Woodbury Teen Uses Music To Connect During Pandemic

WOODBURY, MN—Finding himself with free time on his hands during the pandemic, a Woodbury High School senior is using his saxophone skills to stay busy and connect with his peers.

Evan Thornton, a 7th year saxophone player, launched EvanTSax — a YouTube channel in which he records covers of popular songs with a twist — in March 2020. Thornton arranges the songs himself, plays multiple parts on his saxophone, records videos of himself playing each part, and stitches them together into one final video.

Thornton plans to major in some form of music and potentially minor in business at college next year, but hasn’t decided on a school yet.

He came up with the idea after working with his band directors to write arrangements of different pop songs for the band to play. When making arrangements, Thornton told Patch that he likes to put his own twist on the song.

“Originally I was working with my band directors on making arrangements of different pop songs and making them unique and putting a different spin on them,” Thornton said. “It’s not just playing the song straight through, it’s putting in my own little interjections of new parts that don’t exist otherwise.”

Thornton wrote about five arrangements with his band directors and has written 11 arrangements for the channel, which now boasts 159 subscribers and over 8,000 views.

Thornton told Patch he wasn’t expecting this reaction.

“Initially, this was so new and no one in our circle of people had seen it before, or anything like it,” Thornton said. “Everybody was like ‘this is so cool’ and started sharing it. The first video got 300 views on the first day.”

Thornton has received lots of support from fellow musicians. Many saxophone players that he looks up to, as well as a member of the Dave Matthews band, have left comments on the videos.

Making the videos averages anywhere between 50-70 hours.

First, Thornton picks out the song based on what he likes and what’s currently popular. Next he starts work on writing the arrangement.

“I have to figure out how many sax parts I want, what kind of backing parts I want in it,” Thornton said. “I have to then lay everything out and put my own unique parts into it that didn’t exist in the original song itself.”

Arranging music for a video generally takes four days, Thornton told Patch. After arranging the music, it gets recorded in a make-shift closet studio in the basement. Next comes editing the audio.

“I spend a lot of time editing it to make sure everything syncs up, sounds good, and making any edits that I have to,” Thornton said.

Thornton tries to film in unique places to create the final video and told Patch that visiting these unique locations is a fun part of the whole process.

“We try to find cool places to record video,” Thornton said. “We’ve done them on rooftops, near ponds and lakes, and in back alleys in St. Paul.”

The part that takes the longest is editing the entire video together. Multiple videos are shown on the screen at once and Thornton has to decide how to position the videos on the screen.

Search engine optimization is the final step, and one that Thornton wasn’t expecting to learn. His channel has taught him a wide array of new skills- including audio editing and engineering, and how to use Logic Pro. He has also learned about different mic placements and recording techniques.

EvanTSax has helped Thornton stay connected with his peers during the pandemic.

“Since my high school band program isn’t able to play in person, I was asked to do some virtual band projects where we would pick a song to play and everyone would send in clips of them playing it,” Thornton said. “I would match the audio together and do video editing.”

Thornton told Patch that playing “together” digitally made him appreciate the in-person band experience more.

Thornton also connects with others through the comment section on his videos and even received a comment from Indonesia.

“Even though we haven’t been able to do much through the pandemic, through this I’ve been able to find a way to stay connected and meet new people,” Thornton said.

Like many during the pandemic, Thornton’s new activity has brought him solace in a time of chaos.

“It’s effectively kept me sane,” Thornton said. “Having these projects that I could do with an actual objective and goal gave me a direction to go so I could actually do something.”

Thornton’s favorite video he has created is “He’s a Pirate” from Pirates of the Caribbean, which contains 15 saxophone parts and live percussion. During this arrangement, Thornton was able to manipulate the audio of the saxophones and create the sounds of other instruments such as a string bass or bass clarinet.

Thornton is currently working on arranging a popular sea shanty for his next video, scheduled to be released between late February and early March.