Whether it’s the fast tapping beat of an anxious foot, or a stressful sigh at the end of the day, every person has an internal orchestra of emotions and thoughts that can be transformed into music. We all know listening to music has the power to move us, but we help you create music that moves you towards where you want to be.
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Group Sessions for Mental Health/Addiction
Moving Melodies can be an amazing experiential group addition to any Mental Health and Addiction treatment program and is designed for people with NO MUSICAL experience. William Nephew is a CADC-I certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor and has been facilitating music sessions in treatment facilities for over 5 years. Unlike most traditional music therapies and drum circles, our groups form a band, learn to play instruments in real time, and write and record a song together in every session. We have seen incredible outcomes within this process including emotional regulation, mood elevation, encouraging music as a healthy coping mechanism, and increasing measures of wellness such as self-esteem and hope.
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Private Sessions / Education / Events / Retreats
Private Sessions: for anyone who is looking to create a song. Want to share something special with someone you love? Are you having a difficult time defining some of your emotions? Want to learn how a song is written, arranged, and recorded? With our diverse songwriting and production background, we can help anyone with the desire to make music.
Education: Moving Melodies is a registered vendor within Orange County School district…….We offer beginning/intermediate music education in songwriting, guitar, piano, voice sequencing/beat-making, and audio production.
Events and Retreats: Moving Melodies sessions can be an incredible component to corporate team building events and Health and Wellness retreats. How better to forge relationships and encourage team building than to form a band together and write, perform, and record a song?
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Children / Elderly / Developmental Disabilities
Music therapy is a dynamic, multi-sensory method for improving socialization, self-expression, communication, and motor development. Music is highly motivating and stimulates all of the senses, involving a child at many levels. Jenna, our board certified music therapist involves children in singing, listening, moving, playing, and in creative activities that facilitate learning. We work on developing a child’s self-awareness, confidence, readiness skills, coping skills, and social behavior. Our goal is to explore which styles of music, techniques and instruments are most effective or motivating for each individual child and expand upon the child’s natural, spontaneous play in order to address areas of need. Quality learning and maximum participation occur when children are permitted to experience the joy of play, and the medium of music therapy allows this play to occur naturally and frequently.
Our Process…
Identify our Intention: In a collaborative Moving Melodies session we will define our purpose in the songwriting process. What do we want to say? How do we want to feel? It might be a song about letting go of past mistakes, or maybe a head over heels love song, or it could be a fantasy song about living life on a tropical island. Every song has a meaning. This is where we get creative! We can be direct, or we can be abstract. There are no rules in music. In this process we will share feelings and ideas and start finding words and phrases for our lyrics.
Move the Melody: After we have established our intention, we will find our musical direction. Will the song be melancholy? Will it be triumphant? This is where we can tune in to the music and find our movement of melody (style). Will it lift us up, bring us down, or hold us in limbo? It is here that we will also explore sounds and produce beats. Our on-site music equipment is recording studio quality, so whether we want orchestral strings, synth-pop leads, electric guitar, or programmed hip-hop beats, we will find the sounds that resonate with our intentions. We can follow a standard music genre or create our own! In this process we will also teach instruments in real-time to group members for our performance. You can learn guitar, piano, drums, or even how to sequence a rhythm pattern.
Create and Connect: Once we have the basis of our song started, with music and lyric ideas, we will begin to piece it together. This is where we connect with the music as we play it, and get in touch with our creativity. As we perform and listen to our song, more words or ideas may come, and we will turn those words into song lyrics. Usually this is where most of the group creativity happens, as we are inspired by the music that we are creating and seeing the pieces come together. We will continue to encourage the creative process and help cultivate the lyrics and music until we feel there is enough content for our song. We will also arrange our parts and rehearse the song from start to finished until we are ready to record.
Ready to Record:
Once all of the pieces are assembled and we are ready, we will record the final performance of our song! Not only did we move through a creative songwriting process, we now have a tangible recording of what we made. Each group member will receive a copy of the track and able to share it with the world.
