Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 23

Nature-Symphony 23 (A strange air from Beeny Cliff's sea caves) — A serendipitously originated work, arrived at while working on what is now Nature-Symphony 24 (indeed, I took copies of its three bamboo chime layers and used them almost verbatim here, but the context is different, so the overall effect is different). All the passing notes you hear are from one small six-tube bamboo chime with the most exquisite musicality. Here we have it in three layers made from the same recording in the Teign Gorge.

This is underlain with a deliberately subdued old recording of the slow breathing-like very deep rumbles of the sea in the Beeny Cliff cave that I (and probably no-one else) think of as 'the Grandfather Cave' on account of the particularly deep, spacious and indeed majestic booms and rumbles that issue from it according to swell and tide conditions. — Indeed, we start and finish with just those rumbles.

For me the chimes, as heard here, are an uncanny reminder of the sea sound in the entrance of Beeny Cliff's southernmost west-facing cave. With care I'd go down the steep grassy slope to a pretty low-down exposed ledge (especial care required, if one doesn't want to become carrion!), where you face across a sort of vestibule area and into the cave entrance. There, even with a gentle sea and thus no overt dramatics, you could hear all manner of ripplings and minor impacts of sea in minor and not so minor clefts, all with a natural reverberance that has a particularly beautiful and rather dark and menacing quality, sometimes with very subtle reverberant minor booms from deep within the cave.

Chime used (for layers 1-3):

Small (30cm longest tube) 'Fancy dim7' Indonesian bamboo, 6-tube — one of three amazingly cheap ornamented small chimes bought in a Christmas market; this one having a particularly colourful sound, producing intervals and chords of second-inversion minor, diminished seventh, tritone, fourth, minor sixth, with a lot of emphasis on the minor third. The layering has created a lot of tritone emphasis, at times also with half-diminished seventh chord, giving a musical potency and piquancy of colour beyond that already present in the original chime sound. — I must say, I'm quite amazed that I could get such powerful and commanding tone in Layer 3 from such a little and lightweight chime!

I made the original chime recording for this work on 13 December 2023, on Piddledown, just a little above the Hunter's Path, high up on the north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. The original cave rumbles recording dates from 3 September 2014 (Beeny Cliff, near Boscastle, Cornwall, UK). You can hear that one at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/689562/ .

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

Note that many speaker systems — particularly lower-grade ones — lack ability to reproduce lower bass frequencies well or even at all, and thus from those you'd either hear something far too boomy or faint to nonexistent. If you don't hear some rumbles (distinctly lower-pitched than thunder) in the first minute (before the first chime sound comes in), then you definitely need to listen with something better.

Making an earlier recording of this chime in the same session, from a lower position to avoid over-strong wind.

The Beeny Cliff 'Grandfather' cave, from approx. recorder position for the Layer 4 recording

View from Penally Hill, by Boscastle, showing positions of 'Grandfather Cave' (left arrow points to approx. recorder position) and Beeny's southernmost cave — right arrow points to the tricky exposed cliff ledge where I've listened and recorded many times.

Techie stuff:

The recorder for the chime was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested Windcut furry windshields, and mics set at narrow angle (90°), on an Aoka carbon fibre Mini tripod.

Basic post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshields, and stereo widening (135%) in the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin. Then I applied my custom extreme wind-cut preset in TDR Nova GE to drastically reduce the bass aspect of the wind noise. I further used Audacity's noise reduction function to reduce consistent basic background sound (mostly River Teign far below) by two steps of 6dB, and (in WavePad) used CurveEQ to tailor a severe high-pass filter (two 12dB increments) to virtually eliminate frequencies significantly below the chime's lowest pitch (close to 700Hz).

To create this Nature-Symphony I made three copies of the recording thus edited, as follows:

Layer 1: reduced speed to achieve pitch of an octave below original — acoustic: back of cathedral. Pan 30% right

Layer 2: reduced speed to achieve an octave below original, then (in Audacity) reduced pitch only by a further tritone — acoustic: back of cathedral. Pan 30% left

Layer 3: reduced speed to achieve a pitch of two octaves and a tritone below original — acoustic: back of cathedral

Recorder for the Beeny Cliff cave rumbles was Sony PCM-M10 with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective version), on Hama Mini tripod (not just mini but tiny!), keeping it close to the ground to shield it from most of the direct sea sound.

Basic post-recording processing (in Audacity) was to apply an EQ preset to correct for muffling by the windshield, and subsequently, widening (and sharpening) of the stereo image by 160%.

Processing for this recording (to become Layer 4 of this work) was to apply a shelf filter to de-emphasize but not eliminate all non-bass sound. This layer was then adjusted to a suitably low volume, so as to be experienced as a not-too-distracting quiet background while we listen to the exquisite beauty of the chimes' harmonies.

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