How Philip Goddard's Nature-Symphonies came about

Introduction — Beliefs and creativity don't mix!

In useful human terms, creativity is the purposeful production of new and unique responses to a situation, which are not fettered, muted or capped by any beliefs or preconceived notions, so that one explores new ground and can produce new and previously unthought-of artistic works or indeed dishes on the table, and can live an abundant life in all its aspects, and be maximally of benefit for others and indeed Humanity in general.

For this very reason, if we are to be really genuine artistic creators it's not enough to keep producing art that's locked into some particular tradition or belief system, for then one rarely or never looks or experiments outside the narrow rut one is working within. That's minimally creative, no matter how highly regarded or financially successful one may be in one's particular field.

For those who genuinely want to clear themselves of beliefs, so their creativity becomes more powerful, on my Clarity of Being site I present a whole methodology for dissolving beliefs and opening up one's full humanity, and thus expanding / empowering one's creativity

One tremendous and indeed well-nigh essential way of empowering ourselves in that direction, and enriching our lives generally, is going out into the wilds hiking, but a truly great way to expand that is to do what I eventually did — to get recording natural soundscapes. Not just any old natural soundscapes, but ones that in particular ways inspire, haunt, thrill you, and inspire you to take care to learn from your ‘learning-curve’ errors and always set up sessions in carefully thought-out ways to achieve really effective and at least satisfying results.

Mother Nature is a trickster with a wicked twinkle in her eyes, so many recording sessions won't work out as expected, and thus creative flexibility is key even before we've selected brilliant recordings for some sort of use. — So let's see how I got on…

The narrative — Adventures with hidden purpose…

Phase 1 — Hiking (lots!) in wild places

When I moved to Exeter in 1976 to study for a first degree at the University there as a mature student, I joined their Out-of Doors Society, and so benefited tremendously from going out on stimulating and often pretty strenuous day walks in a group context on a weekly basis during winter and spring terms, thus being introduced to wonderful parts of South-West England that I'd not otherwise have been able to visit (not having my own transport, and relevant public transport mostly being insufficient or outright nonexistent). As well as spectacular walks on sections of Devon and Cornwall coast path, some walks were on Dartmoor and introduced me to more serious and remote wilderness walking, which had about it a more austere but adventurous and inspiring feel about it.

I remember being really struck by the pretty intense dawn chorus of skylarks by the big cairn at East White Barrow, in the cloud, while we awaited the sunrise that we'd not see because that particular (annual) all-night walk that time had consistently overcast and somewhat drizzly conditions. For me that chorus was at least due recompense for seeing no sunrise.

I rather bewildered my peer students at Easter vacation time (1979) by taking a 12-day holiday in the middle of my revision period for my Finals, for the first time going to the Scottish Highlands, based in Fort William. As a solo venturer, I'd committed myself to learning all I needed to learn about going on mountains by actually learning for myself*, with not a teacher in sight, apart from the odd tips I picked up from hikers I encountered on a few of those hikes. I then knew I had to go back there the following year (better equipped), and so committed myself to keeping challenging hiking going meanwhile, a lot of it on Dartmoor.

Initially most of those outings were with groups, but I soon learnt that solo hiking was much more rewarding. Without people yacking all the time (mostly ‘sheep’ and not at all on my wavelength), I could attune to my surroundings and all the small alive details around me. My, what wonderful and occasionally dangerously challenging experiences I had!

I stayed at Fort William every spring for two-plus weeks from 1979 to 1999, and then had a final Highlands fling in 2000, to sample the Torridon area. Those Highlands visits took me on amazing single-day mountain walks (up to 26 miles, and up to just topping 2,000 metres of ascent, though, unsurprisingly, those extremes never coincided!), certain of which plied me with mysteriously intense and haunting inner musical improvisations, usually with a quiet and gut-wrenchingly meaningful low drone underpinning the musical action — especially when I was anywhere near Rannoch Moor. Little did I know then that I'd be using extracts from those improvisations as major elements in my Symphony 4 (Highland Wilderness) (1995)!

A later and if anything even more iconic work that drew from those Highlands walks (challenging Sibelius' Tapiola and Holst's Egdon Heath for precedence) is my Music From the Mountain Waters (1999), which is pretty-well completely built on a strange scale that I drew from the haunting thick scrunchy chord that I heard persistently from the sound of very distant rushing water as heard from high mountain ridges.

