Gypsy and Pluto wind chimes in a GALE, high up in the Teign Gorge

Tumultuously wild and exhilarating! A wind chimes ensemble in a gale, in the western end of Drewston Woods, just below the Hunter's Path, high up in the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. We're sheltered from most of the wind, but gale-force gusts come over the top of the hill, chasing and roaring through the treetops and giving us an interesting time!

Chimes used:

1. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Chimes, Soprano (Eastern European Gypsy scale, higher)

2. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Chimes, Mezzo (Ditto, lower)

3. Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (Pentatonic, with a rather 'major' sound)

I made this recording on 30 January 2013, with a gale blowing. Amazingly, when I came out of the Drewston Woods and found myself being beaten back into the woods by the gale, after a few minutes of dithering, wondering what to do, I decided not to go ahead with this session! The point was, that I was thinking only of recording the chimes, and realized that the chimes sound would repeatedly get lost in the tremendous roar of the stronger gusts.

It was then that I used what I nowadays call Helpfulness Testing (do a text search for that term on that page) to get an intimation from my own deeper aspects of consciousness as to what my best choice would really be at that point — whether to abandon the session, to record anyway despite the gale trashing it all, or to do something else altogether. My indication then was clearly to record there anyway.

So, reluctantly I set up the recorder and started recording, repeatedly thinking No, no! This is a waste of time with all this din! — But then, over about 10 minutes it progressively dawned on me: I'd been wanting to record a gale in the woods all along! Silly, funny me! This was not a chimes recording being trashed by the wind, but a wonderful gale recording with the chimes as a bonus! — And so from then on I was electrifyingly elated at my wonderful privilege to have got these conditions and now to be recording chimes in a gale or, a gale with chimes, whichever way one cares to look at it! — And of course I could include a recording of the gale without chimes too, which indeed I did.

The only downer about this became apparent years later, when I used software to sharpen and widen all my PCM-M10 recordings because of that recorder model's atrocious stereo imaging. To some extent the wind sound in these recordings — most notably the recording of the wind without chimes — suffered in the same way that any wide expanse of hissy sea sound did, sounding rather to very phasey and having distinct phase cancellation spots in the soundstage when listened to through speakers (though still excellent when heard through headphones). Anyway, that issue seems not to notice so much in the recordings with chimes, and this one is a case in point.

This recording taking place. The wind was coming over the top of the hill, i.e., from the right and a little behind in this view.

Techie stuff:

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective, version). It was set up on a Velbon Mini 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!