Nature-Symphony 75
— Autumn colour and shadows, with rutting stags

Opus 109 (2024) — Timing: 47'

derived from field recordings of metal and small bamboo wind chimes, and of rutting roe deer stags, with various bird calls.

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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

*The rutting stags recording taking place.*

Instrumentation — (a) A field recording a small bamboo wind chime, small (c. 30cm longest tube), (b) a medium to large metal wind chime, and (c) the whole of Nature-Symphony 14 (Celebration of rutting stags); that itself is a 5-layer deployment of a field recording of, yes, rutting roe deer stags.
Original field recording locations / dates:
Bamboo and metal chimes: different positions by the Hunter's Path, high up on north side of the Teign Gorge (Drewsteignton, Devon, UK), on 13 December 2023 and 16 February 2017 respectively.
I made the rutting stags recording on 22 October 2023, quite well up on the wooded slope of Cranbrook Down, overlooking the Fingle Bridge defile, also in the Teign Gorge.
Processing and deployment: The small bamboo chime is in three layers, the third (lowest) itself being a mix to give an octave doubling. The metal chime is deployed in five layers, layer 8 itself being an octave-doubling mix. Nature-Symphony 14 constitutes layer 9. Full details on this work's Freesound page.
Distinguishing features — A surreal reverie landscape of autumn fallen-leaf colour and mellowness of light, with shadows pointing to darker, harsher days to come. This work has 9 layers in immediate practical terms, but in reality it's 15 layers, because three layers are mixes themselves, two of which are octave doublings, and, the third and most notable, layer 9, which is actually the whole of Nature-Symphony 14 (https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/707360/ ), which itself is a 5-layer work. Layers 5 and 6 of this work are a moderately low-pitched octave doubling that imparts a somewhat menacing autumnal quality to the soundscape, very much suggestive of unexplored deep shadows.

The metal chime (Davis Blanchard The Blues) has a strangely ambivalent sound, with a glowing laid-back quality that's tempered by a persistent 'tension' chord that it produces, and its really rather menacing frequent descending a whole tone from a perfect fourth to a major third.

To me, this is predominantly 'backdrop' music, rather than my usual focus on music that has some sense of urgency — yet it can be spellbinding in the ambiguity of its glowing radiance combined with that barely-concealed sense of threat. The stags' rutting calls give a beautifully earthy and, shall we say, 'hunky' angle on this iconic autumnal soundscape.

Nature-Symphony 75— Autumn colour and shadows, with rutting stags

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 75
— Autumn colour and shadows, with rutting stags