Underlying all my creativity that was to develop was my keen interest in natural history in all its aspects. Living things, geology, meteorology. I went through periods of intensive nature photography, though didn't have the resources for really professional-grade equipment, so wasn't quite up to getting income from photo libraries back then (it was before digital photography had taken over).

Phase 2 — Working up to recording natural soundscapes

From about 2000 I was getting a bit hacked-off with often having music playing in my abode while I was doing things, and was increasingly hankering after being able to use instead recordings of some of the wonderful soundscapes I'd heard on some of my hikes, and some full dawn choruses elsewhere, and also some long recordings of thundering Cornish surf, and of the deep, subterranean-sounding thuds I occasionally heard where there were presumably sea caves below the coast path. My initial star ‘want’ was to capture skylarks singing over remotest Dartmoor — i.e, long, submersive recordings, and indeed an intense skylarks dawn chorus out there, as I'd heard on that long-ago night walk. My hiking was continuing unabated, so I was having reasonably frequent tremendous soundscape experiences, and so wishing I had a suitable recorder with me.

With no funds for equipment, I did an occasional Web search to get some idea of what recorders people were using, and I saw that hand-held recorders were becoming more accessible, though not cheap enough for me, neither of suitable sound quality to satisfy this very picky old b*gger. Even if I'd had the money, larger / heavier equipment was completely ‘out’ because of my not having my own transport and relying on hitch-hiking to get from Exeter to and from my hiking routes — and having skeletal weaknesses that made it quite a wonder that I succeeded in serious hiking at all*! Yes, I had to keep rucksack weight / bulk to a reasonable minimum.

However, I did also search around online and bought the odd commercial natural soundscape CDs, but was frustrated that none of that included Cornish surf as I heard it on my hikes, nor really any of the most compelling soundscapes I heard on my own hikes. I also found a few quite pleasant-sounding wind chimes recordings, but they actually turned out to be appallingly bland, and mostly what I'd label as scam, because most were clearly just repeating loops of a few-minute clip — and their sound was just too effing bland, aimed to bore people to sleep or into brain-damaging meditational ‘no-mind’ states*.

Freesound — my doorway to ‘Recording Heaven’

Then I discovered Freesound, and downloaded lots of thunderstorms especially, and also some forest soundscapes and the odd others, but still I found virtually nothing that was a real equivalent of what was so appealing to me on my hikes.

However, come about 2010, I was starting to pay more attention to Freesounders' notes about their natural soundscape uploads, and noting that a particular Zoom model (I think H2N or similar) had become popular and was quite widely praised and was said to be remarkably inexpensive — though I did note that all recordings I listened to that were made with that model had quite recessed and unnatural treble, evident on sea recordings.

Next step, in spring 2012, was to search around for detailed technical reviews of that model. I came upon Ken Rockwell's very detailed review of that model (no longer on his site), which looked very encouraging, and gave just the sort of info I'd been after. I noted there that the frequency response curve showed a premature rounding-off of the upper treble, so I was a little unsure — but then at the bottom of that review, Ken concluded that although this was a very worthy model, there was another that he'd recently reviewed that was in some respects better, especially regarding frequency response, and was a bit cheaper — the Sony PCM-M10.

So, rather incredulously, after perusing that review and concluding that that was probably the recorder for me, I conducted my final test on Freesound before taking the plunge. I listened to a selection of sea recordings taken with one or other of those two models, comparing their audible frequency response. — And, you know what? I could easily hear that the Zoom was consistently showing recessed treble, while the Sony had it near-enough right. — A no-brainer!

By then I was a little better-off financially, so the price of that little Sony wasn't really an issue. I was to realize years later that in fact that model had very poor stereo separation, but at least then I found software to rectify that (A1 Stereo Control).

During the autumn a physical problem I'd had through that 2012 summer* was very slowly relenting, and during the autumn I was starting to get out on some moderate hikes once more, and thrilled my pants off by getting real ‘wow’ recordings of sea dramatics at and just south-west of the Shag Rock headland near Perranporth. I was tasting more and more blood, so to speak (everyone knows I'm a bogeyman, if not an outright vampire!).

Add-in Phase 3 — the crazy Wind Chimes in the Wild project

Concurrently, I was perking up about that wind chimes frustration. A real motivator was my hearing a hair-raisingly beautiful and other-worldly, partially dissonant, wind chime or pair of them in a garden close to Weston village (south-east Devon) one time when I took a wrong road briefly.

