I’m continuing to dig up ancient MIDI compositions (now converted to glorious, lossless WAV files) from twenty years ago (give or take). This weekend I’m sharing some digital saxophone compositions with readers.
I probably intended these pieces to be played by an actual saxophone quartet/quintet/sextet at some point. I played in a saxophone quintet in high school (two altos, two tenors, one bari) and a saxophone sextet in college (I can’t recall the exact instrumentation, but I think it had soprano, two altos, two tenors, and one bari), so I did quite a bit of arranging and composing for those groups. I also arranged a ton for Brass to the Future, the brass quintet (with saxophone) that my brother and I played in for a number of years in the early 2010s.
Now they exist as ghostly digital instruments, honking and squawking through the musical musings of a plump young Portly with a head full of dreams and a belly full of Cheez-Its.
“Saxophonic Organ”
I’m not sure what the original title for this piece was meant to be, but I do remember wanting to emulate the sound and rhythms of a 1970s classic rock organ in the context of a saxophone ensemble. “Saxophonic Organ” is the result of that experimentation, and I rather like it.
A common custom here in the Southern United States is to have your yard littered with old cars that won’t run. Through a combination of excessive agreeableness and excessive laziness, I had two old junkers on my property until recently: my old 2006 Dodge Caravan, and a late colleague’s 2003 Saturn L200.
I commemorated the departure of both vehicles before the junk car guy came and picked them up (and I pocketed a sweet $240 for each of them). Here are those short videos:
I’ve been composing quite a few trios lately, as I’ve been playing around with blending three of the same sounds. This week, I’m featuring a particularly flamboyant effort.
Earlier this week I posted one of my recent compositions, “Clarinetti” (the Italian plural for “clarinet”), and I’ve composed quite a bit for the instrument over the last year; as such, I thought I’d cast a glance back at some pieces that feature, or at least use, clarinet:
“Open Mic Adventures CXXI: ‘March of the Molemen’” – This piece, which depicts an army of subterranean Molemen carrying out their crafty underground business, features tenor sax and bass clarinet.
Last week I submitted subscribers to Säx, a collection of saxophone quartet pieces I wrote and recorded way back in 2004 in a buddy’s attic studio. In digging around in the vast depths of my backup hard drive, I found quite a few compositions I believed were lost to time (and/or to a 32-bit operating system; my ancient version of Cakewalk 3.0 won’t run on modern, 64-bit operating systems).
Eventually, I’m going to re-release Säx and release these MIDI-based compositions on Bandcamp and on streaming platforms. I managed to convert the MIDI files to lossless WAVs, and I am doctoring some of them up using Audacity. Säx will be released in its original form—what paid subscribers could hear in full last week.
For now, I wanted to share some of the tracks from what will be the MIDI release, as well as a recording of one of the pieces I did on a tiny Yamaha keyboard my family has had since I was a small child (and I still have it—I think it works, too). Paid subs will have access to some other pieces over on SubscribeStar.
The first piece here is “Euroclydon,” named after the Mediterranean storm from the Book of Acts. I remember learning the name from a sermon at my parents’ church years ago, and I am guessing I composed the bulk of “Euroclydon” around 2012:
“Euroclydon”
The next piece is “Aachen Cathedral Chorale.” I used this chord progression and melody in a number of pieces, including my organ solo “Organic Evolution.” I’m sure it’s from some famous Baroque composer, but back in the day, it was one of my favorite themes to incorporate into music.
This version consists of three MIDI files I converted to WAVs and then aligned in Audacity. I also added some additional reverb and chorus effects. Essentially, I had the same theme composed for organ, strings, and saxophones, and then mashed them together into this glorious wall of sound:
“Aachen Cathedral Chorale”
This version of “Aachen” was played using the Yamaha keyboard and splicing/aligning all of the parts together. As I recall, I plugged the keyboard into my older brother’s ancient Crate amplifier, then dangled a primitive computer microphone in front of it and recorded either to Adobe Audition 1.5 or Windows Recorder (the latter would have been a nightmare to line up properly, so I’m thinking it’s the former). I am playing all of the parts on this one:
“Live at the Aachen Cathedral”
It’s wild to think that I wrote some of these pieces as early 2004 or so. I found stuff that I likely composed in high school, which would place the absolute earliest possible compositions at 1999. I was using Cakewalk 3.0 in the eighth grade, so I have some material that would date back to 1998—whoa!
One day I’ll finally figure out how to setup a Windows 95 virtual machine on my desktop so I can run Cakewalk 3.0 natively, but I’ve never had much success doing that.
Regardless, let’s see what else a young Portly cooked up back in the day.
Want to play the sax? Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.
Yours portly is playing saxophone for a client and his wife this evening; the happy couple is celebrating their first anniversary, and the client has booked me to play a song or two as a surprise for his wife.
Naturally, he asked for videos of me playing two pieces so he could get an idea for what he will be getting, and just as naturally, I turned those into YouTube videos for my subscribers.
Now you, my dear readers, will get to hear some sensual, soulful saxophone solos:
I recently uncovered a bunch of old music I wrote during a period spanning from roughly 1999 through probably 2012. Today’s piece is not one of those pieces, but I’ll soon be highlighting some of my super deep cuts here. If you want to hear one piece—recorded with me playing real instruments, not computer ones!—check out this past Saturday’s post.
