Flies as musicians (5) — Nature-Symphony 70 (slowed version)

(Somewhat slowed version for better musicality)
Nature-Symphony 70 (Flies as musicians 5: pentatonic and major, with pedal tone), which I'm also calling Rannoch Moor Moods, 3. — This is the same as https://freesound.org/people/Philip_Goddard/sounds/759413/ (do read the notes there too), but with an important difference. Here the speed of the whole work is reduced to give pitch a minor third lower. That doesn't change the musical speed, because that's determined by the respective layer offsets, but it does slightly lengthen each sound, including the notes. That means that the many over-short notes now sound more natural and musical, and also the overall tone, although not as bright and invigorating as in the previous version (which I'm retaining here), has much more of a brooding Rannoch Moor atmosphere, despite its poetic jubilance.

The Rannoch Moor connection is via music that haunted and pursued me many years ago, yes, out on Rannoch Moor (Scottish Highlands, UK), on my single-day solo mega-walks (some 25 miles total) from Corrour station to Ben Alder for an early summit lunch stop and then the long and challenging walk down and across much rough boggy moorland to Rannoch station in very good time for the evening train back to Fort William. Unlike my previous Rannoch Moor Moods, this uses a powerful and rather complex motif that didn't come to me till long past my Scottish Highlands outings, and which I didn't particularly associate with Rannoch Moor apart from its intense vibrancy based in a pedal note. However, using it with this particular recording does implant it in what I perceive as a landscape along the way on those crazy Rannoch Moor hikes of mine, but here with the brooding quality being transformed into something intensely vibrant, like some dynamo of our inner creative force.

The fly sound is not the continuous hum of mostly hoverflies that I've recorded before in the woods. Here we're out in the open on top of Cranbrook Down in warm to punishingly sweltery weather, high up to south of Fingle Bridge in the Teign Gorge, and with a far-reaching panorama around us. Here our aural attention is repeatedly drawn to the 'zing' of individual flies and bees coming from different directions, and sometimes circling close around the recorder. Here and there we get little flurries of linnet contact calls, also with the odd grasshopper sound. Generally the longer 'fly' tones, which give rise to chords, are from bumblebees, not true (two-winged) flies.

Unsatisfactory constraints on all the flies Nature-Symphonies are primarily that (a) the sequence of layer offset durations is fixed for the whole work, so every sound will repeat the same quasi-melodic / rhythmic pattern (no rhythmic variation apart from the flies' antics), and (b) such a large number of layers usually results in a quite high sum total of background noise, even after my best endeavours at noise-reduction.

I made the original recording in very warm and humid weather during a very extended lunch stop on 17 July 2024 on the top of Cranbrook Down (Cranbrook Castle, an ancient hill fort), high above the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.

Advisory

Important! To get the best out of this, with its mass of detail, listen with high-grade headphones.

A 4-days-later mockup of this recording taking place.

Techie stuff:

Recorder was a Sony PCM-D100, with two nested custom Windcut furry windshields. It was placed on a Sirui carbon-fibre tripod, set at a low height to reduce wind disturbance.

Post-recording processing was to apply EQ in Audacity to correct for the muffling effect of the windshield.

Layer pitch shifts (semitones above / below the slowed-down original): +17, +12, +9, -7, +3, +5, 0, 0, -3, 0, -3, -5, -7, mix (-9+-21), same, -15.
Layer acoustics: all layers: middling foreground in cathedral.
Note that in this and all the other flies Nature-Symphonies I'm not changing speed of any of the individual layers; only pitch gets changed (using kHs Pitch Shifter).

One problem with my use of pitch-shifting without associated speed change is that the process is liable to cause distortions and artifacts in the sound, especially when raising pitch by large amounts. I assume that that is the cause of the rather harsh tone of layers 1 (especially) and 2, mainly in the few really loud peaks, though that's rather less evident in this slowed-down version.

Please remember to give this recording a rating — Thank you!