Chronological list of recordings, Part 2

1. 240830_r5-01+02 — At NW side of SW corner of inner perimeter track, sheltered by and facing a smallish gorse bush with a scattering of flowers still in good shape; was hoping for a lot of bees coming there, but got very little. — 56'

2. 240830_r5-03 — A little S. of the isolated hawthorn tree on the 'Castle' ridge, with a small scattering of very stunted yarrow plants still in flower (hoping them to bring some bees). — 51'

3. 240830_r6-01+02 — About halfway along S. side of the 'Castle' ridge, by the inner perimeter track. — 118'

4. 240830_r6-03 — In SW corner of inner perimeter track, quite closely facing a smallish patch of wood sage with scattered flower spikes not yet finished (getting a fair succession of bees). Unusually, I've retained some aeroplane sound, for Nature-Symphonies that might use this recording. — 40'

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Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

• Nature-Symphony 71a (Flies as musicians 6a: A romp in the shadow of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1)

• Nature-Symphony 71b (Flies as musicians 6b: A romp in the shadow of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 2)

1. 240816_r5-01 — In shelter on W. side of SE arm of 'Castle' ridge. — 87'

2. 240816_r5-02 — Ditto, moved to nearer to nearer the R6 final position for better shelter —77'

3. 240816_r6-01 — About halfway up track from byway to Cranbrook Castle. Rather minimal flies / bees activity —16'

4. 240816_r6-02 — In shelter on W side of N. arm of the 'Castle' ridge. Nice recording but too bees-deficient — 52'

5. 240816_r6-03+04 (split into a and b) — A little short of the isolated hawthorn tree on the ridge. Rather bees-deficient, and generally the flies / bees are mostly too distant for Nature-Symphony use (requires too much noise reduction), but contains various grasshopper episodes and occasionally the squealy sound of juvenile buzzard calls. — 65+61'

   However, both parts of 5. did get used respectively for the Nature-Symphonies listed below in the end, because they had less need for long notes / chords, and for many purposes I cracked the noise-reduction issue by careful use of two passes of Audacity's new OpenVino AI noise suppression tool at low setting, with one pass of Audacity's spectral subtraction noise reduction (6dB) between them.

• Nature-Symphony 72 (Flies as musicians 7: Landscape of pseudo-fugues of the jolly tritone)

• Nature-Symphony 73 (Flies as musicians 8: Hilltop celebration: freaky sarabandes!)

• Nature-Symphony 74 (Flies as musicians 9: Dance of solace, after Mt Everest rockfall)

1. 240731_r5-01 — Almost at the top of Cranbrook Down, on the track leading up from the Cranbrook Down byway to the absolute top (Cranbrook Castle, an ancient hill fort). Passing flies, the odd quiet grasshopper, and Willow warbler song. Some distant farm machinery sounds once in a while. —38'

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2. 240731_r5-02 — In wind shelter of east arm of the Cranbrook Castle ridge. Fly sound fine, but just too much background wind sound for Nature-Symphony use. — 48'

3. 240731_r5-03+04 — Just short of SW corner of the inner perimeter track. Same comment applies. — 53'

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

• Nature-Symphony 66 (Flies as musicians (1): wholetone scale (implicit)) — 41'

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Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

• Nature-Symphony 68 (Flies as musicians 3: Half-diminished seventh (explicit)) (Rannoch Moor Moods, 1) — 44'

• Nature-Symphony 68a (Flies as musicians 3a: Half-diminished seventh (implicit)) — 46'

• Nature-Symphony 69 (Flies as musicians 4: Diminished seventh, expanded! (explicit)) (Rannoch Moor Moods, 2) — 45'

• Nature-Symphony 70 (Flies as musicians 5: pentatonic and major, with pedal tone) (Rannoch Moor Moods, 3) — 43'

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Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

• Nature-Symphony 67 (Flies as musicians (2): wholetone minor 6th (explicit)) — 48'

• Nature-Symphony 67a (Flies as musicians 2a: wholetone minor 6th (implicit)) — 51'

Fourth of my series of sessions in the new bamboo chimes series to provide contrasting elements in my further Nature-Symphonies as well as providing a few bamboo-only Nature-Symphonies.

Initial wind strength and direction decreed that I use the nearby isolated oak beside the Hunter's Path, rather than the slightly higher Piddledown spot — though because of progressive wind reduction I did make the final recording at the latter spot.

This was an abominable and frustrating session for a seething multitude of aeroplane disturbances from late morning to end of session, getting worse as time went on. Fortunately the processing for Nature-Symphony use significantly reduced the number of such occurrences that had to be cut out — and indeed, during my editing the fourth recording I discovered that I'd been cutting out far too much because of the aeroplanes.

Yes, the louder, really intrusive ones needed cutting out, but when I tried selecting an impacted short section with the chimes sounding, and giving it typical Nature-Symphony processing (half-speed with a moderate back-of-cathedral acoustic), a reasonably quiet aeroplane no longer sounded like an aeroplane, each one manifesting as just a gentle reverberating 'atmospheric' hum, which in that case keyed in beautifully in musical terms, as a 'pedal' tone like a gently humming choir, underpinning the top note of the diminished seventh chord of the particular chime.

1. 231213_r5-01 — Small, Plain minor. — 54'

2. 231213_r5-02 — Small, Fancy diminished 7th. — 62'

3. 231213_r5-03 — Large (50cm), major+minor+augmented triads. — 42'

4. 231213_r5-04 — Small, Fancy diminished 7th (again). — 41'

Third of my series of sessions in the new bamboo chimes series to provide contrasting elements in my further Nature-Symphonies as well as providing a few bamboo-only Nature-Symphonies.

I'd wanted to use the same Piddledown spot as last time, but some nearby farm machinery — probably a bit of excavation — made that a no-no, and in any case the wind was rather minimal for my purpose and from wrong direction (WSW). I therefore used the nearby isolated oak beside the Hunter's Path.

1. 231211_r5-01 — Small, Fancy high. — 34'

2. 231211_r5-02 — Small, Plain whole-tone. — 44'

3. 231211_r5-03 — Small, Fancy 5-tube. — 27' (out of 57' original)

4. There was a fourth recording, but the dropped wind meant too little chime activity, so I discarded this.

Second of my series of sessions in the new bamboo chimes series to provide contrasting elements in my further Nature-Symphonies as well as providing a few bamboo-only Nature-Symphonies.

This time the wind was what I was aiming for, though with an issue I hadn't been thinking about much — so I was able to keep to the Piddledown spot throughout the session.

The issue was that, with the wind blowing straight off the nearby broad hilltop, although the chimes and especially the recorder had tolerable shelter from the full wind strength, there was a constant light to moderate breeze coming straight over and keeping the chimes more consistently active than I was really after. There were plenty of gusts coming over too, but they were more in the treetops, while the more steady breeze continued to work the chimes.

Anyway, it does appear that each of this day's recordings will be usable in particular Nature-Symphonies, so this time I could feel pretty satisfied — though I always recognised the need to get recordings of each chime in a variety of wind conditions, and so will have some repeat sessions for that purpose.

1. 231121_r5-01 — Pink Hibiscus 42cm chime 56'

2. 231121_r5-02 — Padi Hat 40cm chime. — 43'

3. 231121_r5-03 — Both the latter. This combination sounds particularly exquisite, and more so at half-speed, though the Padi Hat chime often rather outbalances the Pink Hibiscus. I expect to use this, multi-layered, for a bamboo-only Nature-Symphony. — 61'

4. 231121_r5-04 — Plain 40cm chime. This turned out to suffer from the next-to-lowest sounding tube being too dominant, but I used a notch filter in Voxengo CurveEQ to tame it, and I also raised the chime's striker disc by close to 3" to produce a more balanced rendering in future. — 55'

First of an intended series of sessions devoted to making recordings of various combinations of bamboo wind chimes, primarily for mixing into certain Nature-Symphony creations, where the original chimes recordings didn't contain bamboo or other sufficient contrasting element.

In addition I expect to make one to a few Nature-Symphonies solely from the bamboo chimes (using multilayering), and also possibly a multilayer one also including a thunderstorm.

All recorded with mics at 90° setting for widening afterwards, and recorded at 96K sampling rate to ensure best possible quality of reduced-speed versions. The aim is generally to get as little background sound as possible, to minimize summation of background noise in mixes. Also generally my sleek Aoka mini tripod is to be used, to keep the recorder as near the ground as sensibly workable (while being very adjustable to set up on steep or uneven ground), to minimize wind disturbance.

This session got non-ideal wind, from only slightly north of west, making my preferred spot on Piddledown, just above Hunter's Path and close to where Two Moors Way comes in from the north, pretty ineffective this time. This spot really needs a moderately stiff breeze from NW to NE, as when I got just the right results for this purpose when first recording the Gypsy chimes on 28 November 2012.

1. By offset rather isolated oak tree on downhill side of path, where I'd recorded chimes before, just a little east of the preferred Piddledown spot. This got the wind pretty well, though perhaps a bit more consistent than I'd have preferred, and the recorder had no shelter.

   1. 231115_r5-01 — Large + small (whole-tone) — The latter chime was a fiasco, hardly sounding at all except during the strongest gust or two, and then too weakly to balance with the large chime. Cause is too small striker disc, large gaps between the narrow tubes, my having mistakenly shortened the windcatcher cord, and the tubes simply having a weak sound (I've since rectified the windcatcher cord).

      Although on the face of it that chime is for discarding, I'm going to attempt to get a good close-up long solo recording of it in a stiff breeze, so I can then balance it with others in mixes.

      Despite all that, at least for the large chime the recording sounds great, at least with Nature-Symphony processing. — 8'

   2. 231115_r5-02 — Large + small (minor + augmented triad) — These balanced well, though seemed to be a bit too consistently active, with the wind picking up more. — 33'

2. 231115_r5-03a/b — Large + small (minor + augmented triad) — My usual spot on steep rough slope just below Hunter's Path by Hunting Gate. This seemed a bit too sheltered, and increasingly so. This was just one recording (38'), but I split it because there was a weird drop of wind at that halfway point, just when I went down to the recorder / chimes for something (heard distinctly in the recording there). So it's more convenient to be kept as effectively two recordings, one with reasonable chimes activity and the other with more sparse activity. In any case, both parts would be limited in their usefulness in mixes because of a lot of (very nice) wind-in-trees sound.

   3a has a good balance of chime sound, whereas 3b is mostly the small one, with little incursions of the large chime here and there. — 19', 18'

3. 231115_r5-05 — Large, solo — This was the only one out of three recordings I made at the preferred Piddledown location during the early afternoon. Because of the wind not being sufficiently northerly, it was too sheltered here, despite gusts blowing through the treetops, and the wind was now progressively dropping.

