Spinal Tap

Listen to the work here!
 
Spinal Tap is a work for solo marimba, playable on a 4.3-octave instrument. The work is named after the medical procedure of the same name, also known as a lumbar puncture, which can be used to diagnose several infectious diseases such as meningitis. However, the musical material in the piece comes from my own active imagination as much as it does my (largely insufficient) knowledge of medical procedures. The first time I was made aware of what a spinal tap entailed, I was brought to imagine that such a procedure would be so painful that it might cause one’s mind to shut down to block out such an intense pain. And in my imagination, if one’s mind shut down in this way, their body might start to jump and flail in a strangely macabre but somehow energetic dance, hence this work which is based on Latin dance rhythms. The use of harmonic dissonance throughout also is influenced by this imaginative idea of a pain so neutralizing that your body starts dancing without conscious effort. At the end of the piece, the main theme of the piece’s opening is sped up and modulated, as if one’s body post-spinal-tap is spiraling out of control, like the dramatic conclusion of a contest choreographed routine.