Artist Todd Bartel started playing piano by ear in 1st grade in the mid 1960s. Throughout his primary, secondar school years he composed original pieces of music on piano and occasionally performed. While in college he recorded several tracks while Studying in Rome, but none yet have been recorded digitally. Desperate to be trained by a professional piano teacher, he sought three separate private instructors but all of them rejected him as a student because “his fingering was too ensconced in bad habits for classical piano.” He took music lessons for many instruments including guitar, saxophone and drums, but, while Todd could read music, Todd could not sight-read well. He compensated for his lacking of sight-reading skill with an excellent ear, and he learned to memorize the music just by listening. Ultimately, for each musical instrument he learned however, he was asked to leave the group or the class because “musicians need to learn to sight-read not memorize their music” teachers would say. Todd sang in school choruses throughout middle school and high school and he took music theory while in high school. Back in the day, during the 1960s and 1970s, when there was no real words to describe dyslexia, children like Todd were told to get out of music if they could not sight-read. Due to the pressure and lack of support Todd complied, and he ultimately studied art in college, but his first and true love has always been music.

Several years ago, Todd discovered GarageBand and he gleefully began to make music via digital software. “Music for Collageheads” is his first album and it is years in the making—as a full time art teacher, artist, gallery director and father of two, he cannot often find time to make music. All songs were made using a laptop keyboard as a piano-a challenge for any pianist. Todd played all the digital instruments in his recordings, but as a collagehead himself, used several canned loops and clips provided by GarageBand’s software. Laying tracks like layering collages, the software lends itself to his collage sensibilities and the artist likens the process of working with digital sounds to that of making art, hence the title of his first release. Todd is busy working on more tracks for his first album, but only the first two are available while two others are in a state of production. (Check back once in a while to see what has been added.)

Purchase Tracks at:

http://necto.bandcamp.com/

You can see his art at his website:

http://toddbartel.tumblr.com/

and you can see his work as a gallery director at:

https://www.csw.org/podium/default.aspx?t=119188

http://thompsongallery.blog.com/
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