Feline Abstraction (2022)
drum set + tape solo · 7 minutes · advanced

If you want to be notified when the score releases, send me an email at sebastian.zhang.music@gmail.com with the subject "Feline Abstraction score".

Feline Abstraction was written for a small kitten.

This kitten is named Udon, often shortened to "Doo Doo". He was likely born sometime in late April of 2022, and found in June, alone, on the side of a highway. At the time of writing this piece, he is just over six months old. He is utterly unremarkable in appearance; he is colored completely black without any distinguishing features.

His hobbies include hiding behind corners to jumpscare humans, climbing up tall objects and not quite knowing how to come back down, and observing the world around him.

This cat has reimagined mundane human objects and utilities into playgrounds and toys—tables into defensive forts, hanging decorations as prey, couches and counters as hills and mountains—a sort of feline abstraction of the world.

Sometimes I think I would be happier if I did more of the same—viewing the world with such child-like creativity.

The musical content of the tape part of Feline Abstraction is centered around the sounds Udon heard when we first adopted him.

Vocal synthesizers are representations of my own singing to him. I use singing in my compositional process and I would compose with him by my side, often singing to him whenever I got stuck and needed to work out or riff on a new idea.

These synths mostly hum, sing gibberish, or sing on the syllable "doo". Singing on the syllable "doo" mimics how his name is called.

Sampled mallet percussion and piano are sarcastic representations of my own practicing, as "interpreted" by a cat.

Glitchy, electronic sounds are representative of the disconnect between a cat's perspective and our own.

Overall, this work is directly inspired by the genres of indie, prog, math, and chiptune rock.

Other influences include high-speed Vocaloid-driven music from the early 2000s, the circuit-bending subculture, noise and glitch music, contemporary classical electroacoustic music, and contemporary multi-percussion repertoire.

While I have divided this piece into multiple movements, to me, the way these movements connect to each other are more similar to individual tracks on an album or EP.

I. Highway Radio Howl is themed around the chaos and confusion that Udon likely faced when we first adopted him. The choice in timbre is modeled off of electronic sustains found in contemporary classical electroacoustic music.

II. Wiggly Attempt to Reach Shiny Object is representative of Udon's playing and exploration, which is accurately described by the title of this movement. The odd-time riffs take heavy inspiration from math rock.

III. Sunlight Aria features the soloist humming and scatting along while lightly playing on drum set. If you have ever owned a cat, you may have experienced the comforting yet inconvenient situation where a cat falls asleep on top of you while you are working, and you are unable to get up without disturbing the cat. movement is that situation, while composing and playing drum set on a bright, sunny morning. The musical content itself is inspired by my own compositional process, away from any percussion instruments; tapping tables, singing riffs.

IV. Midnight Nostalgia was written about how much I miss this silly little cat after I moved out to go back to college. It serves as a recapitulation of the prior three movements, incorporating elements from each. A lot of albums or EPs feature a final track as a medley of the rest of the album; this was written in a similar vein.

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