I published my first book as an author in late 2023. I consider this book, Method Matters, to be my first “book” as defined in the traditional manner. However, this isn’t my first foray into the world of publishing. In 2017, I published Quarter Tone Technique for Saxophone, a saxophone technique book that introduces numerous fingerings, musical studies that involve those fingerings, and ten etudes, bona-fide compositions that are written to both challenge the reader in these techniques and stand alone as solid pieces of music. Shortly after, I published Introduction to Quarter Tone Composition, a reference for composers. Unlike Method Matters and subsequent books, these books are essentially musical technique books, comprised mostly of sheet music, which is why I consider Method Matters to be my first official book. Nonetheless, I consider these two books an important contribution to quarter-tone music, which I’ll introduce below, and the first major project I’ve undertaken. I’m happy to announce that I’ve revitalized this quarter tone project by relaunching these books and launching the website quartertonemusician.com!
Put simply, quarter tones comprise a special category of notes. Most music, particularly western music, is based on twelve notes that repeat in octaves, similar to how elements have a repetitive nature on the periodic table of elements. Each note is a certain distance away from its neighboring notes, defined as a half step. Quarter tones open this up by adding twelve more notes for a total of twenty-four. Each quarter tone appears halfway between normal notes, creating quarter steps between the existing half steps. These new notes, in combination with the old ones, can be used to create curious, exotic, subdued, striking, brilliant, beautiful, and haunting melodies and harmonies (to name a few).
I was originally introduced to the world of quarter tones during a music history course I took my first of three senior years of college (due to my dual major). During the short segment where this was introduced, I was first intrigued by the concept, then enthralled by the music I found independently over the subsequent days and weeks. That inspired me to experiment with some saxophone fingerings to find quarter tones for certain notes, which led me down the path to mapping out multiple fingerings for quarter tones along the majority of the saxophone’s natural range of notes, nearly doubling the number of notes it can produce. Concurrently, I was experimenting with various melodic and harmonic ideas, learning more about the world of quarter tone composition. All of this culminated into a fully-fledged quarter tone technique book, complete with compositions, followed by a music composition book and a small handful of independent music compositions.
After about a year, I formed an LLC and republished the books under that LLC, then took over the full lifecycle of the purchase process, creating an online store, printing my own books, and distributing them. Throughout this time, I continued working to master this technique, one which is arguably the most difficult of the extended techniques, and even began working on quarter tone jazz improvisation.
I continued to maintain my LLC, the websites for the books, and the growing list of repertoire until mid-2020, at which point, I pivoted to a different business initiative “Byte This!”. Unfortunately, I allowed the website and project to slip away, losing the website’s hosting and their domain names themselves, as well as any public-facing means of obtaining a copy of those books. As a result, for nearly four years, these books were collecting dust, and nobody who would potentially be interested in the project had any way to obtain them. This mirrored my unfortunate cessation of saxophone performing, practicing, and musical composition.
In the last two years, I attempted to revitalize the project, but I had two false starts due to extenuating circumstances, one of which occurred a month after I purchased a new, professional level alto saxophone. I planned on re-recording my etudes and other materials along with starting a new company, but this didn’t pan out. Last August, I started work again but was unable to continue.
Fortunately, the third time was the charm – I began systematically finding and recreating resources as needed, and as of February 25th 2025, both books are published and the website www.quartertonemusician.com is live with the same resources available to musicians as before. I didn’t re-record the etudes or compositions, but I did recreate the videos and other materials. This time, the videos include a sheet-music display that shows the notes of the page as they are sounded during the performance. Thanks to my years of experience with software engineering and web design since the previous iteration of this project, the website looks much cleaner, as does the new code that drives the website’s apps.
On a more personal note, listening to my old performances of these etudes and compositions took me back to those years I spent in college working on this project. I vividly recalled the sensations of practicing in the large, silent classrooms over the weekends, being young in the midst of even younger students, having a certain level of hopeful anticipation of my future prospects, both as a musician and as a software engineer – my passion for writing would not emerge for some years to come. After wrapping up the new videos for these recordings, I looked back at some of my unperformed and even unfinished quarter tone compositions. For the first time in years, I felt the essence of what I was nearly ten years ago, as if listening to this music pulled me back across the years. I’m still contemplating this experience, but overall, I believe it was a positive one. It’s easy to think of your adult self as a beaten down, burdened version of your younger self, one with less potential and lesser stakes, but experiences like this can teach you otherwise, that perhaps you aren’t lesser than you once were, but are only operating under different conditions on a different path with better vision of the bigger picture. When I was actively performing as a jazz musician, I felt that I’d never quite found myself as a jazz musician and therefore could only improvise to a certain level of originality, but I knew that as I gained wisdom and life experience, my sense of self as a musician would improve. I have no doubt that if I were to return today, my performance would be significantly more impactful than it ever was, once I’d properly reacquainted myself with the horn that is.
However, the music of my past, especially the quarter tone compositions left unperformed but listenable via the composition software, is like a specter looming upon me, reminding me of what I’ve lost as a musician since that time and what I would be today had I continued. I wonder if this is how people feel if they believe they’d peaked at a previous point in their lives and could never return to that level of capability. This would be true for me if I never do pick up the horn again. I hope it isn’t.
To close things off, I’d like to share my republished composition “Spirals in C Neutral for Solo Saxophone”