   This recording had a few moderately vigorous bursts of activity, but mostly little to no activity. I concentrated it from some 44', and it is proving potentially useful in a new Nature-Symphony, where its long spells of boring repetitions of alternating two notes a 4th apart actually work rather well when cathedralized. — 18'

1. 231022_r5-01 — Somewhat zoomed-in recording, mid-morning. quite a lot of bird sound, though a lot of it not very close. — 45'

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   1.  231022_r5-01-lownoise — Version of above with 12dB reduction of background sound of the River Teign, enabling more distant detail to be discerned. (Used for Nature-Symphony 14) — 42'

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2. 231022_r5-02 — Normal wide-angle recording, at lunchtime; it was much busier then, with lots of disturbance requiring a lot of editing, and also by then fewer stags were still sounding off, so for most of the time there were few or no distant ones performing. Rather more bird sound, though. — 31'

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

1. Nature-Symphony 14 (Celebration of rutting stags). a five-layered transformation of the 'noise-reduced' version of parent recording. — 48'

2. Nature-Symphony 75 (Autumn colour and shadows, with rutting stags) — 47'

A very thundery patch in our weather, though as usual the really strong lightning activity went to other parts of the country.  Only two loud lightnings between three recordings, but the small-hours recordings in particular, especially the first, were marked by a certain amount of very atmospheric distant to very distant thunder audible outside the periods of heavy rain.

These are actually parts of one long recording from late evening the previous day to mid-afternoon on 17th. As usual, it was made from my bedroom window, but with a significant difference this time: I had the recorder's mics set to narrow angle (90°). Then, by widening afterwards I could still have a fully wide soundstage, but a somewhat zoomed-in one, which should include much less of my bedroom's acoustic than in previous rain or thunderstorm recordings from there.

In the event, that arrangement worked really well, with a much more vivid sense of being out there rather than listening from a window, and the furthest right or left of the thunder booms and thumps (in my headphones) seemed to be coming from not just left / right, but a fair bit behind, as though this were a surround-sound or binaural recording.

However, I got weird location effects each time a vehicle came up my road (coming towards me and passing on the right). For some reason each sounded to be vaguely located while approaching, sounding to be coming straight for me, with only a vague impression of passing on the right, and as soon as it came alongside it would change direction to come right through me and recede on my rear-left side! Go figure, as they say!

Presumably that glaring anomaly is a result of the recorder having the mics pointing inward for the 90° setting, so that right mic hears left and left mic hears right. Some, but not all, recordings with that setting had left and right channels swapped, so I had to swap them back. Weird, utterly weird!

1. 230917_r4-01 — Heavy rather than fully torrential, with one loud lightning, and otherwise a beautiful atmospheric sequence of distant grumbles and booms.  Because of the one loud one, playing volume needs to be a whacking 18dB above a sensible normal level. — 28'

2. 230917_r4-02 — Two periods of really torrential rain, with a little thunder audible (some inaudible because of the rain din), and dawn bird sounds just coming in at end. Playing volume needs to be 6dB above a sensible normal level — 40'

3. 230917_r4-06 — Early afternoon torrential thundery shower, with another heavy but not really torrential shower later. Towards the end one can hear something musical in the background, which eventually becomes recognisable as the Exeter Cathedral bells in the distance. Playing volume needs to be 15 or preferably 18dB above a sensible normal level — 22'

230628_r5-01 — An extended lunch break session high up above Fingle Bridge, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, primarily to capture the hum of the flies close to the east end of the Lower Deer Stalker's Path (which is high up). The hum became difficult to hear during temporary sunless periods, but restored once the sun came out again. Compared with the 24 June recording, this a more up-front and engaging soundscape, as one would expect from a zoomed-in recording. The flies sound closer, with much more detail discernible, and so do the distant chiffchaffs, which are much more prominent this time, and make an excellent 'continuity' performance during the flies' more or less quiescent periods.

As usual, the zooming-in was achieved by running the recorder with mics set to narrow angle (90°) and afterwards widening the recording by 135% in software, and increasing the level a little to complete the impression of being closer. — 57'

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A much-extended lunch break session high up above Fingle Bridge, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, primarily to capture the hum of the flies close to the east end of the Lower Deer Stalker's Path (which is high up). The hum became difficult to hear during temporary sunless periods, but restored once the sun came out again — except that beyond the first hour there was an overall gradual reduction of the hum, and also attention was shifting anyway to the increasing sound of gentle wind gusts in the trees, plus a family group of ravens that arrived and then lingered to end of recording. — 108'

The version for Freesound is in two parts.

1. 230624_r5-01-pt1 — Main focus on the hum of the flies — 61'

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2. 230624_r5-01-pt2 — Main focus soon shifts to wind in trees and the ravens — 45'

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Nature symphonies with input from this session:

1. Nature-Symphony 47 (Enchanting dark-forest glade)

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A greatly successful recording session, primarily to repeat previous recordings from the same spot, in more ideal conditions and zoomed-in (mic angle set at 90°). With light wind, and sea at least as quiet as I've previously known it here, the guillemot and razorbill bedlams come across with much greater prominence and clarity than previously. I took an afternoon break to get some shade in the sweltery weather, and extended the session into the evening as the intensity of the guillemots' performance suggested that they might be building up for another dusk spectacular as on the memorable 2017 night session here.

However, about 8.30 p.m. I realized that they were actually progressively winding-down, and so terminated the session.

I had a couple of false starts in the morning session owing to disturbances, so started off with two short recordings before the main one. I added those to the latter, and hence the long recording code. During that early part of the recording session I was trying to work out what would be the exactly best direction to be facing, for the narrower coverage meant more care was needed in choosing the direction, so made a few changes during those first two short recordings.

All the recordings were made from the same spot — a minor prominence part-way down the steep grassy slope of Beeny Cliff's southernmost (minor) headland. This proved to be partially sheltered from the gentle breeze coming up the slope from the sea.

I achieved the impressive zoomed-in results by having the mic angle at 90° and then widening that to 120° using the VST plugin A1 Stereo Control. Widening beyond that (approximately 135% in A1SC) caused sounds near hard right or left to sound too exclusively in the respective ear (when listening with headphones) and to seem somewhat disembodied, detached from the main stereo soundstage.

1. 230614_r5-01+02+03 — morning, from c. 9.45 a.m. This captures the loudest cave bedlams of the lot. It's a bit odd having the cave so far left for a while early on, but that was what I was trying in the second short recording. — 89'

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2. 230614_r5-04 — early afternoon, till nearly 2.0 p.m. Slightly amended direction — a very minor improvement in balance. — 89'

3. 230614_r5-05 — Evening, till 8.35 p.m. The guillemots' and razorbills' performances were still excellent, though generally not as strong as in the earlier recordings, and definitely 'winding down' during about the last 20 minutes. — 85'

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

1. Nature-Symphony 33 (Cornwall extravaganza: Pentargon Cove Guillemots' Coven)

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Thrilling sea dramatics on the rocks and outcrops at Mussel Point, between St Ives and Zennor, Penwith, Cornwall. This was a tremendous surprise for me, together with the unexpectedly light wind, for I wasn't expecting to be recording at all on this hike.

I started noticing a faint background thundering during the walk along the tough-going coast path from upper St Ives towards Zennor, and was thinking how I loved that sound, which I hadn't heard for a few years. But then, when I came down to the popular low grassy / rocky 'apron' of Treveal Cliff just opposite The Carracks ('Seal Island'), it was a truly overpowering pandemonium of chunky waves rearing up and smashing down on the rocks and outcrops, sending up great eruptions of spray. I wanted to record there, except that I realized that the sound was just too pervasively and consistently loud and aggressive, and simply would make a poor listen, so moved on to Mussel Point, where I intended to have my lunch stop anyway.

The sea was 'doing it' there too, but the really big dramatics were better spaced out, with periods of lesser dramatics and even almost 'repose' on the odd occasion — AND, there was an area here where there always had tended to be a thundering acoustic resonance, apparently created by the shape of the grassy slope and the ruggedly wild rocky shore (nothing you could call a beach). So, I placed the recorder close to where I'd captured that lovely thundering resonance back in 2013 — a recording I'd eventually come to discard because of shortcomings of the PCM-M10 recorder for handling wide sea panoramas.

What a thrilling lunch stop! — But then I tried another recorder placement to capture a somewhat more distant perspective, but in fact that one turned out to be not just a more distant version of the first recording, but was actually picking up on the blowhole, and with much less of that generalized thundering acoustic resonance.

1. 230415_r5-01 — so loud that the powerful blowhole is inaudible in this recordings, but nonetheless a real 'wow' experience! — 52'

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   1. 230415_r5-01-more distant — A 'tweaked' version that sounds a bit more distant and less in-your-face aggressive, and is thus kinder on the ears, while still retaining a great dramatic impact; it has more 'delicacy' and 'nuance', and indeed 'poetry'. — 52'

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2.  230415_r5-02 — Recorder placed just a little higher and a little west of the previous position, overlooking a bit of the 'action' where I could see part of the blowhole jet, and even just hear the booms that each preceded their respective copious ejections. Curiously, this recording heard the blowhole action much more than I myself did. —35'

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Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

1. Nature-Symphony 37 (Colourful resonance of a wild sea on rocks and cliff)

221023_r4-01 — A single and relatively brief torrential thunderstorm, the first faint hints of it audible at about 2:45 a.m., followed by a brief torrential thundery shower, which was presumably part of the same system. — 42'

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Owing to the large dynamic range, the recording needs a massive 24dB boost of playing volume (an eight-fold increase), above a normal 'realistic' level for classical orchestral music. Without that full boost, many quiet details, including non-torrential rain and really distant thunder, would not be heard at all.

For this reason, I made another version, with the two closest and apocalyptically loud lightning strikes cut out, but even that still requires a 15dB volume boost.

The events are presented in original order, with uneventful interludes each reduced to a useful short length, and all the more intrusive city sounds cut out, though with some flexibility in order to retain as much as possible of the soundscape that I did want. Relatively gentle gusts of wind become apparent during interludes, blowing through the trees as they chase around among the houses.

The sequence is as follows:

1. Very heavy shower.

2. Brief torrential shower.

3. Relatively short thunderstorm, still more torrential, from first grumbling murmur that I could pick out. None of the lightning was overhead; the centre of the line of storm (moving S. to N., along its axis) passing-by a bit west of here. Presumably for that reason, the thunder gives us no big dramatics; the latter were likely still happening, but a bit further west.

4. Two brief torrential showers, apparently with a scattering of hailstones.

5. Thundery shower, not so torrential.

That final thundery shower has more background traffic noise, as by then it's late in the small hours, and some bleary-eyed motorists are already going to work. — 75' total.

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Owing to the large dynamic range, the recording needs a 6dB boost of playing volume, above a normal 'realistic' level for classical orchestral music. Without that full boost, some quiet details, such as the first and very last thunder sounds, would not be heard at all.

