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In 2009, Sean was awarded an ABBEST scholarship from Dublin Institute of Technology to complete his doctoral practice-based woodwind research. The research investigates the expressive range of the instrument (saxophone, clarinet) and how it can be extended with the addition of electronics, micro-tonality and noise elements. This page features free texts on these matters.

Full link at bottom of article: below is an extract from

Microtonality as an expressive device: An approach for the contemporary saxophonist

The Saxophone as a Microtonal Instrument

Invented in 1846 by Adolphe Sax, a Belgian instrument inventor working in Paris, the saxophone was a new composite of oboe, bass clarinet and ophicleide (a keyed member of the bugle family). Much has been written about the particular tonal qualities of the saxophone while the fact that the instrument became an important new voice in, both the then emerging jazz music in America as well as classical music in Europe points to its malleability in terms of tone, tuning and expression. The French composer Jean-Georges Kastner described the new invention as

an instrument with an entirely new sound – powerful, far-reaching, expressive and beautiful. With its unique tonal quality, it offers the best imaginable link between the very high voices of the orchestra and the very weak ones or those with a very uneven timbre. […] Uniting strength and charm, it does not drown out the one kind and cannot be drowned out by the other – it is a perfect instrument.

However this malleability brings challenges for the student saxophonist, who must conquer the technical issues concerning tuning and strive to play the saxophone according to the rules of equal temperament. Jazz musicians have made good use of the saxophone’s timbral possibilities, celebrating it as the archetypal expressive jazz instrument. As Doug Miller writes, “unlike the clarinet, the saxophone is a hybrid instrument which does not have a fixed tonal range of its own. It is an imperfect piece of engineering and this gives it considerable scope for variation in timbre.” A thorough understanding of the mechanics of sound production in the saxophone is therefore crucial to success in this area.

In reed-blown instruments the reed properties, such as size, shape, compliance and damping, are essential for proper tuning. The reed compliance causes a lowering of the frequency. In conical instruments, the reed compliance has the same effect as a mouthpiece cavity and, therefore, it has an important function in keeping the upper register in tune with the lower one. […] The player can correct errors in the tuning within certain limits since […] in reed instruments the tone sharpens as the lips are tightened.

Despite the flexibility of pitch possible with embouchure adjustments (lip pressure, widening of oral cavity) and reed properties, the saxophone has been designed to produce a twelve note equally tempered chromatic scale. However with the use of cross-fingerings, many microtonal pitches outside the chromatic scale may be easily produced. Alternative fingerings are also used to create special effects such as multiphonics and microtonal trills. However, a system has been developed to manipulate the keys into new combinations of fingerings to produce quarter-tone scales.

Technical Considerations of Microtonal Production

Early woodwind instruments (the flute is the clearest example) have no keywork, relying on a simple system of holes which are covered by fingers to produce different pitches. The availability of between six to eight fingers to stop tone holes yields a limited melodic resource. Cross-fingerings: one or more closed holes below an open hole and then additional open holes below that – can be used to produce further note choice. The addition of keys further increases the range of the instrument.

The history of woodwind instrument design has evolved from use of cross-fingerings to a fully keyed chromatic system (perfected by Theobald Boehm in the 1840s), which has been a feature of saxophone design since its invention.

The increasing use of microtones in contemporary music has necessitated re-introduction of cross-fingerings to further manipulate the sound waves in the bore of the instrument. This presents mechanical challenges to the performer as the smooth transition from one note to another enabled by the keywork becomes disrupted. A more pressing consideration is that the cross-fingerings result in an uneveness in tone production as they create a longer section of tube below the first hole:

The effect of this greater length is to push the higher modes of the air column even further away from the harmonic frequencies than they are normally, so the harmonic content of the tone is further reduced; this results in a poorer quality.

In practice, this results in a darker or duller sound, as there is a reduction in the tone’s upper partials. So there is a tonal inconsistancy between the tempered semitones and some of the quarter-tone fingerings. This has varying implications as higher partials are less prevelant in saxophone tone at lower volume levels and also less prominent in the upper register of the saxophone. Notwithstanding these issues, fluid production of quarter-tones on any member of the saxophone family can be reasonably achieved through application of the diligent student.

Developments of Quarter-tone Instrumental Design

Although still a minority interest, there are a number of innovative instrument builders committed to developing new quarter-tone designs for existing Western instruments. The Dutch flute maker Eva Kingma is a leading pioneer in this field producing new flutes with quarter-tone key systems since the 1990s.

A much earlier example of quarter-tone innovation is seen through the work of German clarinet builder Fritz Schüller (1883-1977). Schüller created a new clarinet consisting of two parallel bores and a modified key system which could accurately pitch quarter tones. Schüller’s invention never gained mainstream acceptance and now exists only as a museum piece. The standard clarinet, unlike the saxophone, has hollow rings, which close over the tone holes. This fingering system allows a far greater degree of pitch flexibility, with the option for half covered holes.

