Pentatonic wind chimes with sea / birds backdrop, near Boscastle

From a south-west facing cliff edge on Firebeacon Hill, near Boscastle, Cornwall, UK, we eavesdrop on seabirds on the very close-by Long Island, while serenaded from behind by Woodstock Chimes of Pluto, with their vividly colourful high-pitched pentatonic sound. The latter does readily get into repeating sequences as the chimes' wind-catcher swings around in circles, but every time the sound seems to have a new freshness and radiance.

I don't know why, but that particular chimes sound — i.e., at that pitch and with that pentatonic note sequence, and with a backdrop of sea sound like we have here — always conjures up in my mind a sense of excited joyful departures of ships and boats; maybe the bustle of a busy harbour, but with a strong sense of occasion, those departures being out of the ordinary, with a sense of celebration. Historical memories, maybe — sailing off to a new land, maybe, and indeed maybe at last departing from slavery…

Birds heard are mostly herring gull, but the odd linnet, rock pipit and carrion crow are fleetingly heard. If you listen very carefully, especially with high-grade headphones, you may faintly hear a guillemot or two.

I recorded this on 1 June 2013, aiming to get a bunch of recordings, but conditions were mostly against that working out, and this was the only recording I kept, out of five that I made from there to just before Boscastle.

Advisory

Because of the processing to widen and sharpen the originally atrocious stereo imaging, the sea may sound rather phasey when listened to from certain speaker systems. Therefore high-grade headphones are the best solution.

This recording in progress. The tall craggy rock island whose top faces us is Long Island — apparently 'long' in Cornish place names means 'tall', not 'long' as is meant in proper English! The recorder was pretty-well on the cliff-edge, and so was getting direct sound from the sea at the foot of the island.

Telephoto view of Long Island (left) and Firebeacon Hill from the Willapark headland near Tintagel (on 30 October 2007) — the arrow pointing to the exact position of recorder for this recording.

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective, version). It was set up on a Hama Mini tripod, which is not just 'mini' but tiny, with the chimes hung from a Zipshot tripod.

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).

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!