DMT and music: what research says about sound, song and psychedelic experience

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Music turns up everywhere DMT does: in the songs of Amazonian healers, in the hymns of Brazilian ayahuasca churches, in the playlists of clinical trials and in a whole genre of dance music. Yet almost no laboratory study has asked what music does during a DMT experience. This article separates what has been measured from what has only been described.

Has anyone studied DMT and music directly?

Not in the way LSD and psilocybin have been studied. A 2026 scoping review gathered 19 quantitative papers from 10 studies, with 330 people in total, on music and psychedelics in therapeutic or controlled settings. The drugs studied were LSD, psilocybin and ayahuasca; no study of DMT on its own met the criteria (Rowe et al., 2026). Evidence: established that the gap exists.

A second 2026 review of 36 clinical-trial articles found that ayahuasca and DMT stood out as the substances most often studied without music. Three trials said outright that no music was used: two ayahuasca trials, one to isolate the drug’s own effects and one to keep the room quiet and neutral, and a 2022 DMT study that gave no reason (Cruz et al., 2026). The authors called this striking, given how central music and chanting are to ayahuasca rituals.

Other DMT studies were built around silence by design. In the 2019 Imperial College EEG study, volunteers lay semi-supine with eye shades and eyes closed, and the methods describe no music (Timmermann et al., 2019). In a 2026 interview study, 23 participants were blindfolded inside a brain scanner (Sanders et al., 2026). So the sounds reported in these studies came from the experience, not from a playlist.

Why is song central to ayahuasca traditions?

Ayahuasca is a brew that contains DMT, and in the traditions that use it, music is not background. It structures the ceremony. Our guide to what happens at an ayahuasca ceremony covers the different formats; here the focus is the singing.

Icaros: the healer’s songs

A 2024 review describes icaros in Peruvian Amazonian practice as one of the healer’s primary tools: single melodies without harmony, built from a few repeated phrases, that healers sing, hum or whistle, often with a rattle (Efthimiou et al., 2024). A 2026 study of Shipibo-Konibo medicinal song worked from recordings of two healers (onanya) made in October 2024, translated with the singers and other Indigenous researchers. It argues that, in Shipibo-Konibo understanding, the songs do things rather than describe them: they heal, diagnose and call on spiritual forces (Favaron Peyón and Zariquiey, 2026). Evidence: established as ethnography.

One study asked listeners. Researchers interviewed addiction-treatment patients at Centro Takiwasi in Peru about hearing icaros during ayahuasca ceremonies. Patients said the songs changed their emotions and the course of the experience, helped them feel safe, and guided them through difficult memories (Graham, Saucedo and Politi, 2022). Evidence: preliminary; one treatment centre, qualitative interviews.

Hinos: the hymns of Santo Daime

In the Brazilian Santo Daime church, ceremonies centre on the joint singing of hymns (hinos) in a ritual hall called the salão. A 2021 analysis describes the music as sung in unison to three basic rhythms, the march, the waltz and the mazurka, mainly with guitar and maraca, and led by a woman lead singer (puxadora). Dancing ceremonies typically run eight to twelve hours (Hartogsohn, 2021). The same paper argues that the words of the hymns, full of Christian figures and family imagery, shape the visions members report. Evidence: established for the description; the effect on visions is the author’s interpretation.

Ritual music has also been used as a test stimulus. In a 2020 Brazilian study, nine experienced participants in a shamanic ayahuasca ritual heard 20-second musical excerpts and reproduced their length. Music alone distorted their timing, and the distortion was smaller after ayahuasca, the opposite of what other hallucinogen studies had found (Campagnoli et al., 2020). Evidence: preliminary; nine people.

What did lab studies find about music on LSD and psilocybin?

The controlled research comes from other psychedelics. In 2015, ten volunteers rated their emotional response to instrumental tracks on a placebo day and an LSD day; under LSD, emotions such as wonder, transcendence, power and tenderness were stronger (Kaelen et al., 2015). A 2016 brain-imaging study of 12 volunteers found that LSD and music together increased communication between the parahippocampal cortex and the visual cortex, which tracked reports of richer eyes-closed imagery, including autobiographical memories (Kaelen et al., 2016). Evidence: preliminary; small samples.

In psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression, interviews with 19 patients found that music could be welcome, bringing meaningful emotion, guidance and a sense of safety, or unwelcome, stirring unpleasant imagery and resistance. How patients experienced the music predicted reductions in depression one week later, while general drug intensity did not (Kaelen et al., 2018). In a 10-person psilocybin study for quitting smoking, mystical-experience scores tended to be higher with overtone-based music than Western classical, and six of ten participants chose the overtone music for their third session (Strickland et al., 2021). Evidence: preliminary.

Taken together, the 2026 scoping review concluded that music seems to shape the psychedelic experience by amplifying emotion, recruiting brain networks involved in meaning and visual imagery, and increasing a measure of brain-signal complexity, while warning of small samples and inconsistent methods (Rowe et al., 2026). Whether any of this applies to DMT, with its much shorter experience, is untested.

Why do clinical trials use playlists?

Music is part of what researchers call “setting”, the environment around a psychedelic experience (see set and setting: origins and research). The 2026 review traces today’s trial protocols to therapists of the 1960s and 1970s, who saw music as a way to release emotion and support peak experiences (Rowe et al., 2026). Among 36 recent trial articles, 25 reported using at least one playlist, 8 did not mention music and 3 stated it was not used, and there was no standard protocol (Cruz et al., 2026). Evidence: established that practice varies.

Outside trials, the Canadian Psychedelic Survey, run in January 2022, asked 1,849 people about music in mostly non-clinical use. 91.3% had used psychedelics with music, but only 10% agreed that such music should be unfamiliar and 22% that it should have no understandable lyrics, two common clinical guidelines. In the DMT and 5-MeO-DMT group (385 people), answers split almost evenly: 24.9% preferred music, 25.5% preferred none, 24.7% preferred a mix, and 24.9% had never combined them (Gloeckler et al., 2024). The authors linked the weaker preference to DMT’s rapid onset and short duration. Evidence: preliminary; a self-selected survey that groups two different drugs.

What do people hear on DMT?

Sound is a regular part of DMT reports. A 2022 analysis of 3,778 Reddit experience reports found an auditory ringing-type sound in 15.4%, described with words such as ringing, buzzing, humming, static, droning, pulsing or a high-pitched tone. A felt body vibration, buzz or tingling appeared in 27.2%. Music being played was mentioned in 10.8% of reports, and in 7.1% of entity encounters the beings were described as dancing, singing or partying (Lawrence et al., 2022). Evidence: preliminary; the percentages count only what writers chose to mention.

The 2026 interview study gives more detail. Auditory experiences were described in 78% of interviews, varying in pitch, timbre and volume, and 30% involved musicality, a distinction between structured music and mere sound. Participants separated plain sounds, such as buzzing or ringing, from the sounds of recognisable things, such as chanting or laughter. Sounds usually arrived last, after bodily and visual effects (Sanders et al., 2026). Evidence: preliminary; 23 people in a lab.

Online, this buzz is sometimes called a “carrier wave”. That phrase does not appear in either study; researchers code it as a ringing, buzzing or humming sound. For the wider picture, see what DMT feels like.

Where does psychedelic music fit in?

Scholars treat music and psychedelics as long intertwined. A 2024 review traces the link from Indigenous rituals in the Americas and Africa to modern therapy, with a section on ayahuasca and the Santo Daime church and another on the development of psychedelic music (Jerotic, Vuust and Kringelbach, 2024). Psychedelic trance, or psytrance, has its own scholarship, including Graham St John’s 2012 book on its global culture (St John, 2012). These are cultural histories, not evidence about what music does during a DMT experience.

What we still don’t know

• Whether music changes the emotion, imagery or meaning of a DMT experience in a controlled study; none has been published (unresolved).
• Whether findings from hours-long LSD and psilocybin sessions carry over to an experience that lasts minutes (unresolved).
• What produces the ringing and buzzing sounds people report, and whether they relate to the brain-rhythm changes seen in EEG studies (unresolved).
• How much of the effect of icaros and hymns comes from the music, the words, the community or the ritual as a whole; studies so far are interviews and ethnography (unresolved).
• Whether traditional songs travel well outside their culture, and on whose terms; the 2024 review raises this as an ethical question for future research (unresolved).

The fair summary: song is central to ayahuasca traditions, and music measurably shapes LSD and psilocybin experiences in small studies. For DMT itself, the evidence is reports of sound, not experiments with music. For more, read what is DMT, what is ayahuasca and DMT art and visionary art.

Shroomverse sells mushroom products. This article is general information about research and culture around DMT, ayahuasca and music. It is not medical, legal or purchasing advice, and it does not recommend any product or any music for use with drugs.