A Review of an (Disappeared) Electronic Composition (1973)

Glenn R. Sogge's "Simulty" is a thirty minute composition for the Synthi in the cool impersonal style, and reflecting the same high regard for anonymity that many electronic composers share with Chinese landscape artists. Taped in two bass and two treble voices, the piece is an improvisation of random melodic sequences which alternate between sonorities which are predominantly aquatic or intergalactic, and invariably wrapped in cellophne. A barrier separates the listener from the music.

It is not inherent in the structure. Unlike many of its electronic cousins, "Simulty" has a discernible beginning, middle and end, and the drones, dripsody and winking neon lights which punctuate it are united by intermittently recurring quartets of "B"s. It may be that the 20th century ear continues to rebel whenever timbre usurps melody to take first place in musical expression. Part of the problem, of course, lies in the instrument which is not truly refined.

The Synthi is a briefcase sythesizer whose portability and ease of handling represent a quantum jump from the Dynamophone, the first synthesizer build in 1906 which weighed over 200 tons, resembled a ship's engine room and require four men to operate. The mini machine has a memory capable of 256 events, stores pitch data and can make an shape tone, and can change the tone by altering the shape of the sound waves. But it gets out of tune easily -- it takes 45 minutes for it to warm up -- and the composer - performer has far less control over it than he would have over a conventional instrument. Sometimes the sounds are far more unexpected than would be accounted for by the ordinary irrationality of the creative process.

In the case of Sogge, however, the defects of the instrument may be an advantage. "I don't consider myself a composer," he admits, "the important thing is the modification of sound by the filters. I think in terms of complicated sounds rich in partials."