Today’s piece is another digital piece, composed in Noteflight. I’ve been writing a lot of trios lately, and have been experimenting with getting three of the same instruments to blend without sounding too boring. I’m not sure if I have succeeded, but this week’s piece is a stab at it.
I’m a tad late posting today because I was up quite late last night digging through some old computer files. I’ve been cleaning out my Drawer of Forgotten Technology, and stumbled upon my old SanDisk Sansa c250 MP3 player (which I am currently selling on eBay, if anyone wants it). The battery doesn’t hold a charge, but it will play when connected to power directly via its USB cable connected to any charging block that accepts USB. Even more intriguing is that it will interface with a PC when that same cable is connected to a USB port.
I uncovered a treasure-trove of music, basically the stuff I listened to in college and graduate school. Among the random bits of novelty music and 80s hair metal I found a track from long-forgotten musical project, Säx.
Säx was my first attempt at recording anything solo. I’d composed a number of saxophone quartet compositions specifically for me to record them. Each piece consisted of two alto sax and two tenor sax parts, and ran the gamut from blues to gospel to rock to circus music—pretty much anything I could think of to demonstrate my composing skills.
I recorded Säx in 2004 at a friend’s house. He was learning audio engineering at the time (and I believe he now does it for a living), so he was willing to record me and mix my tracks for free so he could get the experience. We were both 19 at the time, and home from our first year of college, and it was a period in my life when everything seemed possible.
To put things into perspective, this pre-dated YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, etc. Getting music out there still pretty much meant burning CDs on your computer, then distributing those in jewel cases with homemade art to your friends and family. You could get them done professionally, but as possible as everything seemed at 19, yours portly didn’t have the money to make everything possible.
Säx was fun, though. I remember my buddy and I in his little attic space, which he had refurbished into a tiny recording studio, figuring out how to get the click tracks at the right tempo. There was one piece, an Irish jig in 6/8 time, that I just could not get down, so we axed it entirely (I love 6/8, but back then, I struggled with figuring out whether to set the metronome to duple or sextuple, something that seems laughably embarrassing to me now).
These recordings are not great, with the exception of “Middle Class White Kid Blues,” which actually came out pretty nicely:
The other recordings are a pretty good example of my composing chops at the time (which, I think, were not that bad; I can definitely hear my influences in these pieces, and composing elements I still use to this day, nearly twenty years later). My playing is often sloppy, with lots of intonation and pitching issues. Some of the examples are really bad—I end one of the pieces on what should be a beautiful chord, but it’s nasty thanks to bad tuning and intonation. But it’s still fun—albeit a bit cringe-inducing—to go back and listen to these pieces.
I’ll be re-releasing Säx at some point on Bandcamp and, ultimately, various streaming platforms, just for the completionists out there who want to hear everything I have ever recorded (I also uncovered some other synthesizer pieces I played and recorded in college under two project names, “Blasphemy’s Belt” and “Fat Guy in Boxer Shorts”; I’ll be releasing those pieces at a future date, too).
For now, my faithful paying subscribers are going to have access to all seven Säx tracks in existence—whether you like it or not! Enjoy this glimpse into some of my earliest recordings.
Pickup my newest release, Leftovers IV! Get 80% off with promo codeham. That’s 80% off ANYTHING and EVERYTHING on my Bandcamp page, including the album, full discography purchases, merch, etc.!
Want to play the sax? Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.
Wanna be utterly perplexed while laughing uproariously? Grab a copy of my first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link, so I’ll receive a portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you—plus I’ll get the book royalties).
My latest EP, Leftovers IV, released a couple of weeks ago. It’s $5, but with promo code ham it’s only $1. My full discography typically goes for $72.14, but with promo code ham it’s $14.23, or roughly $0.55 per release. Twenty-six albums, constituting over eight hours of music, for $0.55 per release is ludicrous.
But it’s even better—if you purchase anything from Bandcamp today (Friday, 2 May 2025), Bandcamp does not take their 15% cut. I get more money, and you get insane amounts of music for pennies on the dollar. That’s the beauty of Bandcamp Friday!
As I detailed a few weeks ago, yours portly needs your financial support. Purchasing my music is one way you can help—and enjoy some enigmatic tunes in the process!
Pickup my newest release, Leftovers IV! Get 80% off with promo code ham. That’s 80% off ANYTHING and EVERYTHING on my Bandcamp page, including the album, full discography purchases, merch, etc.!
Want to play the sax? Read my ultimate guide to getting started for under $350.
Wanna be utterly perplexed while laughing uproariously? Grab a copy of my first book, The One-Minute Mysteries of Inspector Gerard: The Ultimate Flatfoot (that’s an Amazon Affiliate link, so I’ll receive a portion of any purchase made through that link, at no additional cost to you—plus I’ll get the book royalties).
I’m still brainstorming what my next music composition project will be, but I’ve been noodling around with a few ideas. Even when I am not sure of a thematic direction, I keep composing.
Composing is one of those things that scratches a very deep itch for me. I like to tinker with sets of music theory rules—some of my own creation—to see what kinds of sounds and ideas I can develop within fixed limits. The challenge of “solving” the problems these limitations create is part of the fun for me, as I tease out melodies and harmonies within whatever confines—arbitrary or otherwise—I’m set for myself.
One thing I’ve been interested in lately is writing trios consisting of three of the same instruments, or three very closely related instruments. It limits the palette of sound fonts I have to work with, but that also creates unique opportunities for music expression.
The piece this week is one of the first such attempts, a piece that explores the airy, high woodwinds.
The Portly Politico 