Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 8

Nature Symphony 8 (Exuberance of the bamboo poet) — An extravaganza of bamboo wind chimes. Like so many of my Nature-Symphony creations, this one amazed me, in the beauty and poetry within the sound, which cannot be drowned out by any exuberance. It's important to listen not just to the bonks but to their harmonics and the various changing harmonies shifting around in the complex of reverberations.

Just one set of large and one of small bamboo chimes might not sound like promising material for one of my Nature Symphonies, but I saw the potential and took three copies of the original recording, making them layers, each of different speed and pitch, so this is actually a pretty full-blooded soundscape even though there are various quiescent moments where we hear just the odd quiet hint of a very poetic joyfully eerie-sounding bonk.

The work has a middle section without the top layer, giving us more focus on the lower timbres then.

I made the original recording on 18 February 2013 on the quite narrow and exposed Hunter's Tor ridge at the west end of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK. as a prelude to recording the bamboo chimes with three metal chimes — that recording eventually getting used as the basis of my Nature-Symphony 1. Because Hunter's Tor is lower than my usual high-level spots for Teign Gorge recordings, the background sound from the River Teign below is stronger than for most of my chimes recordings.

Getting this work out of the particular original bamboo chimes recording excited me, motivating me to order altogether four different sets of bamboo chimes, because years ago I sold off all the chimes used in my recordings, and I'd want to add bamboo chimes into a number of my future Nature-Symphonies, quite apart from being able to produce one or two additional Nature-Symphonies just using the bamboo chimes. I'll record all those at 96K sampling rate, so their extended high frequency range would be significantly better than what you hear here.

I'm aiming to have a handful of sessions just with the four bamboo chimes, getting long recordings of all combinations, so I have a good range of different bamboo recordings to choose from without having to use the same one repeatedly in my various works. I'm pleased too, that one of the new chimes (the smallest, highest-pitched) is clearly tuned to the whole-tone scale, which should add some nice piquancy where it's used.

Advisory

A really wide stereo width is recommended, to experience to the full the interplay between the different chimes. High-grade headphones would be best, and also would normally avoid any boominess from the low frequencies in the background sound from the River Teign down below.

The original recording taking place, the arrow indicating recorder position off to bottom-right.

Techie stuff

The recorder was Sony PCM-M10, with Røde DeadKitten furry windshield (original, more effective, version), placed on a Velbon Mini tripod.

Post-recording processing of the original recording was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield, and more recent processing with the A1 Stereo Control VST plugin (160% widening).

To produce this Nature-Symphony I used three copies of the original, importing them into Audacity as layers — concurrent but out of step. I reduced the top layer to half-speed, then middle layer to a perfect 5th below that, then the bottom layer two octaves plus a minor third below the original.

I tried several different combinations of layer pitch before finding this one to have a particularly heart-warming quality, and so settling on it. Then I processed all the tracks with the OrilRiver VST plugin, giving them a custom cathedral acoustic, but a bit more forward in perspective than in most of my Nature Symphonies, so the bonks wouldn't be so overwhelmed by the reverberations. To finish, I used a custom preset in the TDR Nova GE VST plugin to reduce the rather excessive very low frequencies.

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