Terry Woodford

 

 

Terry Woodford

 

How many music makers have impacted four species of animals?  Terry Woodford has now used his music therapy recordings to help warm-hearted moms with a new baby, the thumping hearts of anxious dogs and cats, and the angry hearts of raging male chimpanzees.

But he started with heartsick teenagers.  During his days as a hit record producer, music publisher, recording engineer and song writer, Woodford supplied music for top acts such as: The Commodores, Jimmy Buffet, The Temptations, Alabama, Hank Williams Jr., Wayne Newton, Barbara Mandrell, Mac McAnally, John Kay and others.
His first challenge in the music business was to develop song writers and build a music publishing company with his partners , the world renown  “Muscle Shoals Sound Rhythm Section.” To become a hit song writer I knew you had to compete with the best writers in the country.”  Says Woodford. The great songs get recorded by several artists and can be a hit more than once. I wanted to learn how to teach my writers what other hit song writers were doing so we could better the odds of getting our songs recorded.” For six months he dissected hit songs to determine what they had in common. “We had figure out how to evoke emotional responses in listeners that were so moving that masses of people would buy a copy to listen to over and over again .” When his writers started composing their songs using those techniques and guidelines they got album cuts and sometimes hit singles.

Two and a half years later Terry partnered with talented studio musician, Clayton Ivey, They signed on as exclusive producers and songwriters for Motown records. Two years later they formed an independent production company, built a state of the art recording studio, and started publishing companies that grew into multi-million dollar catalogs.
While still actively producing and publishing, Terry  co-founded the first 4 year college degree program to teach the inner workings of the music business. “ I saw how the talented and the not so talented were being taken advantage of by people who knew the ropes.” Says Woodford. I wanted to put a stop to that.” He developed and taught night courses for eight years in songwriting, music publishing, record production, studio techniques, and music marketing. . During that same time he also served twice on the board of governors of The National Academy of Recording Arts and Science( Nashville Chapter), and was a finalist Judge for The American Song Festival for 4 years.

Today the University of North Alabama is known for it’s music business program and recognized him with the “Excellence in Leadership Award” for program development
His biggest hit as a songwriter was “Angel In Your Arms”, a BMI million performance song that he also produced, published, and engineered. When you dissect the hits today the rules still apply.” Says Woodford. Many of his students have excelled creatively and are still writing hits or have become business leaders in the music entertainment industry.  ( See attached list )

 

From ‘Rock & Roll’ to ‘Rock-a-Bye’
Then in 1985 he ran into a crying need.
At the request of a daycare provider, Woodford took up the project of producing music to help kids sleep at naptime. His idea was to record an actual human heart and use it as the rhythm of traditional nursery songs. What he thought would be a 3-day project ended up as a technical challenge that ate up 1700 hours in his Wishbone Recording Studio. But when tested in a local hospital nursery, it put 94% of crying babies to sleep in less than 2 minutes.

Later that year, Woodford was invited to visit a cardiac intensive care recovery unit. The sight of helpless fragile babies, attached to tubing and wires, struggling for life calm in just a few seconds proved to be life changing.                                 
In 1987 Woodford sold all his interest in the entertainment music business, and he and his wife Lola Scobey, award winning author and former Nashville editor of CashBox Magazine, started a new kind of record company. They began devoting full time to studying, developing, and spreading the use of the calming power of music and how to use it to assist in physical and emotional healing. “ It’s difficult when you are marketing music that literally puts your audience to sleep. When your music is in a category that doesn’t exist, it is a constant uphill battle to reach and inform your audience. You have  to create or use non-traditional distribution systems to sell them.” Says Scobey

Woodford’s research-backed Heartbeat Musical Therapy recordings have been used in over 8,000 hospitals and special care centers to calm infants and children when they are on life support or in pain. Not sold in record stores, his method and music to get babies to stop crying and sleep through the night has sold over 3.2 million copies. Over 1,000,000 of his sales have been to family advocacy programs, child abuse prevention organizations, health departments, and hospitals to help parents stop the crying (the primary trigger for infant abuse).

 

“For years we got comments from parents saying that our baby CD even calmed their dog to sleep.”  We didn’t take it very seriously.  After all, when the baby stops crying like everyone else in the family, the dog gets a break.
But in 2003,  members of The American Boarding Kennels Association (ABKA) verified the parents were on to something. Playing the heartbeat music therapy CD for anxious dogs reduced separation anxiety, diarrhea, aggression and excessive barking. That same year researchers at the Honolulu zoo claimed they could calm aggressive male chimps to sleep by playing the same CD. 
“Frankly, I was more skeptical about the dogs responding than I was the chimps”  Woodford says, “but then I was invited to watch 50 anxious barking – very rowdy – caged dogs calm to the music and lay down in less than 15 seconds in a Colorado Humane Society.  Suddenly, I knew it was for real and an important discovery for animal lovers and their pets.”

Humane societies, rescue shelters, and animal clinics, across America are playing his CDs to reduce anxiety and make dogs more adoptable. When the CD goes home with new adoptive parents, fewer dogs are brought back because of excessive barking and separation anxiety. Over four million dogs are euthanized every year usually because of behavioral problems. Terry is challenged again to reach an audience with a new kind of record company that sells the same music but with a different purpose.
Woodford, is now recognized as a therapeutic music expert – both in artistic creation and in marketing innovation.   He speaks nationally to nurses, doctors, social workers, music therapists, and other care providers as an expert in using music to heal and help calm frightened children.

Woodford’s advice is widely sought by parents, and he has been an informative and entertaining guest on national, regional, and local media including,CBS Up to the Minute, TNN, CBC (Journal Diary), Health Network’s “Ask the Pediatrician”, The 700 Club, ABC , Family Channel, BBC and others. He’s been interviewed by over 400 TV news stories and talk shows, talk radio programs and newspapers in major American and Canadian cities.

For more information about songwriter workshops call Terry
1-719-473-0100     
terry@audiotherapy.com

www.caninelullabies.com