Nature-Symphony 69
— Flies as musicians (4): diminished 7th, extended (explicit)

Rannoch Moor Moods, 2

Opus 103 (2024) — Timing: 44'

derived from a recording of flies and bumblebees, with birds and grasshoppers

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

4-days-later mockup of the original recording taking place — *A 4-days-later mockup of this recording taking place. Tripod is set low to help reduce wind disturbance.*

Instrumentation — A field recording of flies and bumblebees, grasshopper(s), with occasional little flurries of linnet calls.
Original field recording location / dates: I made the original recording on 17 July 2024 on the summit area of Cranbrook Down in the south-west corner within the rounded square of the ancient hill fort Cranbrook Castle, high above the Teign Gorge (Drewsteignton, Devon, UK).
Processing and deployment: This work has nine layers, as detailed in the Freesound page for this work, where the processing is also described. They are tuned to a diminished seventh chord, which has a tritone added at the bottom and a semitone plus a minor third (transposed up an octave) above, with a further layer to create a quite frequent drone effect, reminiscent of my use of a drone underpinning the half-diminished seventh in my Symphony 4 (Highland Wilderness) (and also diminished seventh in its final movement).
Distinguishing features —

Here we have a bold attempt to use my little winged circus to emulate something of the inspiringly brooding essence of my Symphony 4, and its Scottish Highlands and especially Rannoch Moor resonances. To me at least, it does work well, though always with the quite severe constraints of a composition of this type — for example, the number of notes that one fly can sound is the number of layers that I use, and by the time I've got up to eight layers the sum total of background sound is almost (to distinctly) unacceptable (and here I'm using nine!), and the order and any rhythmic placement of the notes or other sounds is fixed for the whole work, which can sound distinctly, moronically, odd at times!

I'd actually conceived this work to use just the diminished seventh chord with added tritone at the bottom, and it was only when I'd got that notionally complete that I felt it was a bit underwhelming as it stood, and got the hunch to add the semitone above (still underwhelming), then, by trial and error, find the 'real' top note that my deeper aspects were seeking to point me to, which was a minor third above that 'semitone-above'.

That immediately registered as the right one, though still there was something about it not as incisive as I was after, and hence my raising those two top notes by a full octave. That then reflected to a fair extent the 'sound and feel' of an intense-sounding chord that appears in the dramatic passage in my Symphony 4 final movement where the frantic search for something that can never be found is heading into its fiery crux. It's still more effective there, however, with more notes and the sharper-etched sonority of high woodwind in the top of the chord.

The flies' timbres are an important aspect of each Nature-Symphony using them. Generally, in these processed arrangements, each individual fly sounds remarkably like a fast tremolando orchestral strings section, albeit more precisely located but on the move. So, we get sonorities ranging from delicate sul ponticello violins right down to double-basses (sometimes sounding like a cross between that and a contrabassoon). At least for the most part the lower ones and those providing smoother notes of longer duration aren't true (two-winged) flies at all but bumblebees.

Nature-Symphony 69— Flies as musicians (4): diminished 7th, extended (explicit)

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 69
— Flies as musicians (4): diminished 7th, extended (explicit)