If I'd had my head screwed-on properly I'd have paused to call in at that house and ask them what make / model of chime that was, and where they'd got it / them. I've never since heard that particular sound, and I couldn't remember exactly where along there I'd heard it, so a retrospective inquiry would have been quite a search, and at that time I had no idea that I might have cause to buy some chimes myself.

I started exploring online for a small selection of wind chimes I could take out with me to string up on tree branches, primarily in the Teign Gorge, not far from Exeter, and record those as solo, and, subject to sounding good, duos / ensembles of the chimes. I ended up ordering some Woodstock aluminium chimes, and soon after, a soprano and mezzo version of the Gypsy chimes from Music of the Spheres, by then getting more and more interested in strongly engaging and indeed challenging combinations, with eyebrow-raisingly new sounds from interactions between the different musical scales. I'd also bought locally a cheap pair of large and small bamboo chimes for a contrasting type of sound.

The musical quality of the various combinations just blew me away, having sounds that in most cases tapped deep levels of musical inspiration, and really made those combinations a sort of elemental music composition in their own right.

The only downside of the chimes sound, though, was that when the wind made the chimes very active their sound was rather a fatiguing jangle. So, a year or so later I got the idea to try making a half-speed (and thus an octave lower) version of one of those ensembles. That was incredibly beautiful and haunting, and much more approachable for extended listening.

Because this was all slower, the notes were no longer just flicking past in a jangle when things got active. I could really listen to the ‘internals’ of each note and its interaction with other concurrent notes, which sometimes had microtonal differences giving the most exquisite shimmering effects. After that I produced half-speed versions of all the more interesting combinations, though at that stage had no real idea of experimenting further with them.

I completed my project of getting all the main combinations of those chimes recorded, during spring 2014, and thought the project was completed.

Come February 2017, however, I got fidgety and was wondering about finding some chime(s) that were more challenging in their sound, and possibly even having one or two chimes custom-made.

Davis Blanchard chimes add a whole new layer…

That's when I stumbled upon the Davis Blanchard Wind Chimes site (sadly, the business no longer exists). Their chimes were different. Not aluminium, but galvanized steel, and having a bright steely sound rich in harmonics — and a small proportion of their range had challenging selections of pitches, with the odd outright dissonances and in any case musically potent intervals and chords. Even one on the whole-tone scale! — Wow, what was I waiting for? The four that I ordered did cost me quite a bit more than the other chimes (shipping from the USA almost doubled the basic cost), but I didn't regret the deal, for they opened-up whole new soundworlds.

Being basically steel, these chimes (also being 8-tube instead of the normal 5 or 6) were heavier than normal chimes of notionally similar size, so I could take only two out at a time, together with the much lighter large+small bamboo chimes, and the total weight was quite stressful for me to carry, bearing in mind my various physical weaknesses.

On my first session with those I took out the DB Pluto and The Blues chimes, and recorded both as solo, and tried recording them as a duo. However, the latter sounded so discordant to me, albeit having a really nice aspect to the sound, that I stopped the recording after a few minutes. But then, when I examined the recordings, before deleting the abandoned one I thought to have a quick listen again to that chaotically discordant sound, and was taken aback.

Yes, at first it did sound a mess, but my ears quickly attuned to the sound, and I then regretted my hasty judgement during that session, and determined that I'd record all duo combinations of those chimes, regardless of immediate impressions. This was a whole new soundworld, bursting with microtonal intervals and harmonic surprises.

No wonder, then, that I did record all those duo combinations, and found each in its own way thrilling — and the half-speed versions were absolutely super-wow, for one could then really listen to the exquisite shimmering effects of the microtonal intervals.

In Spring 2018 I went on to combine those chimes with the smaller of the two Gypsy chimes, to get some really outlandish sounds — particularly dissonant microtonally because the DB chimes were tuned to A448, whereas the Gypsy chimes were tuned to the standard A440.

The idle experiment that dropped me right in it…

It was in late August 2023 that I belatedly made a half-speed version of a much earlier recording, of the two Gypsy chimes, the smallish pentatonic Woodstock Pluto, and large + small bamboo chimes, which had a particularly pleasing and musical quality about it.

