Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 31

Nature-Symphony 31 (Springtime forest tableau: On seeing the most beautiful thing one could never see) — Powerfully beautiful and hypnotic! This brief Nature-Symphony uses the same chimes recording as in the previous Prelude to a springtime forest tableau (https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/720036/ ). Indeed, I actually abandoned my attempt to produce a full Nature-Symphony from the particular original recording, because of too little chimes sound, too much and often too loud birdsong, and a rather over-strong background sound of the River Teign far below, so that the little Prelude was all that I salvaged from it — except…

However, that little Prelude suggested great things to me, so I tried producing a much expanded and elaborated version of it, and this Nature-Symphony is the result. It uses a longer section from the original recording, with a few minutes before and after the tiny 'purple fragment' that the Prelude uses, and we have a proliferation of layers, magnifying the intense and visionary effect of the Prelude into something altogether more substantial.

The chimes used would guarantee a maximally sad and melancholic sound, but here, with the reduced speeds and elaborate layering, we're looking beyond ordinary emotions, into the intrinsic beauty of the very core of human experience.

I made the original recording on 1 April 2014 on steep rough ground just below Hunting Gate, highest point on the Hunter's Path, on the north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.

You can hear the original chimes recording at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/690095/ .

Chimes used (all metal):

1. Woodstock Chimes of Olympos (tuned to a melancholy-sounding Ancient Greek scale)

2. Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (moderately high-pitched, tuned to a radiant-sounding mode on the pentatonic scale)

3. Woodstock Chimes of Polaris (high-pitched, tuned to a radiant-sounding mode on the pentatonic scale)

4. Woodstock Chimes of Mercury (very high-pitched, tuned to a radiant-sounding mode on the pentatonic scale)

Other important sounds:

1. birdsong — a crazy amount of it because of the large number of layers used. Rather less would have been better, but it would have been unworkable to cut out bits all over the place to reduce the birdsong amount.

2. A closely passing fly (not kidding!). This is used in four dedicated layers at the beginning to usher us into the inner auditorium, and again at the end to usher us safely to the outside world.

Deployment of layers:

Complex! See under Techie stuff further below…

I made the original recording on 1 April 2014 on steep rough ground just below Hunting Gate, highest point on the Hunter's Path, on the north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. You can hear it at https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/690095/ .
For more details about the different metal chimes used, please go to https://www.philipgoddard.com/shop/store-windchimes.htm.

Advisory
To get the best out of this, listen with high-grade headphones. Computer speakers — even high-grade ones — are inadequate and will lose a lot of important detail!

Another recording taking place, in the same session as the recording used in this work. The recorder (light grey furry windshield, centre) is perched on a small branch rather than on a tripod. We're looking down a quite steep slope from just by Hunting Gate.

Techie stuff:

The recorder was a Sony PCM-M10 with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (the original, more effective, light grey version), perched on a 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, and, much more recently, 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.

Layer processing and deployment:

Layers 1+1a: speed reduction to give pitch a fifth below original; 1 starts at beginning; 1a starts later on.

Layers 2+2a: half-speed, giving pitch an octave below original; 2 starts almost at beginning (missing a few seconds of prominent birdsong); 2a starts later on.

Layers 3+3a: also half-speed, but pitch further reduced to total an octave plus a fifth below original; 3 starts later on; 3a starts still further on.

Layer 4: also half-speed, but pitch totals 2 octaves below original; starts later on.

Layer 5: also half-speed, but pitch totals 2 octaves plus a fifth below original; starts beyond halfway through the work.

In addition I created four dedicated layers for our little buzzing friend, the fly; they were nipped out of Layers 1–4 respectively (not Layer 5 too, because that event was almost inaudible at that pitch level). I duplicated each clip of the fly, to deploy them close to beginning and end of the work, stacked in both places for one to hear the pitch difference between Layers 1 to 4.

All layers given back-of-cathedral acoustic in OrilRiver VST plugin. I had to use the Voxengo CurveEQ plugin after that, to apply a custom notch filter to each layer, to tame a strong and penetrating resonance where the chimes got at all loud. Of course the 'a' versions were created after all the processing.

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