased prosocial behavior. This isn’t vague “good vibes” - it’s measurable neurochemical change facilitated by rhythmic coupling.

That pleasurable desire to move the body in time to the pulse of music (aka, groove) activates the brain’s reward network, particularly the caudate nucleus. The better the groove, the stronger the entrainment. The stronger the entrainment, the more dopamine gets released. This is why gospel music can feel euphoric. It’s why a great R&B song makes your shoulders drop and your hips sway. You’re literally getting a neurochemical reward for successful entrainment.

Practicality: Using Entrainment in Your Vocal Practice

Understanding entrainment changes how you approach and embody singing:

For Solo Practice: Notice your breath’s natural rhythm before you start. Don’t force yourself to breathe “correctly”: first observe your body’s existing oscillation, then let the song’s rhythm entrain you gradually. Fighting your body’s rhythm creates tension - working with entrainment creates flow.

For Ensemble Work: Before singing together, try breathing together. Seriously. Just stand in a circle, close your eyes, and notice when your breathing naturally syncs up. This primes your nervous systems for musical entrainment.

For Performance: Remember that your audience’s nervous systems are looking for something to entrain to. That’s why stage presence matters - not because of how you look, but because clear and grounded physical rhythm gives them something to lock onto. Your confidence helps to safely lead them enough to synchronize with you.

For Voice Students Learning Gospel, Blues, and Jazz Styles: Stop thinking of these as “techniques” to master and start thinking of them as entrainment patterns to embody. The gospel run isn’t decoration - it’s a breath pattern that creates synchrony. The blues moan isn’t affect - it’s a physiological release that invites empathetic response. Jazz scat isn’t showing off - it’s real-time entrainment negotiation made audible.

The Sacred Science of Connecting

What moves me most about entrainment research is how it validates what singers have always known intuitively: music creates real connection. Not metaphorical or poetic connection - actual, measurable, physiological bonding.

When gospel singers testify that they “feel the spirit move through the congregation,” they’re describing collective neural synchronization. When jazz musicians talk about “deep listening,” they’re describing the attentional state necessary for interpersonal entrainment. When you say a song “gave me chills” or “made me cry,” you’re reporting the neurochemical cascade that occurs when successful entrainment triggers your reward and emotion centers.

The fact that all contemporary American music descends from traditions specifically designed to create entrainment should humble us. Every time you sing a pop song with a backbeat, you’re using technology refined in ring shouts. Every time you add a melisma or bend a note, you’re deploying techniques developed to create collective transcendence under conditions of oppression. This isn’t appropriation to acknowledge - it’s honoring lineage. It’s understanding that the voice techniques we teach aren’t neutral mechanics. They’re sacred technologies for creating human connection, passed down through marginalized people that needed connection to survive.

Photo by Simona Toma on Unsplash

The Practice of Presence

Next time you speak and/ or sing (whether it’s in the shower, at rehearsal, or on stage) try this: instead of thinking about hitting the right notes, focus on establishing entrainment. Let your breath settle into the rhythm. Feel your heartbeat adjust to the tempo. If you’re singing with others, sense the moment when your nervous systems click into sync, because that click is the moment when separate oscillators become a coupled system. That’s when the “magic” happens.

Again, entrainment isn’t magic at all - it’s the science of connection. It’s been hiding in plain sight every time you’ve felt moved by a song, every time you’ve swayed in your seat at a concert, every time you’ve felt your breath catch in your throat because the vocalist hit that note. Your voice evolved to create this. Anyone can sing a song - a vocalist will entrain to the music, study it, honor it, and practice it so they can lead musically with it.

Remember: you’re not just making sound every time you sing - you’re creating an invitation for nervous systems to synchronize, for hearts to beat as one, for the invisible thread of rhythm to weave us back together.

That’s not performance. That’s ministry.

With love + vitality,

Shauna <3

Shauna L. Howard serves as voice faculty at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, where she teaches using her Integrative Vocal Wellness™ methodology. She is also the founder of First Instrument, a sacred voice studio for singers, creative entrepreneurs, educators, and more. In between bike rides & salsa dancing, she writes about the intersection of voice science, healing arts, and social justice at The Sacred Voice - usually with a non-dairy mushroom latte and a neighbor’s dog by her side.

References & Further Reading

Clayton, M., Sager, R., & Will, U. (2005). In time with the music: The concept of entrainment and its significance for ethnomusicology. European Meetings in Ethnomusicology, 11, 3-75.

Goldstein, P., Weissman-Fogel, I., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2017). The role of touch in regulating inter-partner physiological coupling during empathy for pain. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 3252.

Helm, J. L., Sbarra, D., & Ferrer, E. (2012). Assessing cross-partner associations in physiological responses via coupled oscillator models. Emotion, 12(4), 748-762.

Kim, J. H., Reifgerst, A., & Rizzonelli, M. (2019). Musical social entrainment. Music & Science, 2, 1-18.

McGrath, J. E., & Kelly, J. R. (1986). Time and human interaction: Toward a social psychology of time. New York: Guilford Press.

Patel, A. D. (2008). Music, language, and the brain. Oxford University Press.

Stupacher, J., Maes, P. J., Witte, M., & Wood, G. (2017). Music strengthens prosocial effects of interpersonal synchronization. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 41952.

Thaut, M. H., Kenyon, G. P., Schauer, M. L., & McIntosh, G. C. (1999). The connection between rhythmicity and brain function. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, 18(2), 101-108.