Nature-Symphony 9a
— Into the haunted autumn forest…

Opus 41a (2023) — Timing: 61'

derived from a Wind Chimes in the Wild field recording

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

Another recording taking place during same session as this recording — Another recording taking place during this session. The small bamboo chime is beyond the metal (Pluto) chime, and difficult to see because of its tubes being coloured black.

Instrumentation — Wind chimes as follows:

Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (relatively high-pitched, sunny-sounding pentatonic scale)
Woodstock Gregorian Chimes (Tenor) (upbeat-sounding Gregorian chant scale)
Large and small set of bamboo chimes (cheaply purchased locally — imprecise tuning, with hint of whole-tone scale).

Original recording location / date — at a reasonably secluded spot at Sharp Tor, by the Hunter's Path, high up on north side of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK, on 21 November 2012.
Processing — (a) Three copies of original used as layers, at different speeds and therefore different pitches — the topmost being an octave lower than the original, and the bottom being an octave plus a fourth lower than that (a whole 29 semitones below the original); (c) application of a cathedral acoustic with 'back of cathedral' perspective to the top layer and a somewhat more forward perspective in the other two layers. (d) taming of the very strong low bass frequencies.

I just slightly broke my general 'non-intervention' guideline (for my Nature-Symphonies) in that, having cut the middle and bottom layers short so all layers could fade out simultaneously at the end, I sensed that it would be more effective for the top layer's quiet last two or so minutes to repeat, so it could be heard as a peaceful epilogue, free from the complexities brought in by the other two layers. However, before crossfading it in I transposed it up a minor third, which gives a touching lightening of the mood to finish with.
Primary distinguishing features — A compelling big-sounding soundworld. The impassioned melancholy big tune that never fully exposes itself (so challenging one's own imagination to get more creative!) doggedly persists while assaulted from all directions by microtonal intervals and outright clashing dissonances caused by the effects of the big transposition of the bottom layer. Because the metal chimes are tuned to 'just' intonation (as distinct from equal temperament), layering of variously transposed versions of a recording of them will always to some extent result in tuning mismatches of particular notes between the different layers.

Not only that, but at seriously lower transpositions the human ear hears different notes anyway from sounds that have strong harmonics, like the metal chimes. At the lower transpositions and such slow speeds one naturally hears the 'strike' tones as being the 'real' notes of the chimes, while the 'ringing' tones tend to sound subsidiary. They are quite different notes on the scale, and may clash with other chime sounds that wouldn't be clashing at all in the original recording.

That's an effect that I welcome, and which makes for a huge amount of inner drama and emotive effect in the music, and which maximally improves the mental functioning of the listener, through helping to challenge and dissolve ingrained patterns of brain, and thus mental, function. — What fun!

Nature-Symphony 9a— Into the haunted autumn forest…

Basic details

Nature-Symphony 9a
— Into the haunted autumn forest…