Other significant quarter-tone instruments include the quarter-tone marimba designed in 2007 by Norwegian musician Kjell Tore Innervik and a patent for a quarter-tone oboe realised through the addition of extra venting holes

The Quarter-Tone Saxophonist

With the addition of microtonality, an improvising musician has, on a very basic level, a widened harmonic palette. As musicologist Bob Gilmore states “the use of microtones is welcome as a way of increasing the general level of complexity of the pitch domain.” If the improvising musician seeks to expand his/her harmonic palette in a systemised manner, a particular tuning system must be chosen, mastered and assimilated into the aesthetic framework and personal playing style of the musician.

In developing a systemised approach to adopting microtonality for the saxophone, quarter-tone production is the choice (among the infinite varieties of just intonation, sixth-tone, eighth-tone, meantone temperaments, et cetera), which has a number of clear and practical advantages. The production of quarter-tones can be viewed as a simple extension of the twelve-tone equal temperament system. Quarter-tones are easily understood as the half-way point between two equally tempered semitones, which is immediately identifiable both in terms of tuning by ear and is also a workable interval in relation to the mechanics of the saxophone.

Most “just intonation” microtonalists would likely argue that equal temperament is counter-intuitive because it denies the natural intervals sounding within every tone. I maintain that that which has become second nature through habit is what musicians can truly call intuitive. Therefore the process of simply adding pitches, in which one measures the new microintervals against the twelve traditional (habitual) intervals is more intuitive, more "natural," than that of just intonation because it demands, not that musicians embark on a fundamental re-training of their ears and re-invention of their vocabulary, but rather that they expand from a familiar point of departure.

Quarter-Tone Technique

Mastery of quarter-tones on the saxophone mirrors the learning process for conventional equal temperament note production. Quarter-tone production for the saxophonist must start with the learning of new cross-fingerings to approximate the pitches in between the equally tempered semitones.

A period of ear-training must then be undertaken in order to fine-tune these pitches correctly as certain fingerings give merely an approximation of the correct pitch. Ear-training exercises for quarter-tone recognition and production follow the same rules as those for the twelve-tone chromatic scale. The student must develop the ability to recognise and sing all intervals within the twenty-four note octave.

Intervals within the twenty-four note octave

The advanced student will be familiar with all of the intervals from twelve-tone equal temperament, thereby halving the amount of new information to master. The remaining unfamiliar intervals are described (and heard) in relation to their twelve-tone equally tempered neighbouring intervals. For example, the third interval in the example above is described as either a ‘too sharp minor second’ or a ‘too flat whole tone’. An accurate tuner is an essential tool to monitor these unfamiliar intervals.

Technical fluency with these fingerings and intonation issues is developed through exercises, études and scales. See Appendix B for quarter-tone erercises and études for the saxophone. It is interesting to note that this process greatly aids the saxophonist in intonation in general:

Microtonality means increasing and fundamentally changing our patterns of hearing. Being raised in a diatonic musical world for 20 years and then trying to break out of it is a long road but one full of rewards. Once we move back in to our familiar chromatic musical world after playing micro intervals we find our hearing has become more exacting.

 

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Abstract

This dissertation provides a critical examination of the use of microtonality as an expressive tool for the improvising saxophonist and offers a new method for quarter-tone production drawing on cultural references from European art music, Arabic Maqam and Contemporary Jazz. The thesis is underpinned by an historical, musicological analysis of tuning systems and theory necessary for the performer of microtonal music. The dissertation is presented in three chapters. In Chapter One, a discussion of tuning theory and a history of temperament systems contextualises the current uses of equal temperament and extensions of it including the quarter-tone tempered system. Chapter Two introduces the breadth and influence of microtonal music from European art music, regional folk music and contemporary jazz while specifically analysing two exemplary case studies – the Arabic Maqam system and the music of the contemporary jazz saxophonist, Hayden Chisholm. Chapter Three presents the development of a new method, discussing microtonality as an expressive device for the contemporary saxophonist. This method demonstrates the use of the saxophone in microtonal music, looking at quarter-tone technical issues and the use of quarter tones in improvisation and composition within a jazz context. First, this research proves and demonstrates how the saxophone as an instrument of non-fixed intonation and therefore not confined to a fixed or single temperament system may, through a systemised method to mastering production of microtonal notes, be vastly increased in its expressive and melodic potential. Second, it demonstrates how an understanding of the history and nuance of tuning systems and alternative temperaments provides the required knowledge for effective communication and notation of the duality of contemporary intuitive, improvising performance / composition. Third, it establishes that cross-cultural studies most effectively provide the systematic, underpinning knowledge required to support the contemporary performer, drawing on ancient traditions of microtonality alongside recent innovations in contemporary music. Finally, the dissertation demonstrates that quarter-tone production is a proven viable addition to the contemporary saxophonist’s toolkit, and that it has far reaching implications for the saxophonist leading him/her to a position of greater expressive potential.