220815_r4-02+03 — A relatively brief fringe view of a major thunderstorm. A broad belt of showers and thunderstorm persisted over mid and north Devon from about late morning, aligned WSW to ENE, the cloud movement being from WSW to ENE, so that the band didn't move significantly laterally, though in the afternoon it broadened somewhat, so that its SSE margin came close enough to Exeter for an ongoing grumbling of distant thunder to be heard when there wasn't any close traffic noise.

At that time a smaller, separate thundery shower developed, directly approaching Exeter, and it started giving the odd lightning strokes as it came overhead, that then expanding and becoming annexed by extension of the main storm, before the lot very gradually retreated.

So, for almost all of the c. 1½ hours of the 'raw' recording, from my second-floor SW-facing bedroom window, there was a background of distant more or less continuous thunder (informing one that Exeter was missing a really severe storm by a gnat's whisker), with a small number of nearer lightnings from the independent shower that then pepped up as it gradually moved away as part of the main storm. All the receding thunder that's at all distant has a distinctive sound, without much spatial detail, because it's actually on the other (NE) side of this building, so that what we're hearing is largely the sound echoing off the buildings I'm facing (to SW).

As always, morning or afternoon, especially on weekdays (this was on a Monday), is pretty hopeless for my recording in the city centre, so I had to edit out most of the recording to get anything really acceptable. The birds heard here and there are seagulls (I think all herring gull), woodpigeon, and my immediate neighbour's budgies (I'd have preferred only wild native birds, but at least the budgies are pretty unobtrusive and fit in reasonably). — 35'

Owing to the large dynamic range, the recording needs a 9dB boost of playing volume, above a normal 'realistic' level for classical orchestral music.

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220515_r5-00 — A thundery shower in the small hours of 15 May 2022, captured from my bedroom window sill, with some city sounds edited out.

This starts off with two peals of thunder just before the rain arrives, and then no further thunder is heard. — 16'

The main purpose of this recording session was to do multiple takes of my reading my latest poem — the first in some 27 years —, For Ukraine — A New Painting On My Wall, In Which…, in what I felt to be a particularly harmonious and reasonably wild ambience, and I chose a dense stand of Sitka spruce near the north-west margin of Fernworthy Forest on Dartmoor. This worked well, and I added-in appropriate short clips from other recordings of mine for introduction (distant thunder) and 'end music' (an amazing bird in Teign Gorge, which didn't know whether it was a chiffchaff or a willow warbler).

I took a mid-session lunch break, and so had the recorder running then to catch some ambience, and then I ran the recorder for a while at the end to capture more of that beautiful very quiet ambience.

1. 220323_r5-02 (+) — The poem — my best effort at a dramatic recitation (my voice is a bit wavering at times, thanks to my nearing the magic age of 80 then) — relatively close to recorder, so that the ambience is de-emphasized. — 5'

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2. 220323_r5-03 — Ambience with very quiet wind in treetops and more or less distant birds (the treetops were very high). This was recorded with the mics set at narrow (90°) angle for the poetry readings, and I'd left it like that. During processing afterwards I widened that with software, so zooming-in the soundstage, making the birds sound closer than they sounded in real life from that spot, but it's a lovely spacious soundscape, albeit short, having had some minutes cut because of an aeroplane. — 16'

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3. 220323_r5-04 (+) — The poem again, this time about twice the distance from recorder. Less clear for my words, but nice balance with the wind and bird sounds. However, for this version I think my larynx control had fatigued a bit and so this time there's enough wavering of my voice to significantly detract from the effectiveness of the reading. — 5'

4. 220323_r5-05 — Another ambience recording from the same spot, taken at end of session, this time with mics set to my normal wide angle (120°), so giving more sense of the high treetops, with wind and bird sounds all seeming as distant as they were for me then. — 36'

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1. 220221_r5-01 — On slope just a little below Hunter's Path, between that and the track from Fingle Bridge, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, from almost the same location as the gale recordings on 30 Jan 2013, facing obliquely over and up the valley. Rather open valley slope woodland with young or fairly stunted trees. This is a beautiful soundscape, in a relatively sheltered part, with the real roaring of the gale distant all round, though most prominent to the left, from way down on the other side of the valley, which was catching really strong wind pretty well all the time.

   Gusts coming close were not all that strong, and the trees there were a bit small to get a really strong sound anyway, so as a wind dramatics soundscape this could be seen as disappointing. Yet there's something really bewitching about this sense of being in such a relatively sheltered spot with commotion in the distance all around. — 46'

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2. 220221_r5-02 — Very similar position, but a just a little further north-west, at a spot where it was less sheltered and there were some taller trees, including a few slender Scots pine as well as the broadleaved trees — and there was a rather minimal holly bush that gave just enough shelter to the recorder to enable a usable recording to be made. Here the gusts rushing and roaring through were frisky, and sometimes angry-sounding, but still with a lot of quieter spells with the distant wind commotion more evident. — 59'

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3. 220221_r5-03 — Hilltop just above Hunter's Path.
   Just a little way along the line of tall, expansive beech trees that runs northward over the top of the hill (Drewston Common) from Hunting Gate. It was very windy here, but the bases of the trees are joined together in places to give short stretches of a low wall-like character — I'd guess indicating that this line of fine trees had once been a layered hedgerow.

   Taking my cue from my 9 December 2019 recording there, I used the nearest bit of 'wall' that just might give enough shelter, with recorder on shortest setting of tripod. Again this worked out, with recorder very close indeed to the little bit of 'wall', and facing out eastwards, away from the trees but pointing upwards at a steep angle, so that it still captured a lot of sound from the trees.

   An impressively loud soundscape, still quite a commotion during the periods of relative repose. — 69'

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Same position as the 1 August recording, close beside trunk of a large beech tree a little up the slope from the Lower Deer Stalker's Path, high up on the spur from Cranbrook Down to Fingle Bridge, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon. This is such a long recording, with a long wind-only starting section, that I've split off that wind-only section

Before editing, this recording ran just over 4 hours. It starts with just wind in the trees for the best part of an hour before the predicted squally showers arrive on cue, with a lot of dripping from the trees, which continues between showers. The drips hitting the umbrella are quite loud, though nothing like as overpowering as in the recording made on 12 July 2018.

In the quite long gap (still with some dripping) before the final shower, we hear a lot of distant shots — not from army training on Dartmoor, but presumably from two clay pigeon shoot meetings. One is straight ahead (facing west), while the other sounds to be to our left (south). I think it likely that the lie of the land has given a false impression of the direction of that shoot meeting.

The session became physically stressful for me, for as soon as it had started raining I had to be standing close beside the recorder, with umbrella sheltering the recorder as well as me! I had to remain as still and quiet as possible, and keep like that for the rest of the recording — i.e., a bit over three hours. Particularly in the last hour my legs were getting stressed and painful, crying out for some walkabouts, and the soles of my feet were getting sore.

1. 211003_r5-01-start — Wind only — 49'

2. 211003_r5-01+02 — The showers, accompanied by modest squalls — 143'

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I was really after the sound of little 'hailstorms' of acorns falling from the oak trees, but, having found no signs of acorns falling or fallen yet, for a little exercise I hauled myself up to Cranbrook Castle, the ancient fortifications on top of Cranbrook Down. On my retrace descent I noticed the distinct hum of flies in this uppermost level of the valley slope woods, so set up the two recorders I was carrying, to capture that sound.

However, before long the very light wind started picking up, the background quiet sound of wind in trees beginning to mask the flies' hum, and stronger gusts were increasingly coming through — so the whole focus changed from the flies to wind-in-trees. This itself was a delightful sound — not loud and dramatic, but a joyfully gentle play of wind gusts chasing around in the trees over a wide area. In fact some of the gusts did cause the odd minor flurries of falling objects, which I expect were mostly (but not all) acorns — but they were not enough to be a major feature of the recordings.

In addition, the odd bird calls added interest — inevitably the odd ravens, but also a brief tiff between two or more jays, and a long burst of nuthatch calls. In addition, for some quite extended periods we hear the hammerings of a nuthatch on the odd tree trunk, including at least one trunk that was clearly hollow, so that the hammerings were particularly resonant and sonorous.

That's a delightful and invigorating sound, which I'd have liked to extract from the background sounds in order to use it to create a most unusual music composition (I had in mind an expansive multi-part fugue), also using extracted nuthatch calls used over a wide pitch range. Unfortunately I found I couldn't isolate those sounds sufficiently well for them to be usable. Nice idea anyway.

The longer two recordings were made first, the recorders (well separated) pointing obliquely up the slope and away from each other. Then for the last hour I turned them both around, so they were facing obliquely down the slope and (again) away from each other.

1. 210919_r5-01 — Position 1, facing up and away from other recorder — 90'

2. 210919_r6-01 — Position 2, ditto —54'

3. 210919_r5-02 — Position 1, facing down and away from other recorder — 88'

4. 210919_r6-02 — Position 2, ditto — 53'

This time thunderstorms were only a remote possibility in this area, but supposedly light showers were forecast for middle of day, so I made that my goal for the day.

This shower came in on cue, at about 12.15 p.m., catching me a little on the hop as I'd had to hurriedly finish my packed lunch and then, with a sharp burst of rain already coming over, scramble to set up the recorder with its 'furries' and set it up on a new and superior tripod, then stuff the odd things into the rucksack and quickly haul pack and tripod / recorder a little way up the steep wooded slope to the uphill side of a big beech tree trunk, where there was a tiny level spot, then get the tripod properly set up (legs fully extended and locked, and set at the required angles, and recorder oriented optimally on it), and umbrella extended to shelter me, the recorder and the rucksack (leaning against the tree trunk) — with the initial burst of rain already subsiding.

So, the recording started with just light rain gradually easing off, but at least by then a little dripping through the trees continuing. Then, after some 10 minutes a heavier and rather more sustained patch of rain came over, getting the trees very nicely dripping. That rain gradually died down to nothing, but the dripping from the trees was dying out much more slowly, periodically briefly intensifying as each little wind gust gently moved leaves, twigs and branches. — 46'

This time the recorder was set to 90° coverage instead of the normal 120°, so that I could widen the soundstage afterwards, as I'd eventually done for most of my PCM-M10 recordings — so producing a somewhat zoomed-in soundstage, enabling one to hear more detail within the cave, including hearing the varied colours of the sea's echoes and reverberations within it. — 55'

I'm aiming to do a small number of other zoomed-in recordings when suitable opportunities turn up — particularly including the guillemots in the cave on the south side of Pentargon Cove.

210502_r5-01 — A bewildering bird heard among the trees at Hunter's Tor, Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, UK.

