Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 54

Nature-Symphony 54 (Sinfonia Lugubre della Primavera – "Il miagolio") — Another surprising one — Yes, "The Meow" to us disgusting non-Italians! That title had been waiting in my wings from the very beginning of my creating Nature-Symphonies, and its time has finally come! — And yes, I did have Edvard Munch's painting The Scream in mind!

This work consists of five layers, four of which use just one recording of a particular solo metal chime, at different speeds and pitches, meaningfully aligned on the timeline. The chime in question has a distinctive melancholy about its sound, with a particularly prominent descending semitone characterizing its emotional tone. The effect here is one of an unremitting grief, expressing itself effectively as a whole fabric of impassioned meows!

But then, as that would be too much unremitting meow for the length of one of my Nature-Symphonies, I added in a recording of distant spring afternoon birds, with foreground hoverflies and bumblebees, in an open moorland forestry clearing on Dartmoor, both to give an appropriate contrasting element and to add to the musical effect in more specific ways. Both birds and flies are there to try to draw poor old Jeoffry the cat out of his misery (perhaps his owner-companion is no more?) and get him chasing and pouncing on them, but no, his heart is heavy indeed!

The work finishes with a brief coda consisting of a continuation of the birds and flies scenario, so we can re-ground our awareness and enjoy the beautiful positive energy, especially of the flies, which sound at times remarkably like energetic tremolo orchestral string sections.

Sound sources used:

layers 1–4: Woodstock Chimes of Olympos (6 tubes, tuned to an Ancient Greek scale, which is similar or identical to the well-known scale associated with Japanese koto music)

Layer 5: Distant birds and foreground hoverflies and bumblebees

I made the original chimes recording on 14 November 2012 (https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/705706/ ), on isolated tree beside Hunter's Path near Sharp Tor, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, and the birds / flies recording on 8 June 2018 (https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/661258/ ), on the east edge of the large open moorland clearing extending very roughly northwards from Bellever Tor, near Postbridge, Dartmoor, Devon, UK. Geolocation is for the chime recording.

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

One of Bing Image Creator's tries when I challenged it with this subject, "…in style of Munch". It appears that its AI engine has one big confusion between Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Goch, but at least the effect is both gripping and hilarious!

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 this time. As it is, the Pluto chimes came out really insufficiently strongly in the ensembles there. 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.

Techie stuff:

Recorder for the chime was a Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective version), and it was placed on a Hama Mini tripod (not just 'mini' but tiny!) placed astride the base of a branch on the same tree that the chimes were hanging from.

Recorder for the flies / birds was Sony PCM-D100, with three nested custom Windcut furry windshields, placed on a Hama normal-size tripod.
(Note that my use of a third furry windshield was a grievous error, because the post-recording treble-boosting EQ to compensate for the considerable muffling from so many windshields greatly boosted the microphone hiss. I had to apply background noise-reduction and de-hissing to this recording to make it usable for this work, especially as it had to be amplified by 9dB to use here.

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

Layer 1: Speed to give pitch reduction of a major sixth below original. Acoustic: moderate back-of-cathedral

Layer 2: Half-speed, giving pitch reduction of an octave below original. Acoustic: back-of-cathedral

Layer 3: Speed to give pitch an octave plus a tritone below original. Acoustic: moderate back-of-cathedral

Layer 4: Speed to give pitch two octaves plus a tritone below original. Acoustic: moderate back-of-cathedral

Layer 5 (flies and birds): No speed or pitch change, but de-hissing and 6dB background noise reduction. Acoustic: middling foreground in cathedral

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