Nature-Symphony 14
— Celebration of rutting stags

Opus 46 (2023) — Timing: 48'

derived from a field recording of rutting stags

Nature-symphonies — a transformational discovery (background notes)…

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, they won't all necessarily have a title beyond Nature-Symphony [nn]. I'll add an imaginative title only where the finished piece suggests one to me. — Well, er, except that I do have one title earnestly looking for a work for it to be applied to, but currently I don't see how it could fit any extant or future transformed wind chimes works of mine! Not telling why!

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Basic details

Instrumentation — Rutting stags, with some ornamentation and occasional diversionary tactics from birds.
Original recording location / date — Well up on the steep Cranbrook Down bridleway from Fingle Bridge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, on 22 October 2023; recorded at narrow (90°) angle for widening afterwards for zoomed-in effect. Listen to the original recording to appreciate the subsequent transformation.
Processing — Five layers were used, at different speeds and therefore pitches, with the top layer being unprocessed. the speeds were chosen to produce a notional chord on the whole-tone scale, of (descending) whole-tone, major third, whole tone, major third (completing the octave).

This particular chord doesn't include augmented triads (pity!), but it does give us tritones, and a reasonably musical ear will notice that interval in the reverberations, though the effect is quite subtle because the stag calls are insufficiently pitch-focused to give an easily noticed effect of specific musical intervals.

I give specifics about the processing on my Freesound page for the work.
Primary distinguishing features — The loud and often almost burp-like bellowing of roe deer stags competing with each other is an impressive autumn sound, so when I eventually got a good recording of them it made perfect sense for me to experiment to see if I could make that recording the basis of one of my Nature-Symphonies.

The work begins and ends with the unprocessed soundscape (i.e., Layer 1), with successively lower and slower layers each following, so the depth and complexity increases. The same happens in reverse at the end, where Layer 5 finishes first and Layer 1 last.

Because Layer 1 is inevitably the shortest (i.e., it hasn't been slowed down), I split it somewhere in the middle and moved the second part so that it continues a little beyond Layer 2. The other three layers are truncated to give them their respective finishing points. The splitting of Layer 1 leaves a gap in it, which is artistically effective in resulting in a contrasting section in which the focus is more specifically on the lower, processed sounds.

A spat between two or more jays with their abrasive screams becomes pretty hilarious as it turns up in each successive layer in its lower and slower form. Indeed, bird sounds generally are an essential part of this work, so it isn't just about the rutting stags, and, rather, is a fully inclusive autumn soundscape in the Teign Gorge woods. Without the birds I might well have concluded that the particular Nature-Symphony wasn't worth keeping — or I might have tried adding some separately recorded bamboo wind chimes.

Nature-Symphony 14— Celebration of rutting stags

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 14
— Celebration of rutting stags