I love music.

My formal music education began in 7th grade when I took up the clarinet for band, before switching to the alto saxophone after only two months. I fell in love with the saxophone, and–as a 7th grader with not a lot more to do–I practiced. Sometime the next year (8th grade), I got a private tutor which helped a lot, yet I still never really excelled at the instrument. At this time, I mostly enjoyed playing classical music, but my tutor helped me branch out into jazz a lot more. However, a hit a slight road bump in 9th grade wherein my high school only offered a marching band, one that would take hours of my free time for post and pre-school practice. I hated marching band. So, I quit and focused only on my private teaching. Finally, in 10th grade, I switched high schools and was finally able to be in band without having to march. There, I played baritone saxophone for band, while pursuing the alto on my own time. I loveeee the sound of bari, but the music for low instruments is so incredibly boring.

I think I began making music around the same time I began my saxophone journey. I believe my first time making music was for a video game a friend of a friend was making (never got past the idea stage) sometime around my 7th grade year. I believe I used https://www.beepbox.co/ to make the music and I remember thinking it wasn’t very good even back then lol. If I ever find the file saved anywhere, I’ll post it here, but it’s probably long gone. I remember I made a decent amount of songs on beepbox, but, without knowing anything about music, they were all pretty bad. My saxophone teacher taught me some basic music theory, but a lot of my knowledge I’ve picked up from just listening to musicians. Thusly, I lack, still, any real music theory and kind of just try and make things sound nice, discovering chord progressions instead of learning of them. I believe in maybe 8th or 9th grade is when I more so picked up music creation, this time with https://musescore.com/. Around this time I listened to a lot of saxophone quartets, and those really inspired me. (See more at https://jimmanual.com/personal/music-taste/). I created a lot of different pieces–with a lot of different instrumentations–before creating anything I was proud enough to publish (https://jimmanual.com/music/published-music/)
(more coming someday)