I'd heard it there a couple of weeks before, but had been in a hurry to get on then, and even this time, with no wind just there, I rushed to get the recorder out of my pack, and hand-held it, indeed even without furry windshield(s), just for a 'quickie'. I'd hoped it would be there when I returned later that day, so I could then do a longer recording there for the whole soundscape including it — but it wasn't performing then.

The crazy bird couldn't make up its mind whether it was a chiffchaff or a willow warbler. Never heard such a confusion anywhere else, nor indeed there again. Actually this recording is all the more confusing, because at times it sounds as though the chiffchaff and willow warbler elements are somewhat spatially separated between left and right. — And 'straight' willow warblers and chiffchaffs were indeed singing in the area.

Yet, if we then interpreted that as the different species on either side, that would hardly make sense, because no two birds would 'tango' so skilfully in alternating fragments of their respective songs so precisely — and not just that once but also the previous occasion I'd come up there at the start of a walk. And indeed, that consistency of the 'split personality' song continued as long as the particular bird(s) was/were in earshot, both this and the previous time.

I've researched this a bit online, and it turns out that song-switching by willow warblers, incorporating chiffchaff phrases, has been reported from various locations, albeit apparently a quite rare phenomenon. I've listened to some examples on Xeno-Canto, and, I must say, none of those reproduces the sound of both species so clearly contrasted and juxtaposed as I was hearing from this bird, so I'm still not fully sure what was happening in this case.

Could it even be a chiffchaff doing the song-switching? I didn't find any reports of that happening, but maybe in this case that could account for the impressively expert rendition of the chiffchaff sections of the song, typically with willow warbler fragment stuck in the middle. — 0':58 sec.

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200816_r5-01 — This is all I got from another session waiting at the same spot as on 12 August for widespread thunderstorms that never came. Again the location was on the wooded slope just above the Lower deer stalker's Path, high above Fingle Bridge, on the south side of the so-called Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon.

This time it was cloudier and so I didn't capture any interesting hum of flies, and the original recording was only some 22 minutes, and I had to cut bits out of that because of rustles from my waterproof while sheltering the recorder with my umbrella, and also some internal squidgy gurgling sounds of mine, thanks to some sort of mild gut upset. Still, the edited version, without those entertaining distractions, sounds very pleasant and peaceful. — 15'

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The location is on the wooded slope just above the Lower Deer Stalker's Path, high above Fingle Bridge, on the south side of the so-called Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon. The recording was from 2.30–5.0 p.m. BST; I let it run that long to allow for all the disturbances I'd have to cut out.

The fly activity gradually becomes more prominent through the duration of the recording, no doubt as a result of a continuing rise of temperature till mid-to-late afternoon. Interestingly, the overall 'community tone' pitch of the flies remains steadfastly at a fluctuating mixture of C4(261.6Hz) and C5 (523.3Hz) (the latter is Middle C).

The majority of the flies heard are hoverflies (Diptera, Syrphidae) of various species. Birds heard are mostly Woodpigeon — this being the general silent season for birdsong, but the woodpigeons were singing anyway. The odd calls from a raven flying around come in later on. — 107'

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1. 200611_r4-02 — Rain during small hours, torrential at times, with city seagulls at times, and, during the final half-hour, the odd blackbirds starting up as dawn approaches. — 88'

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2. 200611_r4-06 — Afternoon thundery shower (a salvage job, because most of it had to be cut out because of daytime neighbourhood and city noises). — 22'

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As with the April 2015 recording, the recorder was on a rather precariously-placed tripod on the short steep grassy slope below the coast path, pretty close to the cliff edge at the top of the minor alcove in the cliff, and the sea conditions were similar but not identical. This time the overall swell was a little less strong, though still enough just round here to give dramatic sounds as the waves broke — and it was more in the neap-tide period, so although the tide must have been fully 'in', the sea was only partially up against the cliff base.

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Recording location, then, was just below and just above the Hunter's Path in the wood, which here consisted of rather stunted trees, mostly broadleaved, though of course at this time of year without leaves except some remaining dead leaves still on the twigs (mostly the beech trees).

1. 200201_r5-01 — On slope just a little below Hunter's Path, between that and the track from Fingle Bridge. I actually did what seemed to be a silly thing in my placement of this, because I had the recorder facing south, across the valley. That would then capture the two loudest patches of trees, one on the left and the other on the right, and both rather behind the recorder.

   However, although that made for some degree of spatial balance between those primary sound sources, it inevitably meant that the movement of gusts would mostly be from behind to in front of the recorder and going away from it. Soon after I started that recording I had doubts about that,as it would surely minimize the sense of the gusts actually moving about. I did let this recording run for the allotted time, though, for I decided to follow it with another one with what I thought would be a much better placement…

   Months later, however, I listened to this recording again and found it truly wonderful in its own different way. The sense of gust after gust rushing up from behind and then over and down into the valley was impressively beautiful. My error about it earlier was simply that I was too rigidly requiring a particular effect, and failing to recognise when I'd got something beautifully different instead! — 88'

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2. 200201_r5-02 — On slope just above Hunter's Path, and indeed directly above where the first recording had been made. This time it was facing WNW, which placed the two primary noise-making patches of trees at full right and about half-left, with the valley to left and extending primarily behind. Although this was facing right into the general wind direction, the actual direction of the gusts coming over the hilltop here was more from NW and N., and thus was roughly right to left. This way, the recording should be much more effective in portraying the movement of gusts as I was hearing it from the Hunter's Path there.

   That proved to be likely the best possible choice, and it worked beautifully. This really is a superb strong-wind-through-trees soundscape. It differs a lot from the also excellent wind-through-trees recording made at nearby Hunting Gate on 9 December 2019, in that there's little close foreground wind sound apart from dead leaves on the ground periodically getting blown about, and the wind's a bit stronger here. So, our attention is more clearly focused on the near-distance to far-distance, so that the intricacy of the ever changing sound perspectives as the gusts playfully chase around can be experienced the full.
   During the first hour we hear three brief very light showers with very small raindrops, though the third is so slight that not everyone would notice it. — 137'

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The recordings were all made more or less on the tip of the Shag Rock headland, where adventurous anglers come and dangle their lines down the relatively low cliff, to the incredulity of many a walker along the coast path. This time I had the headland to myself, with a nominal 8ft swell reducing to probably a nominal 6ft by end of session — BUT the swell gets concentrated and somewhat augmented in this little patch, so was probably a bit larger here.

The tide was going out throughout this session, so the nature of the seascape progressively changes. Initially only the odd biggest waves break before reaching the cliffs, and then only when getting really close to them, but gradually breaking occurs more readily, and thus starts further out, thus with an increasing hissy sound of the proliferating wave run-outs in the increasing distance from first break to reaching cliff base — and still throwing up big plumes or sometimes walls of spray when they do get there. During the first half-hour the blowhole is fairly active, but beyond that it's soon no longer performing, until the next mid-tide period.

1. Lower position

   1. 191216_r5-01 — Blowhole whoomphs and eerie 'breathing' sounds.
      Only slightly back from cliff-edge immediately above blowhole, on little rock platform, facing NW obliquely along waves and seaward, with close-by cliff edge immediately above blowhole to right, and a little rock cleft to left, within which is an inconspicuous small crack in the rock, from which frequently issues an eerie breathing-like sound, synchronized with wave action within the blowhole's air chamber. — And of course periodic outbreaks of close-by apocalyptic-sounding wave-breaking, and indeed (startlingly) a splash-down of a spray plume, which caught the recorder. — 30'

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   2. 191216_r5-02+03 — Wave action gradually developing into a thundering and often banging 'surf' performance, even though no sandy beach here.
      Same recorder moved several metres east, onto a slightly higher rock prominence, actually to escape from hazard of occasional spray plumes splashing down at the first position, as well as to get a bit more sheltered from the breeze, which had picked up a little. Here it's facing north, directly facing the main incoming waves. This is a wider panorama, taking in the distant sound (hard right) of the surf run-out in Perran Bay, in addition to all the closer dramatics. — 162'

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2. Slightly higher position, facing W., along the waves

   1. 191216_r6-01 — Facing roughly west, along the waves and along the main line of rugged cliff to Cligga Head, on the rocky cliff edge.
      Here we hear and can really feel the powerful surging movement of the waves from right to left.Curiously, the waves we're overlooking here have a strong rather bouncy pulsation in their sound. This is caused by the incoming waves interacting with a corresponding series of rebound waves returning seaward from the cliff base. We can also hear the blowhole a bit at times, though there are so many booms, rumbles and deep thumps that it's often not easy to be sure whether any particular sound is the blowhole. — 33'

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   2. 191216_r6-02+03 — Notionally the same panorama (facing the same direction), but some 10 metres back from the cliff-edge to get more shelter,
      as the breeze had picked up close to the cliff-edge. Gradually the more continuous thundering /banging surf sound develops, though still with short quiescent periods. — 151'

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I'd previously got an excellent long wind-in-trees recording on the other side of the Teign Gorge, high above Fingle Bridge, on 9 March 2019. That soundscape had a particular quality given to it by some close-by conifer trees — primarily Scots pine, and I still rate it very highly. Here all the individual trees we can hear significantly are broad-leaved species, and that makes the sound less smooth than with conifers but also more varied, invigorating and 'friendly'.

1. 191209_r5-01+02 — Hilltop just above Hunter's Path.
   Part-way along the line of tall, expansive beech trees that runs northward over the top of the hill(Drewston Common) from Hunting Gate. I thought at first it would be impossible to record there in those windy conditions (too much microphone wind noise even with all furry windshields used), but then remembered that the bases of the trees are joined together in places to give short stretches of a low wall-like character — I'd guess indicating that this line of fine trees had once been a layered hedgerow.

   One of those bits of 'wall' just might give enough shelter, with recorder on shortest setting of tripod. This worked out, with recorder very close indeed to the little bit of 'wall', and facing out eastwards, away from the trees but pointing upwards at a steep angle, so that it still captured a lot of sound from the trees.

   A majestic sort of soundscape! — 158'

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2. 191209_r6-01+02 — Steep slope just a little below Hunting Gate.
   Same place where I'd made many of my wind chimes recording, and a couple of wind-in-trees recordings on 2 March 2017, but placed slightly lower down to get better shelter from the wind. This is in a very open copse of stunted trees that runs down the valley slope from there as though it were a continuation of the line of beech trees on top of the hill.

   Those March 2017 wind recordings were nice, but the wind direction wasn't optimal (W to SW,giving less shelter and a fair amount of microphone wind noise), whereas this time the NW wind direction helped that spot to be remarkably well-sheltered for the recorder, even though gusts kept coming closely around in the trees.

   There's a lot going on in this soundscape. We hear gusts rushing and almost roaring in the hilltop beech trees (to right and behind) before they come eddying down the slope here, causing a lot of rattling of dead leaves still on the twigs. In more quiescent periods you can hear gusts distantly moving around as they play their games down below in the valley and right over on the other side.

