Nature-Symphony 28
— The mountaineer's 'Poem of Ecstasy'

Opus 60 (2024) — Timing: 53'

derived from a field recording of quartet of metal wind chimes, plus individually recorded solo small and medium bamboo chime

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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

Recording skylarks during this session — *The original metal chimes recording used in this work taking place.*

A different recording of the large bamboo chime, made a week or so later near the same spot — *Recording the medium bamboo chime used in this work; the recorder was close to the ground, off to bottom and somewhat right, facing steeply upward to the chime,*

Instrumentation — Part of field recording of quartet of metal wind chimes, used as 3 layers, and part of another of a solo medium bamboo chime (longest tube 42cm) and another of a solo small (longest tube 30cm).
Original field recording location / date:
- Metal chimes: 10 December 2013, high up on north side of Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.
- Bamboo chime (small) recording: 11 December 2023, similar location.
- Bamboo chime (medium) recording: 21 November 2023, similar location.
Processing — The layers were processed as follows:
- Layer 1 (metal chimes): half-speed, thus an octave below original;
- Layer 2 (ditto): speed reduction to make it an octave plus a fourth below original;
- Layer 3 (ditto): quarter-speed (2 octaves below original), but pitch reduced by a further minor sixth;
- Layers 4–6 (bamboo chimes): My precise data is suspect here, so I'm not sharing it. I was trying out so many options with the small and medium bamboo chime recordings (i.e., with regard to choice of chime and speed and pitch for each layer), that once I'd settled on my best choices I'd lost track of exactly what were the parameters for the candidates I'd chosen. I should have been writing down a note of each one, but that slipped my notice till it was too late. I could work it out through intensive listenings and comparisons with new examples, but it's not worth all that time expenditure.
  
  Let it suffice that Layer 4 is sort-of upper bass, and the bottom layer is at least 3 octaves below original, and really deep bass.
I give some more specifics about the recordings, chimes used, and the subsequent processing, on my Freesound page for the work.
Distinguishing features — An intense and visionary-sounding work, as intimated by the title. The metal chimes suggest the heights of aspiration, in a distinctly ungrounded state, while the much speed-reduced bamboo chime, giving some quite deep bass sound at times, is our grounding aspect of the work, reflecting everyday preoccupations down in the lowlands.

That's in marked contrast to Nature-Symphony 27, which uses the same ensemble plus Woodstock Pluto and Mercury chimes, and as a result had a more wistful, 'hoping to achieve' quality. Here, the sound is more sharp-etched and somewhat sterner, but in the most positive way, with the incandescence of actually making the summits of achievement, always moving on to other achievements.

Nature-Symphony 28— The mountaineer's 'Poem of Ecstasy'

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 28
— The mountaineer's 'Poem of Ecstasy'