Extraordinary sextet of wind chimes — Gypsy, Olympos and others

A real 'Wow!' wind chimes ensemble hung up from trees high up in the Teign Gorge:

1. Woodstock Chimes of Olympos (relatively low-pitched Ancient Greek scale)

2. Woodstock Chimes of Polaris (high-pitched pentatonic)

3. Woodstock Chimes of Mars (high-pitched, not sure what scale, but different from all the others)

4. Woodstock Chimes of Mercury (very high-pitched pentatonic)

5. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Mezzo (Eastern European Gypsy scale)

6. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Soprano (ditto, but lower, and different mode on that scale)

Most appropriately, a strong emotional atmosphere that I pick up from this ensemble's sound is that of an unimaginably strong and persistent sense of SURPRISE, as though felt from some very deep source. That effect is primarily from the combination of the Gypsy chimes — which on their own sound deeply melancholic — with any of the pentatonic ones, and here is spiced up with the Olympos chimes, giving some dissonant touches reminiscent of some music of Béla Bartók, and the Mars chimes giving a really odd suggestion of a major scale poking out at times in the top end. Sounds like fun? — Well, at least this errant monkey thinks so!

I recorded this on 15 April 2014, on the rough slope just below Hunting Gate, which latter marks the highest point of the Hunter's Path, high up on the north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.

This was a particularly bold musical adventure of mine. To my ears this has come out as something incredibly beautiful, in a challenging and healthily invigorating way. We need our horizons and brain function opened up and broadened, even if we misguidedly view anything of the sort as anathema! This is all about (further) opening up our ability to experience life with abundance, variety and full vividness — in short, being fully human!

This took a lot of time to set up in order to get optimal balance between the different chimes and so to achieve a reasonable ensemble effect. The Gypsy chimes in particular always needed to be further away than the Woodstock ones because of their strong and penetrating tone. The Mars chimes really needed to have been a little further away because they were particularly shrill and penetrating, whereas the Mercury chimes (the smallest and highest-pitched) needed to be a little closer still. A perfect balance was really tricky to get anything near achieving, because of the limited number of suitably positioned hanging points on the various tree branches.

For more details about the different chimes used, please go to https://www.philipgoddard.com/shop/store-windchimes.htm.

The full ensemble for this session — from left to right: Olympos, Gypsy Mezzo, Mars, Polaris (difficult to see), Mercury, Gypsy Soprano. The Gypsy chimes are further away because of their strong and penetrating tone.

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield. It was placed on a Zipshot Mini tripod, which I regard as more 'midi' than 'mini'.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield — and then more recently stereo widening / sharpening-up using the VST plugin A1 Stereo Control (160% widening).

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