   This is thus a soundscape of considerable contrasts:
   1. the intimate, with very close play of wind, set against:
   2. the elemental and impersonal — a breathtakingly expansive distant panorama of larger-scale wind actions.

   Additionally, three successive brief very light showers came across during this recording, and the pattering, especially on dead leaves, can be heard — though most of the time that is easily confused with concurrent rattling and rustling of dead leaves.
   — 166'

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1. 190823_r6-01 — Mildly thundering sea on rocks, from cliff 'apron' rocks just a little east of Mussel Point.
   This was a salvage job because of very frequent wind gusts that had to be cut out (one was strong enough to blow the recorder / tripod over, causing termination of that recording). Out of some 1h25' of original recording I salvaged 41 min, but at least that has the beautiful sound I heard there on location. The gentle thundering of the sea there has a particular sound and 'atmosphere' distinctive of that stretch running east from Mussel Point, which I find rather haunting, and must be a product of the acoustics of that particular rocky environment and the shape of the cliff slopes rising back from the rocks. — 41'

2. 190823_r5-01 — Sea on cliff 'apron' rocks below, from clifftop over Economy Cove, overlooking the cleft in which the pulsing blowhole is situated, from position that is particularly exposed to the general breaking sea sound and facing rather across the blowhole cleft.
   Amongst the general breaking sea sound we hear increasingly frequent 'dry' booms — perhaps described as heavy bumps —, but towards the final ten minutes we start hearing gentle deeper, far-from-abrupt, and rather gruff, grunt-like booms, which start coming in groups, with a splashdown immediately following many of those. That is the pulsing blowhole becoming active as the tide goes out.
   An excellent sleep-assist recording, full of details and so it's a healthy listen too! — 77'

3. 190823_r5-02 — Sea on cliff 'apron' rocks below, from clifftop over Economy Cove, overlooking the cleft in which the pulsing blowhole is situated, from position that faces down along the cleft in which the blowhole is situated.
   This position gives a much quieter and more audibly detailed rendering of the general breaking sea sound, so the blowhole, now fully active, is more clearly heard. Those irregular groups of very deep grunt-like booms, many of them immediately followed by a splashdown, sound eerily as though there is some subterranean machine causing this to happen.

   Later in the recording the blowhole grunts and ejections become less frequent, mostly with fewer pulses per group (often just single). — 72'

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A magnificently productive session — birds' evening / dusk chorus and dawn chorus (plus!) with fully featured nightjar chorus and cuckoo spectaculars — had never heard so many cuckoos before! — And no sound quality issues as compared with the session here last June. I'd venture to describe this as by far my most productive and consistently successful recording session ever, and well worth last year's 'failure' here and all this year's prospecting and then trial sessions so I had the best chance of getting things really right this time.

Two of the recorders were again placed in the wind-shelter of self-seeded Sitka spruce trees outside but more or less near the forestry perimeter within the north-west quadrant from the top of Bellever Tor (but placed differently from previously and facing differently on account of different wind direction this time), and the other two were placed in new positions just inside the edge of regrowing clear-felled forestry a bit further north, which had taken me some careful thought and planning to come to choosing them.

Again the special aim was to capture the cuckoos — hopefully some reverberating and echoing in the forestry — and, if lucky, some full nightjar chorus. All recorders were placed far enough apart to be capturing materially different soundscapes, even though a cuckoo in some positions,particularly on the tor, could probably be heard by them all.

Recorder placement and the direction each was facing were dictated by a non-ideal wind direction(SW). The wind was forecast to back SE during the evening, which could have caused a problem, but actually did so only towards the end of the morning recording, when the breeze was light enough to make no difference.

In all the recordings — especially the dawn ones — some of the birdsong was from species I don't yet recognise, so when I write 'Birds heard include', I do mean there were definitely more species.

Despite all the masses of disturbances that I had to edit out (so much so that initially I thought the evening recordings wouldn't be worth salvaging!!), the edited version of each proves to be in its own way a full five-star affair, each with its own particular extra-strong points. Truly amazing — especially if you knew how much I had to edit out!

1. Evening into early night
   Heavy editing was necessary to cut out the masses of distant traffic disturbances from the Dartmeet road, plus a modest number of aeroplanes, plus a period of people disturbances. So, this was a salvage operation, reducing the original c. 3-hour length to a bit less than half that.

   In these soundscapes cuckoos obligingly performed, though less than in the dawn soundscapes, and the nightjar performances were fragmentary and relatively brief, none of the recorders picking up what I could call a nightjar chorus.

   1. 190531_r4-01 — In regrowing forestry edge, just NW of the low drystone wall crossing the clearing that runs roughly north from the tor; recorder facing NW.

      Birds heard include: Song Thrush, Chiffchaff, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Cuckoo, Tree Pipit, Robin, Blackcap, Tawny Owl (once), Wren,Nightjar.
      — 63'

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   2. 190531_r1-01+02 — In regrowing forestry edge, due N. of the tor, just on the tor side (SE-facing) of the forestry perimeter's right-angle bend, recorder facing NNE.
      Late in this recording, during the intermittent nightjars phase, but while a small number of distant songbirds are still singing, a small group of what suspect are Dartmoor ponies just outside the forestry, but might possibly have been roe deer) come close-by to graze (a wonder they didn't knock over or even trample the recorder / tripod if indeed they were within the forestry, as they sound to be!). No vocals, but one can hear them grazing, and sometimes stumbling on the very tussocky / hummocky ground there.

      This recording was made with my original PCM-M10 recorder. Subsequent processing with A1StereoControl has transformed the poor stereo imaging of the original recording into something really vibrant and life-like, much as we hear from the PCM-D100 recorders. However, there are inaccuracies in positioning of some of the sounds — something that any listener apart from me would have no means to know of.

      Birds heard include: Blackbird, Song Thrush, Willow Warbler, Carrion Crow, Wood pigeon, Blackcap, Cuckoo, Nightjar, Robin, Tawny Owl(once). A good number of quite spectacular close encounters with cuckoos.
      — 102'

   3. 190531_r5-01+02 — Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, NW of tor, facing NNE.
      
      Birds heard include: Willow Warbler, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Cuckoo, Tawny Owl (once), Tree Pipit, Carrion Crow, Robin, Blackcap.
      — 109'

   4. 190531_r6-01+02 — Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, W of tor, facing NNE.
      
      Birds heard include: Wren, Willow Warbler, Tree Pipit, Wood pigeon, Blackbird, Blackcap, Chaffinch, Carrion Crow, Song Thrush, Robin,Nightjar.
      — 89'

2. Pre-dawn (as early as 2.30 a.m. BST) to early morning (7.30 to 8.15)
   Arguably the most beautiful and compelling soundscapes I've yet had the great fortune to record — especially 3 and 4 below

   Based on experience from the night session here in June 2018, the recorders were planned to run for an hour longer than I'd allow normally for a dawn chorus recording (usual start of packing up had been 6.30 a.m.), to allow further cuckoo activity to be captured. In the event, while this did enable a bit more of that to be captured, it turned out not to be absolutely necessary as the cuckoo activity generally was greater this time.

   Also, for about the last 2½ hours (fortunately reasonably well past the primary or 'core' dawn chorus) each recording was ravaged by a continual succession of high-altitude aeroplanes — sometimes as many as five at a time within earshot. And of course the traffic on the Dartmeet road had become quite frequent again. So, the major part of all that final c. 2½ hours got cut out, but nonetheless with some excellent material salvaged, including some further spellbinding moments (not least, the echoing / reverberating cattle moos).

   Recorder placements were the same as the evening ones (recorders actually ran overnight, the evening and morning sections then getting naturally separated as I cut out the middle-of-night inactivity period from each of the four original c. 11-hour recordings.

   Each of these four recordings, after editing, was a star of the session, each with its own strong and rather less strong points, but all being winners from my own perspective. A weirdly persistent distant solo cuckoo solidly stuck on the musical interval of a major second (whole tone) was cuckooing even about 2.30 a.m., and picked up by all four recorders.

   This made a weirdly mysterious and even melancholy-seeming effect for the start of each edited recording, with nightjars eventually gradually insinuating themselves into the respective slowly developing soundscapes. When other cuckoos came in, depending upon where they were singing from,some produced wonderful and quite haunting-sounding reverberations and sometimes actual echoes in the forestry — just as I'd been aiming to capture.

   In last year's session here I heard no skylarks at all and neither did the recorders, so it came as a surprise to me this time that during the dawn / early morning period occasionally a skylark or two serenaded me up on the tor, and that all recorders captured some skylark song, albeit one of them only just a fleeting fragment. Positions 3 and 4 captured particularly well-balanced and multitudinous nightjar choruses — 4 doing best at that by a narrow margin.

   1. 190601_r4-02+03+04 — In regrowing forestry edge, just NW of the low drystone wall crossing the clearing that runs roughly north from the tor; recorder facing NW.

      Birds heard include: Nightjar, Cuckoo, Skylark (fleetingly), Song Thrush, Carrion Crow, Green Woodpecker (alarm call), Robin, Blackbird, Tree Pipit, Willow Warbler, Wren, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Stonechat (alarm calls).
      — 189'

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   2. 190601_r1-02+03+04 — In regrowing forestry edge, due N. of the tor, just on the tor side (SE-facing) of the forestry perimeter's right-angle bend, recorder facing NNE.

      This recording made with my original PCM-M10 recorder. Subsequent processing with A1StereoControl has transformed the poor stereo imaging of the original recording into something really vibrant and life-like, much as we hear from the PCM-D100 recorders. However, there are inaccuracies in positioning of some of the sounds — something that any listener apart from me would have no means to know of.

      Birds heard include: Nightjar, Cuckoo, Skylark, Carrion Crow, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Firecrest, Goldcrest, Blackcap, Willow Warbler, Chaffinch,Green Woodpecker (alarm call).
      — 170'

   3. 190601_r5-01+02+03 — Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, NW of tor, facing NNE.

      I also made a version of this, slightly shortened through concentrating it a bit to give priority to the cuckoos.

      Birds heard include: Cuckoo, Nightjar, Skylark, Stonechat, Green Woodpecker (alarm call), Willow Warbler, Song Thrush, Blackbird, Blackcap, Robin,Wood pigeon, Chaffinch, Tree Pipit (distant).
      — 174'

   4. 190601_r6-01+02+03 — Sheltered by self-seeded Sitka spruce trees a little outside forestry periphery, W of tor, facing NNE.
      The biggest and most pronounced cuckoo echoes and reverberations from the forestry.

