Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 48

Nature-Symphony 48 (After the great earthquake the shocked silence shudders, shimmering like heat) — One of my most challenging and dissonant Nature-Symphonies, yes, but the dissonances (sometimes transient tone clusters) are constructive, creative ones, each promptly morphing into more recognisable intervals and harmonies.

Incidentally, a lot of the 'dissonance' is not really the sort of dissonance that people usually mean by that word, but more of a tuning mismatch between the two metal chimes, such that we get a lot of microtonal effects, with shimmering 'beats' in their sound as they interact. That in particular was my prompt for the 'shudders, shimmering like heat' reference in the title.

This evoked for me a sense of immediate aftermath of some natural disaster: awe-inspiring and invigorating / empowering, yet also with an impression of devastation and loss. It made me think of Anatol Vieru's strange elemental and evocative Earthquake Symphony (https://youtu.be/za9hxq0Zec0 ), which in turn pointed me to this work's title — though this sounds nothing like Vieru's highly distinctive nervously quivery-brittle idiom in that symphony.

The bamboo chime is deliberately adjusted to sound as though in the fairly far background. Any stronger sound from it would divert attention too much away from the awesomeness of the overall sound of the metal chimes. Note that the bottom layer of the metal chimes is pitched very low, and produces very low frequencies. This is intended, and thus not something that I've ignorantly failed to filter out. Indeed, I did filter out subsonic frequencies from all three metal chimes layers.

Chimes used:

(layers 1–3)
1. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Soprano (6 tubes, tuned to an Eastern European Gypsy scale)

2. Davis Blanchard Pluto (8 tubes, tuned to an ethereal-sounding minor scale but incorporating a minor major seventh chord, spread through the two octaves, which embraces both minor triad and augmented triad, and gives it a teasing, mysterious dissonant aspect)

(Layers 4+5)
3. Indonesian bamboo chime, small (longest tube c. 30cm) (notionally tuned to a minor scale)

I made the original metal chimes recording on 10 May 2018 (not on Freesound), on rough steep ground just below Hunting Gate, highest point on the Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. The bamboo chime recording dates from 13 December 2023, on Piddledown, a little above the Hunter's Path. Geolocation is for the metal chimes.

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

One of the YouTube video background images, an AI one from Bing Image Creator (the artist's canvas effect was my own addition).

Two Davis Blanchard chimes being recorded in a previous session at the same spot.

Techie stuff:

Recorder for all recordings was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields, and it was placed on a Zipshot Mini tripod (metal chimes), and an Aoka carbon-fibre mini tripod (bamboo chime).

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshields.

(Metal chimes)
(Had to de-hiss each layer using Bertom De-noiser)

Layer 1: half-speed, giving an octave pitch reduction

Layer 2: Speed to give pitch reduction of an octave plus major sixth below original.

Layer 3: Speed to give pitch reduction of an octave plus major sixth, then a further pitch reduction to total 2 octaves plus major sixth below original

(bamboo chime)
Layer 4: Speed reduction to produce pitch a minor third below original, and then pitch restored to original (rather than just stretch the track, which produces artefacts too readily)

Layer 5: Speed reduction to produce pitch a tritone below original, then pitch raised to just a third below original (again to avoid stretching the track)

Acoustic for all layers was 'moderate back-of-cathedral'.

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