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Things Frankie Heard

from Abstractions I by Thom Blum

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Things Frankie Heard (2002, 12:01)

What if we heard the world the way cats do? To start with, our perceptible frequency range would increase five fold, topping out at 100kHz (versus human’s measly 20kHz). Our ability to pinpoint the location of a sound source would also improve considerably. Cats can distinguish the locations of two sounds emitted just 18 inches apart, at a distance of over 60 feet.

The proposition — to hear like a cat — was one starting point for "Things Frankie Heard".

I didn't attempt to play with the outer bounds of our frequency range or localization capabilities but instead opted to experiment with the effects of context changes on our perception of and (dis)orientation to them. If we're a typical housecat our reaction or degree of disturbance from a sound context change may be proportional to the abruptness of the change. So the piece emphasizes these more or less abrupt context changes.

But most of all this piece is about (and for) my dear black Persian cat Frankie, who died in April 2002 of natural causes. For 18 years she
was my constant feline companion and "miews". She sat with me, attentively or not, through all my tinkerings with sound, and she taught me many things about listening.

©+℗ 2002 Thom Blum (ASCAP)

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from Abstractions I, released June 9, 2020

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Thom Blum San Francisco, California

Thom Blum has been composing electroacoustic music since 1974.

Recent performances and installations include "[You Are [Here] You [Are] You Here]", a sound installation established in 2022 in the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, and "Telescopic 1 (zoom out)" at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2024. ... more

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