Nature-Symphony 59
— Magnificent mountain of three glaciers towering

Basic details

• Instrumentation — Field recordings, respectively, of a trio of metal wind chimes, a solo small bamboo chime, and a large plus small bamboo chime.

• Original field recording location / date: on 10 December 2013 on rough steep ground beside Hunting Gate, highest point of the Hunter's Path, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK

• Processing and deployment: The metal chimes recording was deployed in 4 layers, with various speed and pitch reductions and degrees of cathedral acoustic. The solo small bamboo chime is in 2 layers, at half-speed, but pitch-raised, though not as far as original pitch. The large plus small chimes are also in 2 layers, much pitch-reduced, the bottom layer especially giving the most deep and thunder-like sound I've ever obtained from a wind chime of any type.
  For fuller details please see the Freesound page for this work.

• Distinguishing features — A particularly colourful and atmospheric soundscape is created, full of a rather eerie sense of nervous anticipation, accentuated not only by the apparent fairly distant booms of thunder, but by the relative atonality of much of the music (i.e., once all the metal chimes layers are sounding) — in this case such atonality not equating with with a real sense of discord. Rather, everything seems strangely coloured in all sorts of exquisitely beautiful ways, like a profusion of different Alpine flowers in the foreground, contrasting with the menace and grandeur of the mountain of the title rising imposingly beyond.