Nature-Symphony 41
— Forest springtime — the enigmatic waiting…

Opus 75 (2024) — Timing: 63'

derived from field recording of ensemble of two metal wind chimes with large and small bamboo chime, and birds

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 location for the metal chimes — A recording at the same spot during a previous session. The arrow points to the recorder. For this recording the bamboo chimes were rather closer to the recorder — about the same distance as the metal chimes.

Instrumentation — Part of field recording of ensemble of two metal chimes plus large and small bamboo chime and birdsong.
Original field recording location / date: 10 May 2017, on steep ground just below the Hunter's Path (high up on north side of Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, by Hunting Gate, at the highest point of that track.
Processing and deployment: Four layers were used, with different speed / pitch reductions, and different degrees of back-of-cathedral acoustic.

For fuller details please see the Freesound page for the work.
Distinguishing features — As with my Nature-Symphonies in general, I didn't choose for this work to come out as it has — and this is definitely a case where I felt a little dissatisfaction because out of habit I was wanting more obvious action and sense of direction. The challenge for me in such cases is always broadly the same: to set aside those preconceptions of what the work should be like, and to reorient my own outlook on what I'd just created, and to work on the basis of making the most meaning out of what Nature's stochastic (probability-driven) processes had given me.

after the rather comical monstrosity of Nature-Symphony 40, this one is superficially dreamy-gentle, with mostly just light breeze to move the chimes, and birds singing. Quite a lot of the time the quiet harmonies from the metal chimes have an almost cheesy peacefulness, but when you listen to them closely you can hear that there's more to it than that, for an ongoing conflict is running between the gentle laid-back sound of the Blues chime and the more earnest and troubled sound of the Twilight chime — the uneasy sense of something lurking in the shadows, which might come out to bite you.

The large bamboo chime adds to the unease through being on some different scale again, with one particular note that feels unsettling, again suggesting 'You just wait till you see what's now waiting for you in the woodshed tonight', sort-of thing. And then there erupt the occasional celebratory-seeming big outbursts, when a rare quite stiff gust comes along and briefly gets the chimes really sounding. It all has an enigmatic feel about it, no questions really being answered.

That sense of enigma no doubt rests largely upon the sense of waiting for something big and significant to happen. Once in a while there is one of the aforementioned outbursts, which each sounds great in itself, but is that what one is waiting for? — Not sure, not sure! A lot of mostly quiet beauty along the way, but that uneasy sense of not being sure what one is awaiting. It must be just a dream, which of course (hopefully) one wakes from…

Nature-Symphony 41— Forest springtime — the enigmatic waiting…

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 41
— Forest springtime — the enigmatic waiting…