Just as a little bit of doodling, I thought that was funny: I'd had a marvellous reverb VST plugin called OrilRiver for a few years (used judiciously in producing better versions of some of my ‘conventionally’-composed works' MIDI renditions) — yet I'd not thought to see what any of these half-speed chimes would sound like in a cathedral. So, with a nice sense of tentatively peeking into a whole ballpark of weird unknowns, I ‘idly’ experimented with the aforementioned belated half-speed version (see photo above for recording setup).

Little did I know what my ensuing little experiment was to tip me headlong into! I made four copies of the half-speed recording of the aforementioned field recording, all of which I put on Freesound. Just listen to these two versions with their different reverb settings, reasonably convincingly mimicking different distances away, from ‘relatively close foreground’ to ‘back of cathedral’. The other two versions were intermediate between these two. I chose the latter as my definitive version to present to the world as first example of a totally new type of music work, which I called ‘Nature-Symphonies’.

— But not before I'd rather dubiously tried applying that reverb to scattered half-speed chimes recordings throughout my whole collection, and found that every one I thus spot-checked sounded out-of-the-world tremendous in their different ways, ensuring that there could be no doubt that I was now on an immensely abundant trail of new discovery.

Discovering and seeking to understand whole new soundworlds

That first Nature-Symphony (entitled The inner fire wistfully seeks to define itself) was one of the simplest I was to produce. Typically I'd use more than one layer in Audacity, normally at a carefully chosen different pitch or/and speed, getting even more varied and often dramatic effects.

I discovered one thing in particular that one needs to get one's head around was that when a chime is significantly pitch-reduced (say, an octave or more), whether as a result of speed reduction or direct pitch reduction, in practical terms it's NOT giving the same sounds / music as the original, just transposed down. — No indeed, it's producing a whole new music and soundworld!

Careful listening to the original and lower-pitched versions reveals something mighty interesting that explains the basis of the difference. One's natural tendency is to focus on a certain pitch-range and timbre as representing the instrument's ‘primary’ tone — the effective ‘real’ pitch of the note —, so when the instrument is pitch-reduced sufficiently, we naturally focus on a harmonic of the original ‘singing’ tone, then interpreting the original ‘singing’ tone as an undertone of the perceived ‘primary’ tone.

Not only that, but presumably because all the metal chimes are tuned in just intonation (as opposed to equal temperament), the combination of changed pitch, interpreting harmonics as ‘primary’ tones, and having different layers at different pitches, we have a hotbed of small mismatches of notes and intervals between those layers, producing a whole new world of (at times) shimmering microtonal effects. The bigger a pitch reduction, the more pronounced are those tuning anomalies, and so the weirder the sound.

Any creator who regards such anomalies as unwelcome hideousnesses needs to open up their own restricted outlook and release more of their own creativity! All those ‘anomalies’ are the very stuff of heightened creativity and the enrichment of human experience and achievements (i.e., within certain bounds)!

Although most of my Nature-Symphonies use just wind chimes as the overtly musical element (environmental sounds also often being an important element too), a small proportion use, at least predominantly, other natural sounds, such as bird choruses, rutting stags, bizarre seabird calls, and — completely beyond the pale — a number using the sound of flies and bees as musical instruments! (For goodness' sake get this guy (pardon, er, bogeyman) shut away in a psycho institution quick!)

The role of composer creativity in these Nature-Symphonies

This is a con! — You're just banging-together recordings of random sounds and pretending it means something profound! — Concisely comment, with reasons…

Yeah, I'll comment all right! To anyone who's even thinking of saying that sort of thing to me, I have a supreme counsel of wisdom: Kindly run along now, and cock the other leg somewhere else far-removed!. No point in trying to convince such belief-driven nay-sayers and downright trolls!

Now, for those with more open minds, let's summarize the ways my own creativity and mental clarity have been a crucial part of the process. This can't be an exhaustive list, but it should give a reasonable idea of the various angles from which great awareness, sensitivity and, yes, creativity, is essential to get more than just the odd fluke inspiring, even electrifying, end-product.

• Being a particularly sensitive and aware composer to start with (being a no-soul person with ‘sniff-it-out’ specialist configuration, so I already recognise the significance of particular intervals, chords, transitions, modulations, on a deeper-than-emotional — indeed, elemental — level.

  Knowing the names of musical elements was NOT essential, and I see it being rather a hindrance for many, because it distracts attention away from really listening in the most sensitive and creative ways. That way I already had an idea from direct experience that certain sound sequences put together in particular ways could be expected to have particular types of effect.

