JeffTolbert.com

About Me

I’m a composer, web developer, and graphic designer living in beautiful Seattle, Washington. Whatever project I’m working on, I strive for beauty and simplicity in everything I do. I believe simplicity and clarity are the goal of both art and communication and the best way to speak to and move an audience. The irony is that making something complicated is easy. True art comes from working with that initial, messy idea, stripping away all the unneccesary bits, and finding the gem within. As painter Hans Hoffman said, “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

In addition to design, programming and music, I’ve also written a number of ebooks, articles and blog posts about technology and music. Beginning in 2004, I wrote a set of two ebooks about Apple’s GarageBand program. Take Control of Making Music with GarageBand was about song construction and composition using loops, and Take Control of Recording with GarageBand covered basic recording techniques. They were published by Take Control Books. Since then, I’ve updated those books whenever a new version of GarageBand came out. I also have a blog, FilmScoring.info, which explores the art of film scoring, music composition and their associated technologies.

As if that weren’t enough, I studied studio art in high school and college and I still paint from time to time. Most recently I did some penguin paintings, some of which are featured on this page. It’s a nice change of pace from music and design, and it helps me to turn off the left side of my brain for a while.