      Birds heard include: Cuckoo, Nightjar, Skylark, Carrion Crow, Song Thrush, Willow Warbler, Blackcap, Green Woodpecker (alarm call), Goldcrest,Wren, Blackbird, Tree Pipit, Wood pigeon, Firecrest, Pheasant (distant alarm call).
      — 139'

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Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

1. Nature-Symphony 30 (Mother Nature telling springtime melancholia not to be so silly!)

On this occasion the swell was hardly discernible but there were modestly-sized superficial waves, and the general wind dropped to very light during the evening, but a gentle nagging katabatic wind started about mid-dusk and continued right through the night. I couldn't record usefully anyway during the afternoon because of persistent background noise from a couple of fishing boats a little way out at sea. Then in the evening the guillemots and razorbills in the big cave on the south side of Pentargon Cove did perform, but only modestly, and didn't stand out all that much from the sea sound. During the night I heard only one Manx shearwater, so the recording aimed to capture a good display of those was another one for the bin.

However, things worked out better for the dawn / post-dawn period, and I've retained the following two recordings:

1. 190522_r5-01+02 — Closely overlooking Pentargon cove from just below the crags on the clifftop spur running down to Beeny Cliff's southernmost headland. This viewpoint gave coverage further into the Cove than in my previous recordings from around here, and indeed favoured the oystercatcher 'spectacular' flyabouts very well indeed. The guillemots and razorbills were more vocal than in the preceding afternoon / evening, but sounded surprisingly quiet from this relatively close viewpoint — but they still come out clearly enough to make this an excellent recording.

   Also, we can rather faintly hear a land birds' small-scale dawn and post-dawn chorus showing through the sea sound. Primarily, Stonechat, Blackbird and Wren are noticeable in that landlubber part of the soundscape.

   In addition, periodically the continuous splashing sound of the Pentargon waterfall is heard. In fact from that position we don't hear at all any direct sound from that waterfall; what we hear is all echo, thanks to an angle in the cliffs of this side of the cove. — 179'

2. 190522_r6-02+03 — Further back, up the hill slope, beside the higher alternative to the official Coast Path (which avoids the very steep and loose section at Fire Beacon Point), among heather, gorse and blackthorn scrub, facing back over Pentargon Cove. An exquisite small-scale land-birds' dawn and post-dawn chorus up here around the recorder, while down below we hear clearly the oystercatcher flyabouts — and the megaphone properties of the guillemots' big cave enables us clearly to hear their comical bedlams. A persistent gentle breeze is often heard in the microphones — a soothing and unintrusive sound, thanks to appropriate windshields being used, plus a bit of 'post-recording' dynamic filtering for the relevant bass frequencies.

   This foreground dawn chorus compared with the popular notion of a dawn chorus is remarkably like an exquisite music work for chamber ensemble compared with a big symphony for full orchestra. It starts with stonechats, whose song has a delightful thin mouse-squeaking sort of voice that gives areal 'atmosphere' and sense of anticipation.

   Then a blackbird perches on a narrow small crag to the right and starts its mellifluously joyful-sounding performance. Presently another blackbird joins in on the left, and soon a few others join in too, split pretty evenly left / right. That truly exquisite ensemble continues for awhile, gradually giving way as a persistent whitethroat takes centre-stage.

   Meanwhile down below, the exhilarating if slightly vulgar fluty whistles of groups of oystercatchers on flyabout low over the cove, plus the hilariously volatile, raucous and uncouth bedlam outbursts of the guillemots and razorbills in their cave, make for a dramatically picturesque contrast that emphasizes the purity and sweetness of our nearby blackbirds and even the rather scratchy and crotchety-sounding whitethroats. — 143'

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The recorders were all placed in the wind-shelter of self-seeded Sitka spruce trees outside but more or less near the forestry perimeter within the north-west quadrant from the top of Bellever Tor. The special aim was to capture the cuckoos — hopefully some reverberating and echoing in the forestry — and any nightjars that might perform (I expected it to be a little too early in the season for any major performance from those).

I wasn't going to record from near the top of the tor this time, because I was seeking to have more background sound (than last year's night session here) from wind in the trees in order to mask the microphone self-noise, so I set out the recorders in different positions to see which of the latter best captured the echoes and reverb in the forestry.

With regard to the echoes in the forestry, not only certain bird sounds produced those echoes,but also the occasional distant cattle that were in just the right position and mooed / bellowed loud enough (rather spectacular in a few cases). But the really spectacular set of echoes unfortunately had to be cut out, because they were from a pair of exceptionally loud motorbikes racing each other with very high revs on all the more or less straight sections of road, first on the road from Postbridge to Two Bridges, and then coming back on the Dartmeet road (from where the most spectacular echoes were produced).

1. 190514_r4-01+02 — Same as Position 2 on 20 April: placed NNW from top of Bellever Tor, by where an unofficial minor track from the tor meets the more definite unofficial track running just outside the forestry perimeter. Facing approx. S., with the tor to left and the forestry to right. Quite a lot of excellent wind-in-trees sound, though with an over-quiet period after cessation of the bird sounds,before the breeze got up a bit again to give a good long stretch of relatively gentle gusts chasing about in the trees. On a few occasions a cuckoo on the left can be heard echoing in the forestry to right.

   Birds heard include: Willow warbler, Robin, Chaffinch, Blackbird (some very strong solo singing), Cuckoo, Song thrush, Nightjar (just a couple of very brief and quiet incursions).

   — 185'

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2. 190514_r5-01+02 — Same as Position 1 on 20 April: placed just a little SW of 1., making it nearer to NW from top of Bellever Tor, at a sheltered spot where the recorder had an excellent panorama including looking across and up the slope up to the tor with all the scattered trees on the slope, which were prospective singing spots for cuckoos and nightjars as well as any other birds. Facing approx. SW.,with the tor to left and the forestry to right.

   Because this was pretty close to the first position, the same birdsong sequence is heard,although with a slightly different perspective — and from here the echoes from a number of the cuckoos were more pronounced, even with the loud blackbird solo producing faint echoes. All these echoes, however, come very close indeed after the original sound, so I hoped that the echoes in the further two recordings might have more delay and so come out more impressively.

   Altogether I prefer this recording to 1., even though I rate that pretty highly too. However,the wind-in-trees sound after cessation of birdsong was much less, and I deleted most of that long final part.

   Birds heard include: Blackbird (some faint echoes), Willow warbler, Song thrush, Chaffinch, Cuckoo (some echoes), Wren, ?Whitethroat (heard just once, close), Meadow pipit, Carrion Crow (reverberant), Robin, Nightjar (just a couple of very brief and quiet incursions).

   — 161'

3. 190514_r6-01+02 — Further SW, almost due W. of the tor, sheltered by a clump of self-seeded Sitka spruce trees that enabled me to have the recorder facing N., with the forestry to left and the tor to hard-right.
   This was far enough away from 2. to capture a mostly different birdsong performance. Here indeed my wish for a greater echo delay was granted.

   Possibly as much as half of the many brief cuckoo events produced echoes, and sometimes this was quite striking and beautiful. Sometimes echoes could be heard from a cuckoo that could hardly be heard at all directly. And there was a weird occasion where a cuckoo did a 'hiccupping' phrase, and the echo was in a surprisingly brighter tone and slightly higher pitch, with notes added at the end that I didn't hear directly from that cuckoo at all. Also a few impressive echoes from cattle.

   Birds heard include: Chaffinch, Cuckoo (many echoes, and occasionally reverb rather than echoes), Wren, Greater Spotted Woodpecker (drumming),Blackbird, Tree Pipit, Pheasant (once), Willow Warbler, Robin, Song thrush, Carrion Crow (impressively reverberant).

   — 93'

4. 190514_r1-01+02 — A little up the slope from 3., in wind-shelter of a small isolated Sitka spruce — again facing N., but with a more open and clear panorama, as it was just a little above the tops of the larger trees below.

   From here the wind-in-trees sound was less, and so the recorder's mic self-noise was a little more apparent, so I probably won't use this recording. I cut out the later part of this recording, after cessation of birdsong, as there wasn't much wind-in-trees sound to give much interest to take attention away from the mic self-noise.

   A weird thing was that this recorder (my original PCM-M10), after enhancement of the poor stereo imaging, gave a very different, and inaccurate, rendering of the cuckoo echoes and reverberation. Instead of a clear echo with significant delay, on the right-hand side, produced by some of the cuckoos (mostly distant) to left, this recorder transformed that into a reverberation, almost completely without echo, also on the left — even though the recorder was capturing the same panorama as in 3., but from a modestly higher viewpoint. It still sounded great, but was way-out in accuracy.

   Birds heard include: Cuckoo (many echoes), Stonechat, Willow Warbler, Chaffinch, Meadow Pipit, Wren, Blackbird, Carrion Crow (reverberant),Blackcap, Robin.

   — 78'

One thing I'd already found was that these young spruce trees gave exceptional shelter from the wind, with hardly any gusts blowing around into the small sheltered area to their immediate lee.This appears to be because all the trees' needles were acting like combs to the wind, smoothing out the airflow and deadening the turbulence that would have produced those local gusts. So, these outlying trees, then, mark excellent spots for me to put recorders with some delectable viewpoints for the wanted recordings and an exceptional degree of shelter.

The three positions tried this time were each just a little outside the forestry perimeter, the first about WNW from Bellever Tor summit, the second about NW, and the final one NNW (sheltered by the final outlying tree as one follows the forestry perimeter round north-eastwards).

Main birds heard include:

• Position 1: Willow warbler, Chaffinch, Robin, Cuckoo (with echo & reverb), Carrion crow (with reverb)
• Position 2: Cuckoo, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Coal tit, Wren, Willow warbler (more distant)
• Position 3: (all more or less distant) Blackbird, Willow warbler, Robin, Song thrush,chaffinch

The test aspect worked brilliantly, and, subject to wind direction, I could well use this exact spot as one of my night session positions. We are just outside the forestry perimeter, with a fairly narrow clear-felled area separating us from the current standing forestry edge (quite tall dense stand), and we're among scattered small clumps of smaller trees outside the perimeter. As I found, these small tree clumps afforded a really surprising degree of wind shelter, so I was able to run a PCM-D100 recorder with only one furry windshield (a rare luxury with that model!) and yet the recording to have minimal intrusive wind disturbance — at least after processing in TDR Nova.

In the event, after cutting out a lot of aeroplane and other non-wind disturbances, I'd still captured a really beautiful wind soundscape, with gusts restlessly chasing around among the trees. Because these are conifer trees, the wind sound has a smoothness that is quite different from the sound of wind in broad-leaved trees. That smoothness actually gives a pointer to why even very small clumps of these trees were giving such unusually thorough and consistent wind shelter without the usual gusts coming whistling round into the sheltered space.

The point is, the huge number of 'needles' acts like a comb to the wind, smoothing and straightening its flow round the tree's edges, so the airflow around it's much less turbulent than when rounding other types of tree or other sheltering objects.

