Half-speed! Extraordinary sextet of wind chimes — Gregorian, Olympos, + smaller chimes

Half-speed version of part of an enigmatic 'Wow!' wind chimes ensemble hung up from trees high up in the Teign Gorge — but how come it's so emotionally ambivalent? — See further below for some degree of explanation. Chimes used this time are:

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

2. Woodstock Gregorian Chimes (Tenor) (relatively low-pitched, a Gregorian chant scale)

3. Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (moderately high-pitched, pentatonic)

4. Woodstock Chimes of Polaris (higher-pitched, pentatonic)

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

6. Woodstock Chimes of Mars (very high-pitched and penetrating; not sure what scale!)

I recorded this on 19 March 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.

For this session my four smaller chimes sets (Pluto, Polaris, Mercury, Mars) were put together with the larger Chimes of Olympos and Gregorian Chimes (Tenor), in various combinations. This recording gives us the whole lot, and thus gives some really intriguing and maybe at times rather disturbing effects. Read on for more…

Actually, things weren't straightforward for me over this session. For one thing, the wind wasn't really as strong as had been forecast or indeed as what I was aiming for, and indeed there really wasn't enough wind at all for what I wanted till towards midday. For this reason certain of the recordings are really 'birds with gentle wind chimes sounds (on and off)'.

Also, I didn't get the chimes balance fully as I was after — though, generally speaking, the balance was still acceptable, there being no precise right or wrong about this. And then, as part of that issue, really the small chimes were a bit closer to the recorder than would have been ideal, and this led to the non-musical tapping sound of the strikers, particularly of the Mercury and Mars chimes, being intrusively loud, particularly in recording 6 as listed below, and in places the diminutive Mars chimes came out really uncomfortably loud.

Another issue for me was that the sound of these combinations, although exquisitely beautiful, was musically not what I'd been expecting, and indeed in some cases was something that I wasn't keen on (actually sounding sentimental in a weird twisted way!) — though mitigated by the overall soundscape, with so many birds pronouncing their springtime territories.

To expand on the weirdly ambivalent musical effect brought in by the Gregorian chimes, I have this to say…

On their own, to my own sensibility the Gregorian chimes sound has about it a religion-based pretentiousness, augmented by its strong vibrato, which latter was probably not intended by the manufacturers, but would have been the result of a non-ideal batch of the tubes used to make the chimes. This produces a sort of hollow, pretentious "This is Heaven and everything's hunky-dory" sort of message, in denial of all the deeper things we pressingly need to be openly and honestly holding up to scrutiny in our life experience — a real awareness-blocking sort of mindset, and not something I'd really want to be dealing with!

Then, when this is combined with the immense melancholy / sorrow of the sound of the Olympos and smaller chimes, for me the effect is complex and disturbing, full of an almost agonizing ambivalence and sense of disorientation. The melancholy and sorrow are still there, but wrapped up in a triumphant 'This is Heaven, and all you need to know!' message. In places it can sound sort-of sentimental, especially when the Mars chimes are in the ensemble. — Surreal!

In fact that is a remarkable parallel to the final climax in my Symphony 4 (Highland Wilderness), in which the overall effect appears to be one of an incandescent triumph, yet with something disturbing — even twisted — about it. If you separate out the canonic parts you can hear why there's something strange about it. Each of those parts is a descending chordal sequence that is actually sorrowful in effect, including one chordal progression that sounds to embody 'the ultimate profound disappointment' — an archetypal thing, and not any one little person's individual disappointment or sorrow. I also 'borrowed' and adapted that climax to appear like a bolt from the blue in the final 'eruption' in my Symphony 7 (Ancient Cry for Freedom).

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

Recording four Woodstock chimes in this session. The recorder (light grey furry windshield) is perched on a small branch rather than on a tripod.

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield. I had the recorder for this session perched on a branch by means of a GorillaPod.

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). For this half-speed version I used the 'Change speed' effect in Audacity.

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