We work at the intersection of music education, music therapy, and sound practice, grounded in the conviction that meaningful engagement with music is always embodied, always active, and always specific to the person and context.
Touching Sound is a music and sound practice working at the intersection of clinical science, creative practice, and educational inquiry. We develop and deliver evidence-based music therapy, technology-integrated music education, and sound-based programs grounded in embodied musical cognition, neurologic music therapy, and the praxial dimensions of musical engagement across the lifespan.
Our work is clinical and creative in equal measure. In therapeutic contexts, we apply the neuroscience of musical experience to address measurable health outcomes, from physiological regulation in neonatal care to pain management, psychosocial support, and neurorehabilitation across medical populations. In educational contexts, we design programs that give learners access to improvisation, sonic inquiry, and musical identity development, through traditional ensemble practice in jazz, rock, and strings as much as through electronic music production and digital instrument interaction. We bring the same discernment to music therapy: the question is never which tools are most innovative, but which are most appropriate to the person and the moment.
Our work also extends into sound practices that exceed the conventional boundaries of music, soundscape inquiry, acoustic ecology, and pedagogies of listening that engage learners and clinical populations through the perceptual and environmental dimensions of sonic experience.
We work from Ecuador with a commitment to contextual relevance, building programs that are responsive to local realities and designed for long-term sustainability within the communities and institutions they serve.
The name comes from our 2018 research: that music learning is touching sound, physically engaging with it, shaping it, being shaped by it. That conviction runs through everything we do. In education, it means building experiences where students perform, produce, and invent, where the instrument in their hands, digital or acoustic, becomes a site of identity formation. In therapy, it means bringing music into contact with bodies, nervous systems, and lives in ways that are precise, responsive, and evidence-based.
Different fields. The same root.
Embodied musical cognition as the starting point.
Music education is most powerful when it starts from the body, from the recognition that musical learning is about how physical engagement with sound shapes identity, creative agency, and ways of knowing. Embodied musical cognition is not a technique; it's the premise that makes everything else coherent.
Our research in digital lutherie asks what happens when learners design, build, and perform with instruments they've created. When performance and production meet, students stop being consumers of music and start becoming authors of it.
NMT, humanistic, and behavioral frameworks.
We offer evidence-based music therapy grounded in multiple clinical frameworks, not a single method applied to every situation, but a carefully chosen approach matched to the person, the population, and the goals at hand.
Our frameworks include Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT), humanistic and person-centered approaches, and behavioral methods. In practice, these inform and complement each other.
Soundscape, ecology, and pedagogies of listening.
Sound is the medium both of us work in, and it exceeds what either education or therapy can fully contain. Soundscape inquiry, acoustic ecology, and pedagogies of listening are where our two fields converge most openly.
This is territory where our work in music education and music therapy meet, sonic inquiry and clinical attention to sound as an embodied, environmental force, on ground that neither field fully owns.
Each branch is a distinct offering under the Touching Sound umbrella, sharing a mission, operating with its own focus and identity.
A structured perinatal music therapy program accompanying families from week 26 of pregnancy through hospital discharge, including birth support, immediate postpartum, and neonatal intensive care. Grounded in NMT mechanisms with a humanistic, family-centered approach throughout.
Johanna works directly with expectant mothers, neonates, and perinatal families in Quito, Ecuador, with bilingual services in Spanish and English.
Our music therapy practice draws on multiple evidence-based frameworks, not a single method applied uniformly, but a carefully chosen approach calibrated to the individual, the population, and the therapeutic goals at hand.
Applies neuroscience-based music mechanisms to specific, measurable physiological and neurological targets. Used across perinatal care, neurorehabilitation, pain management, and autonomic regulation.
Centers the client's lived experience, autonomy, and meaning-making. Guides work in psychosocial support, identity development, grief, and contexts where the therapeutic relationship itself is the primary vehicle.
Uses structured, contingency-based music interventions to support skill acquisition, habit formation, and self-regulation. Applied across developmental, educational, and clinical populations.
Bespoke consulting across music education, music therapy, curriculum policy, and program evaluation, for schools, universities, healthcare institutions, government bodies, community organizations, and EdTech companies.
A standalone educational platform for music educators and learners, interactive lessons in harmony, voice-leading, and music theory with automated feedback; digital lutherie resources; and a growing professional development library.
We are developing a new branch of Touching Sound that will be announced in due course. If you have a project or partnership in mind, we'd love to hear from you early.
Johanna's curriculum contextualization for Ecuador's Galápagos Islands was officially adopted by Ecuador's Ministry of Education in 2021 and expanded through 2024. Nicolas's IB curriculum work is live in classrooms now. We don't just advise, we build things that last.
We work with schools, universities, hospitals, government bodies, community organizations, and EdTech companies, anywhere serious investment in music or sound requires serious expertise to back it up.
We offer individual and small-group mentoring for music educators navigating curriculum redesign, research projects, IB program development, or questions about how technology fits into their teaching.
We also work with graduate students and early-career researchers who need a thinking partner, not just feedback, but rigorous engagement with their work. If you're working on something interesting in music education or music therapy and need someone who has genuinely been there, we're interested in talking.
Based in Quito, Ecuador. Working in English and Spanish.
Music educator, music technology researcher, and community music facilitator. His work is grounded in embodied musical cognition and the question of how the tools we use to make music shape who we become as musicians, from digital lutherie and instrument design to jazz ensemble pedagogy and electronic music production.
He has worked across jazz, rock, strings, and electronic music in K-12, university, and community contexts, and brings the same analytical rigor to all of them.
Music education policy specialist, music therapist, curriculum researcher, and community engagement practitioner. Her work spans curriculum design at the government level, music therapy across medical and community settings, and the policy structures that shape what music education looks like at scale.
Her curriculum contextualization for Ecuador's Galápagos Islands was officially adopted by the Ministry of Education in 2021 and expanded through 2024.
The premise behind the name has always belonged to both of us: that meaningful engagement with music is always embodied, always specific, always active. Nicolas arrives at that through the study of how instruments, digital and acoustic, shape the musicians who play them. Johanna arrives at it through clinical work with bodies, nervous systems, and the complex terrain of human development and health. Different paths. The same conviction.
We trained together at the University of Miami. We publish, present at the ISME World Conference, and serve on international commissions. We are based in Quito, Ecuador, and work in English and Spanish. And we've built Touching Sound as an integrated enterprise because we believe these fields, music education, music therapy, sound practice, inform and deepen each other when they're in genuine conversation, rather than running in parallel.
The combination of credentials is genuinely unusual: music technology research + digital lutherie + NMT + humanistic and behavioral music therapy + curriculum policy + government-adopted work + community music + active publishing. We don't know anyone else doing exactly this. We think that matters.
Alongside our consulting work, we're building Touching Sound as a learning platform, interactive music lessons, performance and production tools, grading tools, and a professional development resource library for music educators.
Current offerings include interactive lessons on voice-leading, harmonic function, seventh chords, and secondary dominants, with automated feedback built on music21 and abcjs.
Visit the platform →Performance, production, harmony, and sonic exploration, with real-time feedback.
music21 + abcjs-based chorale and voice-leading assessment tools for educators.
Professional development resources, community modules, and extended lesson sequences.
Whether you're building a music program, evaluating an existing one, integrating music therapy into a clinical setting, or thinking through a research question, we're interested. We take on a limited number of engagements at a time, and we choose them carefully.
Tell us what you're working onOr reach us directly at johanna.abril@touchingsound.org