How Music Releases Dopamine, a Case Study with sundaysunday’s Piano House Tune ‘Back To You’

sundaysunday puts another record in the Dopamine Machine with ‘Back To You’, a piano house track that triggers exocytosis with a saxophone melody and lyrics that pull on your heart strings.

Dopamine Machine

This Dopamine Machine Records release sparked our curiosity on how music can release dopamine so we researched the subject to discover from Intermountain Health Care that, “dopamine is not only released during peak musical moments but also when we anticipate those moments.”  That means that those pre-rave highs or pre-drop emotions are a real thing.

Plus music can take you to a place from the past, your happy place, and for sundaysunday’s latest ‘Back To You’ we are taken to a beautiful beach-club at sunrise, and there you are with the love of your life, back together once and for all.

Continuing to explore the positive effects of music, we found a recent interview with Josh Kwon, a music producer in his doctorate program shared more about the psychological effects of music based on his studies of Chinese medicine,

“Music has a transcendent property that connects us all to the feeling of something greater than ourselves. Within our modern social paradigm, we continuously feel detached from one another as we go through our mundane yet desperate lives, through which we collect and store a whole host of negative feelings within ourselves which in turn stagnate our minds & bodies. This potent emotional factor is what we call Stress.

Stress can manifest in many aspects of our lives, but for most of us, it often crosses over from the mental realm and into the physical by showing up as pain and dis-ease of the body. Therefore, the proper management and wholesome release of your stress can positively affect your health, spirituality, and overall quality of life.

The limbic system, involved in processing emotions and controlling memory lights up when our ears perceive music, which activates the nucleus accumbens, the “pleasure center of the brain”– flooding our bodies with neurotransmitters that we need to process both positive & negative experiences as well encounter them throughout our lives.

In this way, good music and deep human connection which it helps create– lowers the body’s cortisol production, and in doing so, lowers stress, elevated heart rates, and blood pressure.

It eases anxiety, improves mood, and stimulates a positive cognitive/emotional response that reduces the effects of pain which in turn affects our natural healing processes. I can go on and on at length on this topic, but I truly believe that we as humans are all inherently aware of this truth–music heals, period.”

sundaysuday is Watson‘s new project with new studio mate, Austin, out of Toronto, Canada. Watson is known for his prolific work on Armada Music, Dim Mak, Universal Music, Virgin EMI, FrtyFve, and Strange Fruits. His collaborations with industry giants and recent contributions to Netflix’s ‘Bad Blood’ soundtrack has built his reputation.

Partnering with Austin behind the guitar, whose influences include Stevie Ray Vaughan, the duo is blending electronic innovation with soulful live house music sets destined to release dopamine across the globe.