Bulbs

In the ongoing saga of researching things I never thought I’d learn about, “bulb economic history” is the latest installment of new knowledge I’ve acquired - courtesy of percussionist Aaron Ragsdale in South Dakota.

Aaron first approached me with a piece idea last spring - wanting a solo percussion piece about the Phoebus Cartel. Always eager for an excuse to write for vibraphone, I happily agreed without really knowing anything about what the cartel was—let alone how to capture it with music.

Bright Ideas in the Dark

Aaron told me had recently learned about the cartel himself—a group of light bulb tycoons forming to ensure the continued sales and increased profit margins of light bulbs. In one of the first recorded cases of “planned obsolescence” (now standard practice among most manufactured goods), the cartel worked to develop less efficient lightbulbs that would need replacing sooner and collaborated to fix prices at higher margins—imposing fines and utilizing other strong-arm practices to get other manufacturers to fall in line. The cartel’s activities officially ended sometime during the outbreak of World War II, but the impacts proved lasting.

After hearing from Aaron about it (and binging a few YouTube videos and articles on the matter), I was simultaneously disgusted and amused. An almost cult-like gathering of business men meeting under cover of night to nefariously disrupt something as innocuous as lightbulbs has a touch of whimsy I couldn’t ignore. The result was version one of Cult of Bulbs.

With the vibraphone at the core of the set-up, I knew I wanted the auxiliary to highlight other resonant metals. I love suspended cymbal—people underestimate just how many sounds/textures are possible on it, but it’s actually one of the most versatile instruments in percussion. While its use in this piece is fairly limited, I do dream of some day writing for a quartet of suspended cymbals! In addition the vibraphone and cymbal, I also decided to add a tam-tam/low gong to the set-up to help balance out the bright tones with something dark and boomy.

The last touch was to the vibraphone; with the cartel working to essentially change light-life/longevity into money, I knew early on I wanted to prepare the vibraphone with some coins. When struck, the coins would create a buzzing texture with much less of the pitch than an unobstructed vibraphone bar—the sound literally being replaced with the buzzing of money. This metallic buzzing also meant that the cymbal and tam-tam could support the transition away from the warm resonance of the vibraphone towards the harsher, less-pitched sounds of the other metals.

From there, it was just a challenge of pacing out the musical material in such a way that the take-over was gradual without being too obnoxious. With three main ideas, I focused the coin texture in the lower octave—allowing repetitions of the material to gradually get more buzzy as it moved material into the lower registers of the instrument. The ideas were kept simple and distinct, to further help tie the piece together as the melody was replaced with unpitched iterations of the same rhythms.

Motive 1: tides and pulses

Motive 2: melody and accompaniment

Motive 3: bursts of groove

It was a lot of fun to work on this movement; the simple nature of the material made it  exciting to just play with color and texture as I puzzled out how best to pace the transformation.

Part way through the process, however, Aaron had came to me with an idea for an additional movement about a different kind of bulb…

The Power of Flowers

Who knew that not only were there other bulbs (in the form of flowers), but that they had their own first-in-history economic manipulation? While I had heard of the term “Tulipmania,” I had always assumed it was just carnival-style name for tulip festivals—but there was a real mania for tulips back in the 1600’s Dutch Republic that proved to be our first recorded “speculative bubble,” economically speaking.

While a great many articles, books, and video essays have been made about tulipmania, the short version is as follows: tulips became wildly popular, and rare breeds of tulip could be valuable enough to purchase a castle with(!!). Obviously, the bubble popped after a short time (only 3 years), leaving many would-be tulip tycoons in the mud, though some may argue that the tradition of overpriced tulips is alive and well today!

Aaron envisioned this as a second movement with a completely different set-up—making the whole piece a kind of “duology.” Given the tulipmania location in the Dutch Republic, he eagerly explained he had somehow acquired three pairs of wooden clogs he would love to see incorporated into the piece; the whole movement, then, focused more on wooden textures. 

Despite being a white lady from the midwest, I do not have a previous relationship with clogging or clog music (my ancestry is largely Polish—so polka, for those wanting to know). However, I found this great mini documentary on YouTube that had some great demonstrations, background, and musical samples. How lovely to discover that the harp (which IS in my musical background) is a staple of the genre! While there is obviously a lot more nuance than I had time to delve into, the use of simple melodies and punctuated endings to phrases were common themes I could latch onto musically.

While economists have debated how impactful the fallout from Tulipmania was for people other than investors, there’s no doubt that the sudden awakening from their flowertrip would be a rude one for those involved. With a similar idea of a texture being “taken over,” this time it was the percussive sound being silenced by a pitch-driven one.

Clog texture

Marimba-mania

Afterburst 

I don’t think of anything I’ve written as “clogging music” so much as the music being “clogged up” a bit throughout. Perhaps the timing of writing this movement near Halloween inspired the more “entranced” feel to the marimba sections, but it was a blast to put together regardless—and I’m excited to see how this fits into other programs in the future.

And who knows? Maybe there’s a whole other bulb we haven’t even thought of yet which could tie the instruments from both movements together. For now, though, I’m happy to have this duology as it is, and am so grateful to Aaron for the unique inspirations and welcome feedback throughout the process.

What Else is Happening?

In addition to these works, I’ve been continuing my descent-into-DAW for Perpetual Motions (a new work about tortilla-making-through-the-ages for two piccolos and electronics), and I’m sure I’ll have more to say on that work soon. I’ve been dreaming and sketching and researching and listening and sound-hunting and drawing and fussing for weeks over the piece—so now, I have to get back to the work of actually writing it down!

The other piece I’m working on this month is a new piece for Grade 3 concert band for the Philadelphia All-City Band. Working with their conductor, Patricia Cornett, I’m working on something that we hope will introduce them to aleatory without being alea-nating. More details on that to come, but what I’m willing to share for now is that the piece has been titled BRAWL.

Other exciting news includes a swarm of upcoming recording releases, which I think I’ll save more notes on for a future post—though you should know that my choose-your-own-adventure-work for piano is OUT NOW on Chris Opperman’s newest album, Still Waters alongside some pretty fantastic composers. You can grab your copy at the link here.

Happy wandering everyone!