Go to Freesound page…

These two pairs of concurrent recordings were being run as test recordings, using less furry windshield protection than I'd come to be habitually using (two furries instead of three, and one furry instead of two) — then seeing to what extent the more efficient wind noise reduction I could get afterwards using TDR Nova really would be effective in compensating for that reduction of protection. In the event the results looked very favourable for that approach, suggesting that, even with the D100recorders, from now on I'd be to a smallish extent less restricted as to where I could usefully make recordings.

Because these were test recordings, any actually good and usable end products would be regarded as a bonus to the sessions main purpose.

1. High up on Hunter's Path, overlooking the Gorge from the north side. Although both these soundscapes sound nice, I think that with the sparseness of their birdsong they don't stand out sufficiently from the crowds for me to expect to use them — though of course I might change my mind…

   1. 190327_r5-01+02 — A little down the steep slope from Hunting Gate, the highest point on the Hunter's Path, highest point of the Hunter's Path. Generally rather sparse birdsong, the birds including: Blackbird, Chiffchaff, Raven, Robin, Tawny owl, Linnet, Dunnock, Chaffinch, Great spotted woodpecker (drumming), Blue tit, Coal tit, Carrion crow, Wood pigeon. — 123'

   2. 190327_r6-01+02 — A little down the steep slope from the Hunter's Path a little to the west of Hunting Gate, in the edge of a very open copse that runs down the hillside. Again, the birdsong relatively sparse, including: Chiffchaff, Chaffinch, Wood pigeon, Tawny owl, Raven, Yellowhammer, Great Spotted Woodpecker (drumming), Blackbird, Mistle thrush (distant), Carrion Crow, Coal tit, jackdaw. — 97'

2. In field immediately upstream from the Gorge — panoramas from bottom and almost top of small hill, both partly encircled by a bend in the River Teign (bordered on both sides by tall trees, with other woods and copses further away, and the Teign Gorge woods on the left). Both recordings are beautiful and worth using. Most of the birds heard are more or less distant, and they give delightfully different perspectives on the quite hypnotic robin and especially blackbird choruses. The blackbirds are all distant to very distant, and the effect when many of them are singing all around is a wonder to behold.

   In both recordings, here and there some brief blackcap-like song is heard — but this is deceptive. As far as I could make out, it was all just the occasional robin briefly mimicking a little bit of blackcap song. The real blackcaps had probably not arrived yet, being summer visitors.

   1. 190327_r5-03+04 — Just outside the top of the hillside copse, facing out through the taller uppermost trees of the copse extending immediately below, having a grandstand panorama of the valley bottom's bending around us. The acoustic is very three-dimensional and a bit on the 'dry' side, with only modest reverb from the trees and within the valley bottom. This gives great clarity of detail, the higher viewpoint allowing various more distant bird sounds to be heard.
      Birds heard include: Robin, Jackdaw, Chaffinch, Great tit, Blue Tit, Blackbird, Wood pigeon, Carrion crow, magpie. — 112'

   2. 190327_r5-03+04 — Just outside the bottom of the hillside copse, only very slightly raised above the actual valley bottom. The acoustic is much 'warmer' and generally more reverberant, so that even the most distant birds seem to fill the valley with sound to a degree greatly out of proportion to their distance and therefore quietness.
      Birds heard include: Robin, Blackbird, Blue tit, coal tit, Great tit, Chaffinch, Wood pigeon, Carrion crow, jackdaw, Song thrush. — 99'

190309_r6-01+02 — A beautifully spacious and detailed panorama of wind gusts chasing around through the trees high up on the wooded southern slope of the Teign Gorge, Drewsteignton, Devon, with some birds as it's early spring. Ones I noticed were robin (most prominent and frequent), blue tit, coal tit, wren, a couple of brief raven fly-overs, and for a short while a very distant mistle thrush.

On this occasion the recording started with a general force 6 wind, giving some dramatic intensely roaring gale-force gusts through the trees, but after about half-an-hour that had dropped down to a less powerful level, and then proceeded gradually to decrease further during much of the recording, though with the odd mildly stronger gusts once in a while. But there was always the background sound of wind in the trees further down in the valley and indeed up the other side — and in the lulls the bird songs and calls were more noticeable. — 222' (Yes, 3h42'! — This has been split into two equal parts for uploading to Freesound.)

Go to Freesound page…
(That links to the Part 1 page, and both pages link to each other).

Initially only the larger waves were breaking before meeting the cliff base, but gradually more were breaking, progressively further out, so starting to give more the familiar continuous sound of breaking surf — but particularly in the early stages the wave breakings were particularly dramatic,with wave-crests rearing up here and there and collapsing with quite a heavy bang, while often an incoming wave would hit an outward-bound rebound wave to cause a violent eruption of spray,inevitably followed by an impressive splashdown sound.

Although this is a dramatic and thrilling soundscape, it's also markedly soporific in effect during extended listening, and would be an excellent sleeping aid for some people.

For realistic sound, it needs a playing volume of 3dB above a sensible normal listening level.  — 96'

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190224_r5-01+02+03 — I'd produced some excellent earlier recordings closely overlooking the particular cave entrance and 'vestibule' area, but this is much more dramatic than any of those, apart from two early recordings that found the sea so wild that they made poor listening because of the pretty unremitting assault on the ears.

Here the dramatics, with much reverberating booming and rumbling, with splashdowns from spray plumes sometimes big enough to make a menacing roar, go about as far as I'd really want for an extended listen.

I made the recording, as on previous occasions, from the little exposed rock platform closely overlooking the cave vestibule, looking across it, with the cave entrance to right. A great plus point is that we can distinctly hear the trickling of a little streamlet on the rocks just behind the recorder, for the latter can hear sounds most of the way round behind it. That gives an enhanced sense of perspective, like a foreground object in a photo.

Actually I had a Zoom H5 recorder with H6 mic module recording closely next to this one, as one of my side-by-side comparisons to see if there was any advantage in my using that nearest Zoom equivalent to the Sony D100.

It turned out that although the Zoom recordings were superficially still more impressive in all the detail that jumped out at one, really that difference was because the Zoom mics were too directional and gave poor integration of left and right channels, so all the details were too prominent and 'separate'. So I discarded all the Zoom recordings I made, and sold the recorder.

Playback volume needs to be 3dB above a sensible normal level. — 192', but cut down a little for the Freesound upload (144').

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181211_r5-01 — A repeat of the 6 March 2018 recording, from exactly the same spot and facing almost the same direction (this time with far end of weir at centre, so the weir itself occupies the right half) — but this time with the River Teign running quite high and the weir's sound now a real heavy aggressive sort of sound. Not at all as smooth and comfortable as the March recording, but with a dramatic, invigorating quality.

As in the March recording, to a regular audiophile this would sound odd and probably seriously flawed in terms of the stereo soundstage, at least until one sees a photo of the weir and the exact direction the recorder was facing. In fact, as noted above, the centre-stage is the far end of the weir, so the whole weir occupies the right-hand side, while the left-hand side captures the defrothing and turbulent river rushing on its way downstream from the weir. And the weir itself is quite diverse in its sound as it incorporates a fish ladder, which greatly augments the thundering quality of the sound in the weir's middle section. — 91' (A great sleep-assist recording)

I've produced an additional rather more laid-back version of this recording (181211_r5-01-laid-back), with the higher treble slightly attenuated, subjectively giving a slightly more distant perspective.

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The midrange-frequency background sound is mostly from the rain on my roof (my flat is top floor), for the rain is heavier than it sounds from the window.

It's of relatively modest length, despite the all-night length of the recording, because this was a Friday night and so there was quite a lot more traffic disturbance, even in the small hours, than I'd have got midweek, and because of that I had to edit out most of the recording. — 66' (A great sleep-assist recording)

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A consecutive pair of recordings with a fairly substantial swell (though decreasing later in second recording), capturing particularly effectively two different perspectives (and thus sound balances) of this thrilling Beeny Cliff sound — the rumbling and booms often having a deliciously earthquaky quality because of the very low frequencies in the sound.

1. 181020_r5-01 — On the alcove clifftop about a third of the way along from the south end.
   This was set up to be as exposed as possible to the direct sound of the sea action down below in the alcove — though in practice that means only a small (but very telling) amount of action against the more seaward part of the north face of the alcove. — 91'

2. On the clifftop at the south end of the alcove.
   181020_r5-02 — The recorder was placed so that it was just shielded from all direct sea sound from the alcove, but it still picks up echoes of that action from the alcove's north cliff and the nearer slopes. This is a spot within a small area that I'd normally use as my base and lunch-stop point while making recordings here — and I'd always felt that while sitting there, shielded from the direct sea sound, I was hearing a nicer sound balance than one got from points along the alcove's clifftop or down the side of the alcove, and this recording bears that out. — 82'

181010_r5-01+2 — Can an autumn day be experienced as vibrant and cheering rather than mellow, wistful or indeed melancholic? — Clearly 10 October this year here thought so! This autumn soundscape was captured on a sunny very warm, quite summery October day. Because the wind was an upper force-4 Bft south-easterly, the slope in the woods here was relatively though not fully sheltered, the wind gusts tending to catch the treetops more, causing newly-ripe acorns to dislodge from their cups and indeed sometimes to give little flurries of 'acorn hail'.

This was fascinating to listen to, for the sound of each impact varied according to what each acorn hit. And because this was on a fairly steep slope, many of the acorns would bounce a little way down the slope before coming to rest. They couldn't actually roll down, because of the already accumulating dead-leaf litter and underlying soft and lumpy grass and moss cover.

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of bird sound, too. Okay, this isn't a bird chorus, but birds are not long out of earshot. Robins were just about the only singers, often singing enthusiastically as though it were spring, but other birds frequently sounded outwith their particular calls. Birds heard include Robin, Raven, Jackdaw, Rook, Carrion Crow, Long-tailed tit, Blue tit.

The original recording was just over 3 hours, to allow for expected disturbances, which did indeed happen. I had to cut out nearly half-an-hour at both ends, as well as some shorter sections in-between, so I was relieved to end up with as much good recording as I did. The CD-length version was created by cutting sections out of some of the more 'fallow' sections, so enabling all the more interesting parts to be included in the CD. — 128'

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A rather sweltery late morning to mid-afternoon pair of recordings of quite voluptuous gentle sea action in the alcove, with gentle very deep rumbling and booms from the sea in the cave system opening directly below, with the most exquisite and varied grasshopper ensembles and also various flies, bees and bumblebees flying around in the foreground around the recorder. These recordings are consecutive ones, from somewhat different positions on the clifftop of the alcove.