• An experience-based understanding of acoustics and acoustic relationships i.e., concerning spatial configuration of sounds and recorder / microphones. Being able to work out which sounds (in multiple track works) are best grouped roughly together and which, if any, are best widely separated. Impressiveness through ‘wow’ stereo effects may often detract from the real musical essence of the work.
  

  Typically, different wind chimes in a duo / ensemble need to be well separated, but in some cases a particular pair might be best presented as a single instrument, well separated from other chimes. In other words, stereo separation needs to be part of the meaningful musical content, and not just a matter of imposing a freaky or ‘psychedelic’ effect as so many people do.

  Where I used flies and bees as the primary musical instruments it was particularly important not to pan any of the layers, so that the natural spread of the sounds was faithfully reproduced. When I tried panning to give additional spatial effects, the result seemed ‘impressive’, but musically it was a confused mess.

• Having the sensitivity to recognise which dissonances are constructive and meaningful in the current context, and which ones simply don't meaningfully ‘fit’.

• Tuning into the elemental beauty of non-equal temperament tuning and microtonal intervals, with their shimmering effects.

• Aware discernment: having a reasonably accurate intuition of which recordings are likely to be ‘interesting’ in useful ways when put together (multi-layered) in some way, so one spends a minimum of time testing combinations that don't work well.

• On the other hand, also being adventurous, with a very open mind and ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ approach, to balance with the aware discernment (i.e., ‘aware discernment’ is NOT the same as timidity — the negative Do take care! sort of mindset). A reasonably small minority of less outstanding items is inevitable if one isn't going to miss opportunities for some really stunning successes.

• Being finely attuned to solitude in wild places, to the point that it readily inspires new music within one.

• Having the inspired deep connection that enables one readily to intuit as to what sound / soundscapes / recordings promise to be effective or at least very much worth trying out as a Nature-Symphony element.

• An aptitude for achieving balance of timbre types and pitch ranges, just as with creating good compositions for orchestral instruments.

• A flair for experimenting, including beyond preconceived boundaries, both in types of sound and in pitch ranges and speeds. Flexible assessment also required; a grotesque ‘failure’ can sometimes be experienced on its own terms as a stunning success!

There would be other ways too, but these should give a fair idea of the sort of abilities and aptitudes required.

Randomness — Friend or foe? — Nah, go for unpredictability!

Really that very question tends to lead us astray. Worthwhile (i.e. genuinely beneficial, as distinct from being popular) art contains some element(s) of the unexpected — in other words, at least some degree of unpredictability. The problem with the term ‘randomness’ is that most people don't understand what that term really means, and usually think of it as representing an even distribution of details or events. Genuine randomness is based on unpredictability, so within an apparently disordered array there would be patches or sections that appear at least more ordered, and maybe even apparently precisely ordered.

That opens the doorway to whole vistas of potentially large-scale and visionary music works, provided they're created by really sensitive and deeply-connected composers who can recognise the ‘meaningfulness’ of certain relationships between chaos and order in a fundamentally random or chaotic system.

For me, the prime source of such unpredictability in an artistically potent form has undoubtedly been event sequences driven by natural processes. In practical terms, this has been most effective as recognisable music when I used wind chimes strung up on tree branches in relatively wild places. The coming and going of wind gusts, and their great variability of strength, straightaway gave interest and some sense of ‘narrative’, with timbres also changing according to how hard the chimes' strikers hit the tubes. Also, the sound of the gusts coming through the trees was effectively an additional instrument, albeit unpitched, often giving dramatic episodes in its own right. — And of course in many recordings bird sounds also punctuated the proceedings, so that a rich and varied soundworld was produced.

My Nature-Symphonies are an immensely meaningful parallel of some of the stochastic (probability-driven) works of Iannis Xenakis. The difference in his case was that he used mathematically worked-out probabilistic structures and processes as the basis of his works, whereas instead of my doing mathematical computations I simply allowed Mother Nature to do the work for me. In both cases intense and visionary works with a real elemental emotional power have resulted.

For more about my relationship with Xenakis' music, see relevant notes in Musical influences on Philip Goddard's music & literary works.

Browse through the Nature-Symphonies

On Freesound — For the most part, having the most detailed notes about the respective works.

On YouTube — Mostly with less detailed notes, but with related images, which are location photos (of original recording sessions) for the earlier videos, and often really telling AI-generated images for the later ones.