Half-speed! Extraordinary quintet of wind chimes — Olympos, Pluto, Polaris, Mercury, Mars

Half-speed version of part of a '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 Chimes of Pluto (moderately high-pitched, pentatonic)

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

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

5. 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.

The ensemble for this recording gives us a tug-of-war between the seriousness and deep melancholy produced by the combination of Olympos and the pentatonic chimes, and the brilliance of the Mars chimes, which latter inject a few 'major'-sounding notes at the top end. In the full-speed original the overall emotional effect of the apparent 'major'-scale injection is to give an impassioned quality to the overall sound (especially where the chimes are most active), as well as lightening up the serious and melancholy tone of the rest of the ensemble. If you listen carefully and really musically you'd notice that the melancholy / sadness is still there, and it's that which is giving weight to the 'impassioned' effect brought in by the Mars chimes' injections of 'major' into the top end.

However, seemingly bafflingly, this half-speed (full octave lower pitch) sound has a dramatically different emotional effect from that of the full-speed original. Gone is any obvious sound of 'major' notes from the Mars chimes being injected into the ensemble, and the overall effect is much more serious, melancholy and anxious, but in an exquisitely beautiful and other-worldly way. It gives me a strong sense of a labyrinthine anxious searching for something pressingly important, which one is doomed never to find…. Of course, that's just my impression, and no doubt other people will get different or at least 'variant' experiences.

After close examination of the sound of this version and the original full-speed one, I find that the difference is caused by the Olympos chimes being almost inaudible in the latter version, but rather more so in this one. For this reason, the sound of the full-speed version is actually contrary to my intention, but this one, with the Olympos a bit more audible, is nearer the markk, even though not fully 'there'.

Actually, with regard to this recording session overall, things weren't straightforward for me. 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 on occasions, and in places the diminutive Mars chimes came out really uncomfortably loud (though the latter doesn't notice in the half-speed versions).

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 (primarily involving the Gregorian chimes) 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.

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. As already noted, it was perched on a tree 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). This half-speed version was produced using the 'Change speed' effect in Audacity.

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