Nature-Symphony 82
— The rutting stags' ‘Music of the Depths’

Opus 116 (2026) — Timing: 66'

generated from recording of rutting roe deer stags, in two layers, plus strongly processed solo metal wind chime, in one layer, with bird calls.

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 deer recording in progress — **Above:** the deer recording in progress. A deep steep-sided valley lies between here and the Prestonbury Castle hill beyond, yet the louder rutting calls we hear aren't on this side at all, but on the lower slopes of that hill.

**Below:** Recording two Davis Blanchard chimes plus a large and small cheap bamboo chime in this session. The arrow points to the recorder, with its black furry windshield. For this recording (just the one chime), the hanging position was very roughly intermediate between those of the two Davis Blanchard chimes in this view.

A different recording in the same chimes recording session — **Above:** the deer recording in progress. A deep steep-sided valley lies between here and the Prestonbury Castle hill beyond, yet the louder rutting calls we hear aren't on this side at all, but on the lower slopes of that hill.

**Below:** Recording two Davis Blanchard chimes plus a large and small cheap bamboo chime in this session. The arrow points to the recorder, with its black furry windshield. For this recording (just the one chime), the hanging position was very roughly intermediate between those of the two Davis Blanchard chimes in this view.

Instrumentation — Field recording of Davis Blanchard Pluto chimes 8-tube galvanized steel wind chime, and field recording of rutting roe deer stags.
Original field recording locations / dates:
Wind chime on steep ground just below Hunting Gate, highest point on the Hunter's Path, on north side of the Teign Gorge (Drewsteignton, Devon, UK), 16 February 2017.
Rutting stags: recorded from part-way up wooded valley slope overlooking Fingle Bridge (Teign Gorge) from south, 12 October 2026.
Processing and deployment: The rutting stags recording deployed in two layers: one unchanged, and the other same speed but pitch-lowered by a tritone, and displaced a little along the timeline so that the two layers interact properly. I gave both layers a little discreet reverb to mimic the in-forest reverb that I actually heard during the recording session but which for some reason wasn't significantly noticeable natively in the recording — so, apart from the pitch reduction of layer 2, the deer sound as close as possible to what I heard at the time.

The chimes recording is one layer, starting a bit after layer 2, running at half-speed and further pitch-shifted to make it three octaves below original. I gave it a ‘back of cathedral’ acoustic to really bring out its other-worldliness.
Full details of this rather complex deployment on this work's Freesound page.
Distinguishing features — The deer recording includes bird calls, a continuous bustling hum of the woodland flies, and the occasional sound of the odd bits falling from the trees (late acorns, maybe). The chime, sounding particularly deep, ponderous and other-worldly, has an extraordinary sound, as its eight tubes sound an adulterated minor scale spread out over two octaves, and emphasizing the minor-major seventh chord, minor triad and augmented triad — a potent suggester of deep unknowns.

Nature-Symphony 82 — The rutting stags' ‘Music of the Depths’

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 82
— The rutting stags' ‘Music of the Depths’