Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 25

Nature-Symphony 25 (Lament — "My land is laid waste; we have nothing…") — This is not a comforting piece, and no doubt won't score high in popularity stakes! Nonetheless, it has its own intense deeply-sourced beauty, not just of the chimes sound, but also of the inherent beauty of a healthy deep empathy. I award no Brownie points for guessing where the title's inspiration has come from at this troubled time!

However, as with my other Nature-Symphonies the title and its inevitable images at this time came to me almost at the end of my creating the work, so the latter as a whole cannot be said to be inspired by anything at all apart from my experimenting artistic curiosity. Indeed, I was coming rather to doubt as to whether the prospective Nature-Symphony 25 could figure as a worthwhile work at all — but then the title that came to me made compelling sense of it in a sudden, and indeed quite tearful lightbulb moment. While it's no help to anyone to keep dwelling upon the suffering in the world, we also lose our humanity through always blocking our empathy and turning a blind eye to what's really going on, which in any case is increasingly threatening our own very existence.

While in my other Nature-Symphonies so far the bamboo chime element has been a positive and enlivening element, here, although it's providing a necessary contrast, its sound is antagonistic, even suggestive of war scenes all around. Near the end the bamboo chime fades out, leaving us in a subdued epilogue, in which each of the two metal chime layers becomes doubled with a same-speed copy reduced in pitch by a fifth. Thus those closing (notional) bars are in bare fifths (rendered hazy by the interacting harmonics), giving a darkening yet also somehow clarifying effect.

Chimes used:

Layers 1, 2: (3 chimes in one original recording)

1. Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (relatively high-pitched, on a sunny-sounding pentatonic scale)
2. Woodstock Chimes of Olympos (tuned to a melancholy-sounding Ancient Greek scale)
3. Woodstock Gregorian Chimes (Tenor) (tuned to an upbeat-sounding Gregorian Chant scale)

Layers 3–5:

Bamboo chime, large (50cm longest tube) (sounding a peculiar selection of notes, giving major triad, minor triad and augmented triad, and thus liable at least partially to clash with other layers)

I made the original metal chime recording for this work on 14 November 2012 (https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/705728/), slightly east of Sharp Tor, beside the Hunter's Path, high up on the north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, and the bamboo chime recording on 15 November 2023, on Piddledown, just a little above the Hunter's Path, a bit further north-east.

The geolocation is for the metal chimes.

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

A recording during the previous session using the same tree, using Pluto chimes (my very first chimes recording, on 6 November 2012). It was a wonder that I got acceptable ensemble recordings at all with all chimes and recorder on this spindly little tree on that occasion. As it is, the Pluto chime came out with less than ideal strength in the ensembles. We can see the black furry windshield of the recorder, with its tiny tripod precariously astride the branch leading off away from us. I had no GorillaPod back then.

Making a recording of the large bamboo chime a couple of days after the one that I used for this work.

Techie stuff:
The recorder for the metal chimes was a Sony PCM-M10 with Rycote Mini Windjammer furry windshield, on Hama Mini tripod (not just mini but tiny!), perched on base of branch on stunted oak tree.

Basic post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and stereo widening (160%) using 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.

For this Nature-Symphony I made two copies of the recording thus edited, as follows:

Layer 1: half-speed: an octave below original — acoustic: back of cathedral. Pan 20% right

Layer 2: reduced speed to achieve an octave plus a fifth below original — acoustic: back of cathedral. Pan 20% left

Recorder for the bamboo chime was Sony PCM-D100, with two nested Windcut furry windshields, and mics set at narrow angle (90°), on an Aoka carbon fibre Mini tripod (keeping close to ground in order to minimize mic wind noise).

Basic post-recording processing (in Audacity) was to apply an EQ preset to correct for muffling by the windshields, and subsequently, in A1 Stereo Control, widening of the stereo image by 135%.

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.

I made three copies of the recording, and reduced their speed, but omitted to keep a record of the speed reductions / new pitches, though I'm sure that Layer 3 (the highest bamboo layer) was half-speed (an octave below original).

I gave all five layers a 'moderate back of cathedral' acoustic, using a custom preset in the OrilRiver VST plugin. In the case of Layer 1 I then had to use a custom notch filter in CurveEQ (in Wavepad) to tame the obtrusive strength of a pair of pitches when the chimes got at all loud.

As usual when dealing with a multi-layer setup, I had to do some juggling with positioning of particular events in the different layers to produce a seemingly meaningful end, and of course trimming off the excess length of tracks as appropriate. In this case that was a more difficult task and took a lot of time to arrive at something that properly fitted.

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