River Teign with wind chimes (Pluto, Gypsy Mezzo & Soprano) and birds - excerpt

This is the first of two wind chimes recordings I made beside the River Teign just very slightly upstream from where it enters the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, on the afternoon of 5th March 2013.

My recording studio for this set of recordings, by the River Teign just entering the Teign Gorge. The recorder was actually rather closer to the chimes than it looks in this photo. The chimes are the Gypsy Mezzo and Soprano (black tubes) and the Pluto chimes (silvery tubes).

The chimes in this recording are the Woodstock Chimes of Pluto, tuned to a radiant and 'happy' sounding pentatonic scale, and the Music of the Spheres Gypsy Mezzo and Soprano chimes, tuned to an Eastern European Gypsy scale. The interaction of the two scales produces an intriguing effect, which seems to radically change the nature of both scales and produce a sound different from either.

This time I'd learnt from my February recording session here and hung the chimes on a different tree, whose branches were so arranged as to enable me to get a much better sound balance, also helped by the Teign itself being much lower now and thus quieter. Also, I was wanting to get a variety of less close and indeed on occasions distant perspectives on the chimes. I thus had the recorder somewhat further back from the chimes, and the Gypsy chimes (with the most penetrating and 'carrying' tone) most removed from it. The result, then, is a very beautiful and 'sweet' balance between all the sound elements - something one often cannot get so easily when making opportunistic field recordings as I do.

This is a 5-minute excerpt from the 26+ minutes full recording.

Recording made with a Sony PCM-M10 on a Velbon mini-tripod, using the built-in microphones covered with a Rode Dead Kitten windshield. I have used Audacity to apply a custom EQ profile to correct for the high frequency muffling caused by the windshield and also to correct for the audible broad 'hump' in the bass frequencies of ALL my recordings prior to processing.

Please note that the volume level of this recording has been carefully adjusted for listening purposes, and ALL my recordings so far are meant to be listened to with a volume setting that would give a realistic level for playback of CLASSICAL music (a large but not exceptional symphony orchestra). If you have the right volume setting, you should not need to change that setting from one recording of mine to another.

(Later note: This recording - with better sound than here - is one of my CD-quality downloads, and can be found in my e-Store.)

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