Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 15

Nature-Symphony 15 (December rural afternoon quietude) — A haunting early winter afternoon quietude after the breezy earlier part of the day. Quietude is by no means silence, and here, as well as the quiet 'continuity' sound of the River Teign far below in the valley bottom, we hear various bird calls. I used multilayering to extend and elaborate the slowed-down chimes sound, and also to have some fun with the mooing herd of cows that could be heard rather faintly later on in the original recording.

A carrion crow announces the absolute beginning and also the end, with the cows leading us in and indeed out at the end. Here and there the slowed-down bird sounds give us entertaining surprises, including one hilariously startling one towards the end.

This Nature-Symphony was another unexpected item, because I'd regarded the original recording as not containing enough of interest for me to use it for anything, even though I did rather hanker after seeing if I could use that herd of cows! — The original field recording is https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/708345/ .

Chimes used:

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

2. Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (moderately high-pitched, on pentatonic scale)

3. Woodstock Chimes of Polaris (high-pitched, on pentatonic scale)

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

I made the original recording on 10 December 2013, at what was to become my regular spot for chimes recording: in the bit of stunted open copse extending down the steep and rough valley slope from the Hunter's Path high up on the north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK — just by Hunting Gate at the highest point on that path.

This took more work than other Nature-Symphonies so far, to meet the challenge of making something really inspiring, and inspiringly beautiful, out of the pleasant but fairly deficient-feeling original recording. Multilayering was the key.

Advisory
To get the best out of this, listen with high-grade headphones.

The first recording in the session taking place. The Gypsy chimes are the ones with black tubes, and had to be placed rather further back from the recorder because of their loud and penetrating tone. Note recorder position, on tree branch (identified by its light grey furry windshield).

Techie stuff:

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10 with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (the original, more effective, light grey version); it was perched on a roughly horizontal tree branch by means of a GorillaPod.

Basic post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, with eventual stereo widening using the VST plugin A1 Stereo Control (160% widening).

I'm afraid I just haven't time to describe all the details of how I created this Nature-Symphony as I did for N-S 14. It was a fairly long-winded process this time, with four main layers and a lot of additional layers to get the cows performing more effectively, not to mention adding the carrion crow to beginning and end, helping to give some feeling of symmetry.

I can usefully say, though, that the two top main layers were reduced to half-speed (an octave lower than original), and the bottom two main layers were reduced to a speed that resulted in a pitch an octave plus a minor seventh below original. The cows in those layers are therefore speed-reduced, and indeed in the bottom two main layers the cows aren't recognisable as cows at all, and come over as very low-frequency 'somethings', giving a slightly eerie quality to the proceedings (unless you use sufficiently high-grade headphones you may not hear those at all).

For that reason I chose not to speed-reduce the added cow clips at all, but in one added section I use three layers of the cows clip, in which the second and third layers of them are pitch-reduced (but not speed-reduced) by a major third and a major third below that, so that, for fun, the cows are then mooing in canon and surreptitiously filling the air with a discreet augmented triad. :-)

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