Transformed natural soundscape: Nature-Symphony 14

Nature-Symphony 14 (Celebration of rutting stags) — Not a wind chime in earshot this time, but roe deer stags bellowing out their almost burp-like rutting calls — the soundscape also adorned and punctuated by the calls of various birds flitting around, including linnet, blue tit, long-tailed tit, robin, skylark, carrion crow, nuthatch, jay (a comical spat between two or more of them). How in the name of Winnie-the-Pooh could any right-minded person make a Nature-Symphony out of that? — Well, this 'f*cking idiot' has gone and done just that! :-)

This was another unexpected item, and indeed completely unforeseen until just three days before my writing these notes and uploading the work! The original field recording is https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/706657/.

I made the recording in a grassy clearing (the one with a pile of old logs) just off the east side of the steep bridleway from Fingle Bridge (Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK) onto Cranbrook Down, just a bit below where the Lower Deer Stalker's Path turns off on the west side. That's pretty high above the valley bottom, and thus avoided a lot of the people and barking dog disturbance I'd have got if I'd attempted recording lower down.

Once I'd edited out all the disturbances the following day I was pleased with the result, and then started getting this preposterous notion, of making this the basis of one of my Nature-Symphonies. I explain in 'Techie stuff' further below what I did about that…

Advisory
To get the best out of this, listen with high-grade headphones. Also, if at first it sounds to you just like an empty gimmick, do listen to at least halfway through and see if you still feel that way!

The original recording taking place.

Techie stuff:

The recorder was Sony PCM-D100 with its mics in narrow-angle (90°) setting (for later widening for a zoom-in effect), with two nested Windcut custom furry windshields. It was set up on a Sirui carbon-fibre tripod.

Basic post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, plus stereo widening using the VST plugin A1 Stereo Control (135% widening) to achieve a moderate zoomed-in effect.

To create this Nature-Symphony from the original I took the following steps:

1. Used the noise reduction effect in Audacity to reduce the background sound of the River Teign by 12dB — important, as I was going to use several layers, so the combined background sound would otherwise be too much.

2. In Audacity I started with a copy of the noise-reduced version of the original, 'as is' (layer 1)

3. Decided to try having additional layers effectively to make a quite potent chord on the whole-tone scale, including tritones. Then made 4 additional layers of the same content, as follows:

Layer 2: Speed reduced to lower pitch by one whole tone;
Layer 3: Similarly lowered pitch by further major third (two whole tones);
Layer 4: Ditto lowered by another whole tone;
Layer 5: Ditto lowered by another major third, making it an octave lower than the original.

Originally I applied my standard 'moderate' back-of-cathedral custom preset in the OrilRiver VST plugin to layers 2 to 5. For this improved version I've considerably moderated the reverb, so that we can hear much more detail. The result sounds more genuinely musical and nature-connecting, and the major thirds and resulting tritones are often clearly discernible to sensitively musical ears.

4. Distribution of sounds on the soundstage:
Layer 1 — 10% left
Layer 2 — 20% right
Layer 3 — 20% left
Layer 4 — 20% right
Layer 5 — centre

Also, for further redistribution, I swapped left and right channels for layers 2 and 4.

5. Balancing between layers — the only adjustment required was a 3dB level increase in Layer 1 to give it greater prominence over the rather overpowering reverb in all the other layers.

6. Adjusted alignments, so that successive layers started slightly later, with a reverse staggering of endings, cutting off excess lengths. I used Layer 2 to determine the overall length, so just it and Layer 1 contain the entire recording. As Layer 1 is shorter, I split it and moved the second part to extend slightly beyond all the others, so we end as we started, with just the unaltered soundscape. That also means that that layer has a central gap, which temporarily puts more focus on the transformed layers.

Later note (19 September 20224):
With much more Nature-Symphony experience under my belt, I can say with security that I'd not done the full job in producing the noise-reduced version of the recording, and this Nature-Symphony, which I made from it. Revisiting this work today today, as expected I noticed that the bird sounds were way over-shrill. Reason? — That spectral subtraction noise-reduction always unbalances the sound in favour of the treble. I just tried applying a whacking '-12db' EQ tilt (using a straight-line curve from 100Hz (no change) to 8K (-12db) to the the noise-reduced recording and this work, and that immediately resolved the issue, with the bird sounds now sounding natural, without unnatural shrillness. I'll no doubt soon upload the corrected versions.

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