Thoughts On Sum Music

Sum music players were first formed in September 1974 out of the Wellington Scratch Orchestra (a common thing to happen to a Scratch Orchestra). Some of their achievements have been participating in Sonic Circus, a tour last year that included Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Napier and other places in the North Island, and most recently two contributions for the Wellington Festival - Piece for Ships' Foghorns and a concert. In April Sum Music will be leading a course in Experimental Music at Napier Community College.

Experimental music is a very broad field. To me it appears that the main concern of any piece is the amount and dimension that the composer is going to control: total length of piece, size and position of the audience(s), the amount of sound to be used (volume, spread of pitches, and number of reflections), the number and/or rate of changes throughout the piece and technical dexterity of the performers, are just a few of the possible concerns of a composer. Some have put more emphasis on accidents and spontaneous construction (Scratch Orchestra) where as other has tried to control as much as possible (Stockhausen).

Sum music players are experimenting musicians and are primerily involved in the auditory sense rather than for example the special effects: where the sound has come from. A number of them are music students and this no doubt is a contributing factor to the mixture of values they appear to have. They only occasionally use come of the old conventions such as five line staves but are obviously more at ease with orchestral instruments. Sum music players have their limits but appear to be stretching them.

On Friday 18 March you may have noticed Sum Music player's performance of a piece for ships' fog horns shortly after 6pm).

As a piece of experimental music whether you value it or not is very subjective because there is no recognised set of standards for it. My opinion is that it was a valuable experiment that prove to have only limited musical value.

Monday 22, Wellington Cultural Centre. This Sum music performance had four pieces in the programme: The first 'Electronic Piece' was an improvisation for three synthesisers. I don't think that this piece came anywhere near realising any of the limits of the instruments - like beginners bowing open strings on violins.

It may have strained the limits of the players but it didn't appear that way to me.

It did however appear to realise what their players thought their audience would find quite comfortable - it was an interesting juxtaposition of sounds that involved a little feeling. The drinking and hooting machine (alias interval) was fun and produced some interesting sounds from bottles being blown like flutes and a lot of chatter from the diminishing audience.

'Zones' by Graeme Moire was played from scores and conducted in a fairly conventional manner. The large variety of orchestral instruments made a liberal interpretation of the score (allowing some of the effects to come through) but I suspect it could have been a more effective performance if it had been more throughly rehearsed and worked through.

'In C' in which the audience was invited to participate was an interesting work using tonality and the relation to the note C was effectively maintained throughout. An interesting pieces, but like the rest of the concert the presentation was haphazard and unorganised perhaps consistant with the values of experimental music

Roger Palmer