Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 11

Nature-Symphony 11 (The Eternal Astronomer's gaze) — The original field recording (https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/699999/ ) had a lovely early spring fine breezy day quality about it, but this two-layer transformation of it is dramatically different!

This is a real tough, challenging work, which would be riveting for those who are able to open to it, but undoubtedly repellent to the vast majority, who lack the requisite awareness and mental flexibility to cope with its ever-shifting harmonic clusters and the obsessive tone that shines out from the Galaxy, through all its dust clouds and other obscuring phenomena. It's a great wrench after the sweet and relatively unchallenging sound of Nature-Symphony 10 — but then for me the latter was my 'lightest' and least challenging Nature-Symphony so far, and for me perhaps the least satisfying — shall we say, 'just a little divertimento'. This one is on the other pole, as is my next upload here, Nature-Symphony 12 (Around the rim of the quivering volcano). They are both intense visionary pieces, as suggested by their titles.

I myself was dumbfounded, when I idly put two differently speed-reduced copies of the original field recording into Audacity as layers, gave them the usual Nature-Symphony processing, and idly started playback before making expected adjustments; I was then riveted and had to listen to the end of the shorter (top) layer, where I just had to do a few minutes' work to get the piece to finish in a meaningful way. No further adjustments required. Mix-and-render and save — simple!

Chimes used:

1. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Chimes, Mezzo and Soprano (both tuned to different modes on an Eastern European Gypsy scale)

2. Bamboo chimes, large and small set (rather indeterminate tuning, with a touch of whole-tone scale — bought cheaply at local store)

I made the original field recording on 5 March 2013 beside the the Hunter's Path, high up on north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.

Advisory

This work is meant to sound rather distant, so I strongly recommend NOT turning the volume control higher than a sensible normal listening level. For extended sections a penetrating relatively high G is persistently sounding from the Gypsy Mezzo chime in the top layer, and this can be wearying and indeed somewhat harmful if you listen to this (especially repeatedly) at more than the intended level.

The original recording taking place. The two bamboo chimes are on the left, and the two Gypsy chimes are on the right.

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. Although I fairly quickly learned subsequently to avoid having recorders so close to the ground (distorts the frequency spectrum and tends to overemphasize lower parts of the frequency range), actually in this situation it was necessary to have the recorder really low down, where the wind was much lighter.

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).

To create this Nature-Symphony from it, I took two copies and used the 'change speed and pitch' effect in WavePad to reduce the speed to achieve the intended pitch reduction — top layer an octave lower, and bottom layer a minor seventh below that. Further processing then in Audacity: I used the OrilRiver VST plugin to apply a moderately back-of-cathedral acoustic. I allowed both layers to start at the same time, so they immediately start becoming more and more out of step with each other.

Because the last 45 minutes of the bottom layer were not only left unused but contained its most thrilling activity, I saved that, with a strong inner nudging to add that to another processed field recording — and that quickly led to my creating Nature-Symphony 12 (next upload here).

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