Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 59 (augmented ending)

(Alternative version with more thunderous end section — see explanation further below)
Nature-Symphony 59 (Magnificent mountain of three glaciers towering) — Imagine yourself on a fairly high Alpine meadow with time on your hands. The great mountain of the title towers above you, with its awe-inspiring three steep glaciers, with its false sense of timelessness, its rockfalls, and its deep thunder echoes menacingly booming once in a while. Intriguing colourful colour-harmonies of the alpine flowers around you, while the great beckoning menace is ever there towering above. Towards the end the weather gathers menace, as a joyful-sounding squall-blown brief hailstorm rushes across to finish the work.

This Nature-Symphony was more elaborate than most to set up effectively for requisite sense of 'really got something here', but yet it was only during my full audition of the final mix a couple of days after making it that I fully appreciated the bewitching beauty and overall effectiveness of what I'd created. Indeed, it was only then that I was taken aback at the real high mountain deep thunder echoes sort of sound the lowest-pitch-reduced bamboo layers were producing; I hadn't at all been thinking of adding-in or simulating thunder in this work, yet I'd got it beautifully here; not overpowering, but a lurking menace.

*Why this alternative version?*
I still love the original version, in which we finish with a dry, rattling sound of an apparent brief hailstorm blowing through. However, when I got Bing Image Creator to produce some suitable background images for a YouTube video of the work, the striking images I came out with were jumping up and down at me to reflect the strength of the thunderclouds in certain of them in the ending of the work.

So, it was a natural then to produce this version, which is just the same apart from the ending section, where tension is building towards the hailstorm, and took a few clips from earlier in Layers 7+8 to add into that final section to give a stronger sense of 'wow!' there. It then made sense for me to share that here too, without prejudice to the first version.

Chimes used:

(Layers 1–4)

1. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Chimes, Soprano (Eastern European Gypsy scale, higher)

2. Music of the Spheres Gypsy Chimes, Mezzo (Ditto, lower)

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

(Layers 5+6)

Indonesian bamboo chime (small, longest tube c. 30cm) (its 6 tubes giving intervals and chords of second-inversion minor, diminished seventh, tritone, fourth, minor sixth, with a lot of emphasis on the minor third, and the differently pitched layers of it bringing in an emphasized minor seventh)

(Layers 7+8)

Indonesian bamboo chimes (large and small) (rather indeterminate tuning, but some hints of whole-tone scale, at least when heard at original pitch)

I made the original metal chimes recording (which isn't online) on 10 December 2013, on steep rough ground just below Hunting Gate, highest point of the Hunter's Path, high up on north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. The small bamboo chime recording is from 13 December 2023, on Piddledown, on north side of Teign Gorge, and the large+small bamboo chimes recording is from 21 November 2012, near Sharp Tor, by Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge. Geolocation is for the metal chimes.

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

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

Zoomed-in view from same position. The chimes with black tubes are the Gypsy ones — the Mezzo being the largest and loudest and so placed furthest from the recorder; the Woodstock chimes are Polaris (left) and Mars (centre — not used in the recording used here).

Techie stuff:

Recorder for the metal chimes was a Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield. It was placed on on a tree branch by means of a GorillaPod.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and more recent processing with A1 Stereo Control to greatly improve the atrocious stereo imaging of the PCM-M10.

(Metal chimes)
Layer 1: Half-speed, giving pitch an octave below original. Acoustic: back-of-cathedral

Layer 2: Half-speed, with further pitch reduction to give pitch an octave plus minor sixth below original. Acoustic: middling foreground in cathedral

Layer 3: Half-speed, with further pitch-reduction to give 2 octaves plus minor third below original. Acoustic: moderate back-of-cathedral

Layer 4: Quarter-speed, with further pitch-reduction to give five octaves plus minor third below original. Acoustic: ditto.

(Small bamboo chime)
Layer 5: half-speed, with pitch raise to minor third below original. Acoustic: moderate back-of-cathedral.

Layer 6: half-speed, with pitch raise to a tritone below original. Acoustic: ditto.

(Large+small bamboo chimes)
Layer 7: Half-speed, further pitch-reduced to give total of 2 octaves plus tritone below original. Acoustic: back-of-cathedral.

Layer 8: Half-speed, further pitch-reduced to give total of 2 octaves plus major sixth below original. Acoustic: ditto.

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