Get Into the Groove

Abstract This chapter considers a psychological mechanism that can arouse musical emotions called rhythmic entrainment. If brain stem reflexes focus on music as sound and sensation, entrainment focuses on rhythm. This is a primary feature of life. After all, we live in a rhythmic environment (e.g. seasons of the year, periods of daylight and dark), and our bodies are ‘symphonies of rhythm’, as reflected in processes such as heart rate, brain waves, and sleeping patterns. Rhythmic entrainment refers to a process whereby an emotion is evoked by a piece of music because a powerful, external rhythm in the music influences some internal bodily rhythm of the listener (e.g. heart rate), such that the latter rhythm adjusts towards and eventually ‘locks in’ to a common periodicity.