about
Daniel Villani
Daniel Villani I am a Toronto born and raised multimedia artist, a licensed professional engineer (P.Eng). I work within a system that calculates and optimizes the visible city. Where engineering demands total precision, my creative practice demands intuition.
My journey started on a dusted-off 1970s Sigma dreadnought acoustic guitar. I spent the first year or two playing entirely by ear without a single lesson. My first electric forced me to learn how to do instrument setups the hardest way possible, wrestling a temperamental Floyd Rose tremolo system. Navigating a complex project, tracking a live guitar line in my studio, or watching watercolor pigment bleed across paper, has taught me problem-solving skills and creative drive. My work is my way of slowing down to see beyond the blueprint.
history
Building a Space to Play
My path as an artist has always been defined by building the stage just to have a place to play. I took that literally for a friend’s 19th birthday when I hauled a full drum set, PA speakers, amplifiers, and DJ equipment out to an outdoor venue to fully self-produce and run an entire music festival from scratch. By that point, I had already spent years immersed in live execution, then buying my first audio interface in grade 12.
The music never stopped even when I went to study Industrial Engineering at Ryerson University, I was self- studying music theory, and grinding through guitar solo after guitar solo, while producing tracks for independent musicians I met on campus.
2019
I was working as a lead guitarist in a cover band right before the pandemic turned the world upside down, and I turned that isolation and frustration inward.
locked in to studio mastering the digital side of production, and picked up watercolour painting.