It was in 2012 that I tentatively started recording natural soundscapes,
and within a few months got the idea of purchasing some high-grade precision-tuned wind chimes to
record out in the wilds, hung up on tree branches. …
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… I quickly found that not only was the sound of each set of chimes individually beautiful and to
some extent inspiring in quality when recorded out in the wild like that (mostly high-up in the
Teign Gorge, Devon, UK), but also, almost all of the combinations of different chimes worked out
beautifully musically, though naturally some combinations made a more ‘challenging’ listen than
others.
Much more recently I tried making a half-speed version of part of each of the most appealing or
otherwise ‘promising’ chimes ensemble recordings. They were each a revelation — immensely
beautiful, with quite dramatic transformation of the original sound. That is, not just a matter of
being slower and an octave lower, but the whole musical and emotional effect changed.
But then, in late August 2023 I got this little urge to do something really stupid
(all the world's ‘sheep’ know I'm stupid anyway, so I thought I might as well do it
anyway!), and try putting a particularly evocative chimes ensemble recording in a virtual
cathedral, of all things, just to see how crazy it might sound.
I tried that with a particularly usable and effective reverb VST plugin called Orilriver, and
was bowled over by the results. Shivers up spine, and plenty of goose-bumps for good measure! I
then did listening spot tests using Orilriver in preview mode on a wide selection of my half-speed
chimes recordings, and every one was incredibly, amazingly, transformed.
It was clear that I'd sort-of unwittingly stumbled into producing powerfully beautiful
stochastic / probability-driven music works that have a lot in common with the ethos
and methods of Iannis Xenakis, but with a big practical difference. Whereas typically
he worked out probabilistic structures and processes to shape many of his works, this
lunatic composer instead left that task to ‘Mother Nature’, then transforming those sounds in a way
that Xenakis did in most of his electroacoustic works, to enhance their ability to excite the
listener's own inner creativity and to generate profound and powerful experiences in the
process.
It can be no surprise, then, that in these new works of mine there would be passing (albeit
partial) resemblances to certain Xenakis works — Bohor comes particularly to mind, and
even, in a funny way, some aspects of Terretektorh.
It was then a real no-brainer to recognise each such piece of mine as one of my numbered public
music compositions. For the purpose of a liberating simplicity I chose to classify ALL of this type
of work that I produce as what I'm calling nature-symphonies. That hyphen is
important, because they are not just symphonies about nature, but are a very specific type of
composition — nature-generated symphonies.
The term ‘symphony’, although closely guarded with a very restricted meaning by small-minded
traditionalists, actually just means ‘sounding together’, which apparently was its original
meaning. For me to want to use that term, there need to be at least two contrasting elements that
are in some way combined or worked together in some way that is much more effective and deeply
inspiring than the sum of those elements.
Although, in terms of my own nature-symphonies, that would mean ensembles rather than solo
chimes sets, I've found that certain of my recordings using just one chimes set still produce
effective and powerful nature-symphonies because of some element of the natural soundscape within
which the chimes were sounding. A weir or waterfall, for example, or the wind itself, or a liberal
amount of bird sound (much of which latter sounds remarkably musical at half-speed).
As for title for each work, my intention wasn't that they'd all necessarily have a
title beyond Nature-Symphony [nn], but in practice each of them did earn one.
