A fantastic option for percussion quartets looking to incorporate elements of the Pacific into their repertoire, Little Sea Gongs is a miniature companion piece to From the Depths Sound the Great Sea Gongs, Farr's major work composed for the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra which incorporates the visual spectacle of three percussionists playing a line of ten roto-toms.

The drumming style is very much inspired by Rarotongan log drumming and is fast, furious and very loud, with its chatty, murmured rhythms passed around in call-and-response style as the work rises in waves of extreme volume. Like the larger work, it was intended to be a Rarotongan-style composition, but played on western drums. It was never notated, and was intended to be flexible in its instrumentation - the drummers would simply play on whatever instruments they happened to have handy. The number of performers also varied from three to seven players.

The present quartet arrangement of Little Sea Gongs was made at the request of Murray Hickman of the percussion ensemble STRIKE, and has since become one of the group's most frequently performed pieces.