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Wind Chimes In the Wild
The full title of this project and indeed this pack is Wind Chimes In the Wild — Symphonies of Wind Chimes and Nature. I use 'symphony' here with something of the original meaning (i.e. simply 'sounding together'), before the term got hijacked by musicians of the 'Classical' period of Western classical music, to have a much more restricted meaning.
This is a new project of mine, commenced in November 2012, to produce a collection of truly authentic recordings of a range of quality wind chimes out in Nature, where 'the elements' are an important aspect of each recording. The recordings thus are not just 'wind chimes' recordings but actual natural soundscapes incorporating wind chimes, which latter in that context have an immensely more engaging and 'musical' effect than 'wind chimes only' recordings. These recordings are indeed symphonies — a sounding together — of wind chimes and nature.
Indeed, that 'sounding together' is not only of wind chimes and nature, because the wind chimes in any particular recording may be up to six different sets sounding simultaneously, tuned to different scales, and also the beautiful and invigorating effects of pitting the unrefined and 'earthy' dry timbre and crudely whole-tone scale oriented bamboo chimes against the refined 'liquid' tone and precisely tuned scales of the metal chimes.
I was moved to point myself towards this project because of the sheer awfulness of all the commercial wind chimes recordings that I'd bought or otherwise heard. The problem was usually not the chimes themselves, but the sheer laziness and contempt for the listener (or/and lack of interest in or feel for nature) of whoever recorded / produced those recordings, which turned out ALL to be faked in various ways — either being just repeating loops of a very short recording, or the chimes being jiggled mechanically and not by any wind, as shown by regularly repeating patterns in the waveform (and far too consistent a sound level), and any wind or other natural sounds clearly just dubbed on, with no relationship between (boringly genteel) wind strength variations and the chimes activity.
The only decent wind chimes recordings that I'd found were a small number on Freesound, and they included some really beautiful ones. So, I decided to help fill the gap left by the lazy and profiteering commercial producers of wind chimes recordings, and make real 'in the wild' wind chimes recordings, with full authenticity, including even wind noise in the microphones at times. The latter, although for many purposes regarded as undesirable, actually enhances my recordings — at least as long as it doesn't get really disruptively loud. After all, if you're out in the wind you do get the wind rumbling, booming and drumming in your ears, and really it's a nuisance only when it gets really strong and gets drowning out what you actually mean to be listening to out there. Here the wind sound is very much part of the 'in the wild' experience.
Also an intrinsic part of these recordings is the unplanned 'countryside sounds'. In the earliest recordings, in a few cases I allowed not-too-intrusive aeroplane sound, if brief, but I soon became more fussy and preferred to record for longer, so I could still have a good length of thoroughly cleaned-up final edited version.
Also, in the odd places you may hear the odd footstep on the track close by the tree where the recordings were made — and you may hear the odd very distant human voice. I cut out anything that I judged to be too intrusive — and that was quite a bit in some of the recordings. Also, in recordings made higher up, near the top of the hill (when there was not enough wind at the normal spots), some distant cow moos may be heard.
How much birdsong gets into particular recordings depends on exact location and, most importantly, the season. A lot of my earlier chimes recordings were during the winter part of the year, so those are relatively low in bird sound.
My aim in this project (now completed) was to make extended recordings. I would then aim to make a small business out of producing CD compilations of these recordings, for which I'd use a 'produce on demand' service that would enable me easily to offer the CDs on Amazon. Hence all the earlier 5-minute excerpts that I uploaded here.
In the event, the CDs did materialize, BUT after a few years the produce-on-demand service close down, and I then chose to offer downloads instead for sale. That, however, didn't work out, because in some three years I had only two people order any of those.
That's why I'm now (in 2023) progressively uploading the best of my work to Freesound, so that at least some people would benefit from it.
The wind chimes used in my various recordings are:
** Bamboo, large and small, purchased very cheaply from The Range in Exeter;
** Woodstock, 'silver' finish aluminium, precision tuned to concert pitch of A440:
Chimes of Pluto (illustrated in the photo above)
Chimes of Olympos
Gregorian Chimes, Tenor
Chimes of Polaris
Chimes of Mercury
Chimes of Mars
** Music of the Spheres, black finish aluminium, precision tuned to concert pitch A440:
Gypsy, Soprano
Gypsy, Mezzo.
=== And, from early 2017,
** Davis Blanchard Chimes, galvanized, precision-tuned to concert pitch of A448
Pluto
Twilight
Debussy Bells
The Blues
Note that the Davis Blanchard Pluto chimes are VERY different from the Woodstock Pluto chimes! The latter are in a pentatonic scale (sweet-sounding), while the former give a minor chord but with additional notes, incorporating a minor major seventh chord (austerely mysterious and visionary sort of sound)!
…And now, in 2023, we have a major development from this project — my Nature-Symphonies. These are technically best described as nature-generated stochastic (probability-driven) electroacoustic works, each being one of my chimes field recordings to which certain remarkably straightforward processing has been applied, starting off by slowing the speed and thus also lowering the pitch.