1. 180805_r5-01pt1 — Somewhat shielded from the direct sea sound at the bottom of this alcove. The foreground sea sound therefore is gentle and rather subdued and so favouring audibility of the grasshoppers — but with rather a 'hole in the middle' with regard to grasshopper ensembles. — 23'

2. 180805_r5-01pt2+02 — Exposed to direct sound of the sea action on the bottom of the prominence forming the north-east side of the alcove, as a result of which that sound is a little louder, brighter and more 'present' than in the first recording. Fortunately, it's still not enough at all to drown out the grasshoppers, even when fairly distant or 'singing' really quietly, and here we get an increasingly varied and all-round panorama of the exquisite constantly varying play of different grasshopper ensembles. — 92'

Without a very good speaker system with well extended bass (right down to at least 30Hz and preferably 20Hz at a reasonable level) you will hear little or nothing of the mostly very quiet rumbling and booms. Generally a carefully configured really good subwoofer or indeed stereo pair of them would be required for a domestic speaker system to do these recordings justice. High-grade headphones would be best.

180712_r5-01 — This was the serendipitous end result of a failure of my primary aim, for this session was intended to capture any of the thundery showers forecast for this afternoon that came this way. In the event there was no thunder, but at least a quite torrential shower developed, lasting a bit over an hour.

However, I was expecting to discard the recording because while the cloud was developing prior to giving any rain, the otherwise light northerly wind, from which my recording session was nicely sheltered, started picking up to force 5 gusts from the east, blowing along the valley and thus catching the recorder, and then once it was raining, especially when that got heavy, the rain made a great din on the umbrella that I had to use to shelter both me and the recorder, and it seemed tome that the recording wouldn't be worth keeping, let alone using.

However, once I'd processed the recording back at home and listened to bits of it, I was surprised to find how good it was despite the din of rain on umbrella being really too strong. As for the wind, actually for this type of recording content the microphone wind noise was almost all within an acceptable range, though I did find it necessary to EQ the bass to reduce the lower boomy bass frequencies by up to 6dB in order to reduce the heavy intrusiveness of some of that microphone wind noise.

So, the recording starts with some gusts of wind blowing around in the trees, both up here and down below in the valley — and then at about 23 minutes in, the first faint patterings of small raindrops come to notice. This builds up very slowly to a torrential assault — and the umbrella rain noise is then quite an assault on the ears! However, despite the intensity of the umbrella rain noise, the latter does not obliterate the general rain sound, which has a different quality — and, at least for me, in playback, the umbrella rain noise really does seem to be coming from rather above, as indeed it was, leaving the straight-ahead and lower physical levels in the soundstage surprisingly audible, and giving a particularly friendly and 'intimate' aspect to the soundscape.

Because of the big dynamic range of this recording, to avoid clipping and distortion during the torrential phase, the whole recording is some 12–15dB lower in level than a normal playback level. That means of course that to get lifelike sound you need to have your playback volume turned up by that amount compared with normal level, which equates to at least a quadrupling of the volume; otherwise many of the quieter sounds would be lost. — 88'

To produce the CD-length version (78'), I shortened both the torrential phase and the wind-only beginning.

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I'm aiming to have further tries for recording thunderstorms or heavy showers in the Teign Gorge, but would need less wind, and also need to find a suitable covering to put directly onto the umbrella to deaden the rain impacts.

Armed with my lessons learnt from the previous outing here, and with rather lighter wind and distinctly smaller swell and thus much quieter sea, this time I achieved what I failed to get last time.

However, in fairly far retrospect I'm all too aware of the microphone self-noise (at least the hiss) in recordings 2 and 3 (thanks to my compensating for the muffling effect of the 3 furry windshields used for each recorder), so am sadly not so enthusiastic about them nowadays (2023), especially as most people would turn up the volume too much, not understanding how quiet those soundscapes really were.

1. 180624_r4-01+02 — By coast path, quite near The Rumps, and facing those dramatic peninsular prominences for the seabirds and clifftop land birds, but the recorder was boldly placed on top of the drystone wall on the landward side of the Coast Path, so that, with its very wide coverage, it could capture the skylarks' dawn chorus going on over the field(s) behind it. Much of the sea sound is muffled because I deliberately placed the recorder where almost all of the 'hissy' sea action was hidden from view, so that the skylarks — even quite distant ones — could be clearly heard.

   Birds heard include: Skylark, Herring gull, Great black-backed gull, Oystercatcher, Guillemot, Stonechat, Meadow pipit, Pheasant, Linnet, Carrion crow — 183'

   Go to Freesound page…

2. 180624_r5-01+02 — In field beside Coast Path, rather more towards Pentire Point, facing roughly ESE, with Polzeath fairly distant on right and the distant seabird calls from The Rumps to left. A glorious all-round panorama.

   Birds heard include: Skylark, Herring gull, Great black-backed gull, Blackbird, Guillemot, Carrion crow, Pheasant, Linnet — 174'

   Go to Freesound page…

3. 180624_r6-01+02 — In the next field inland (on the track for Pentire Farm), facing roughly WNW, with Polzeath fairly distant on left and the much more distant-sounding seabird calls from The Rumps to right.This recording sounds very similar to 2., apart from different positioning, and the seabirds at The Rumps sounding much more distant owing to shielding from a close-by drystone wall.

   I'd really wanted this recording to be another clifftop one like 1., but the position I'd chosen for that started getting a breeze shortly before the skylarks' expected startup time (a bit before 3.30 a.m. BST), so I rushed with this recorder to put it in a more sheltered position than 2., to function as an emergency backup in case the other two recordings got trashed by the wind.

   The proximity of two drystone walls required careful thought and testing to find the best placement and alignment compromise between shelter from wind on the one hand and getting the nearest possible approach to an all-round panorama on the other. I seem to have been particularly effective in achieving that. I stopped this recording earlier than the other two because cattle had been let into that field and were getting rather close to the recorder, and I wanted to avoid any curious cattle causing damage.

   Birds heard include: Skylark, Blackbird, Herring gull, Great black-backed gull, Guillemot, Oystercatcher, Carrion crow, Pheasant — 127'

180612_r6-02+03 — This is the only even moderately successful outcome from this night session, for I was actually aiming for recordings of the dawn chorus full of skylarks. That did actually happen, but I wasn't ready for its earliness and suddenness of commencement, and also the sea was too loud for the clifftop positions I'd chosen for the recordings, so rendering the latter pretty useless. A repeat session here is much needed, now that I've learnt various lessons — but conditions may well not be right again for me to do that this year (I generally don't attempt dawn chorus recordings beyond the end of June, for any results would normally be less than the best).

I set up two recorders for the Manx shearwaters, at clifftop positions where there was much shielding from the direct sound of the sea on the cliff bottom (no shore here), but one recorder had actually got inadvertently switched from 'Mic' to 'Line' input during initial setting up, so had been recording just silence for the whole session. So I have only this one recording from the darkest hours.

Despite the aforementioned shielding, the sea sound was still distinctly louder than I was wanting for this, but there were enough Manx shearwaters on this occasion for quite a number to come close enough to be heard reasonably despite that issue. As always, their eerie,tormented-sounding calls are a wonder to behold. On this occasion the recorder captured a distinctly higher number of males, which have a higher, thinner, less wheezy and more squealing voice, than in any of my previous recordings of this bird. — 163'

I made a CD-length version of this recording, which shortened many of the gaps between 'Manxies' events, so making more immediately interesting listening.

Afternoon — the recorder having to be huddled among the regrowing Sitka spruce trees on the east side of the clearing, for sufficient shelter from the easterly wind — which didn't allow me the all-round panorama that I was really after. Much had to be edited out because of wind, forestry machinery and people disturbances, and indeed I wouldn't have kept this recording at all except for the cuckoo events. Yet this salvaged extract still beautifully captures the peacefulness of this high moorland forestry clearing, and belies the reality of all the disturbances.

Birds heard include Cuckoo, Meadow pipit, Blackcap, Willow warbler, Blackbird, Chaffinch, Robin, with much close foreground interest provided by bees and various types of fly — mostly hoverflies — 88'

Go to Freesound page…

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

1. Nature-Symphony 54 (Sinfonia Lugubre della Primavera – Il miagolio) (Yes, The meow!)

180526_r4-01 — I wasn't really intending to record this storm, because it was evening on the Saturday of our Spring Bank Holiday weekend, so that there was really too much city noise. Generally the only worthwhile time to record a thunderstorm from here is in the small hours, midweek, preferably not during a holiday period. So, my decision to record anyway came late, when the storm was already under way, and I then thought that perhaps it would be a good idea to record, just in case the storm became really severe and blotted out much of the background city noise anyway.

In the event the storm moved away quite rapidly, growing as it did so. Actually its lightning quickly became very frequent, but most of that was high up in the cloud's anvil top and so much of it went more or less unheard.

What is actually in this edited version of the recording is no more than half of what had been recorded, owing to all the disturbances I had to remove, and actually even the original recording was probably no more than half of the actual storm, because I'd considered that it wouldn't be worth recording owing to all the nearby traffic disturbance, and then only belatedly decided to take a chance on recording anyway.

Go to Freesound page…

On the evening of 20 June 2017, from this same location, I'd recorded hilarious guillemot bedlams, primarily from a large cave on the opposite side of Pentargon Cove — but on that occasion the sea sound was strong enough to weaken the impact of most of that in the recording, and just a minute or two before the dark-side-of-dusk half-hour ultra-hilarious spectacular 'macro-bedlam' unleashed(having me in fits of giggles), the local katabatic wind had struck up and completely trashed that part of the recording. I was thus keen to capture a repeat of that tremendously entertaining and generally heart-warming spectacle.

The trouble was, of course, that on any clear and relatively calm night that katabatic wind would come on at some point, so a few attempts to capture a repeat performance all failed — quite apart from the guillemots themselves not performing anyway (i.e., on a usable 'bedlam' scale).

On this day, however, it was all upside-down. When I arrived at the site before midday the guillemots were already creating excellent, gloriously uncouth bedlams, with razorbills also much more prominent in the commotions than on 20 June last year, and all this with a smaller swell and so a quieter sea — so I got recording straightaway in various positions to get different perspectives and degrees of shelter from the occasional slight (non-katabatic) breeze that picked up. I was intending to continue recording overnight, with the emphasis changing to Manx shearwaters for the darkest hours and then rearranging again to capture some nice dawn bird sounds.

In the event, at the late dusk period when last year the guillemots had gone absolutely bananas,this time they just progressively went silent! Also the night and dawn parts of this adventure were unable to happen, for later in the dusk period that confounded katabatic wind started developing again. For a time I thought it wouldn't be strong enough to affect the recordings, but then as it came to time to rearrange for the Manx shearwaters session, I myself was getting cold enough to doubt the wisdom of staying on any longer anyway — and a look at the level meters on the three recorders showed that the wind was significantly affecting them all. I thus made a reluctant but prudent choice to pack up and have a (difficult!) night-time hitch-hike back to Exeter.

Despite that early termination I'd come home with a total of over 22 hours of recording (on three recorders), and knew that some of that would have to be discarded. What is listed here, then, is the end result after initial 'triaging' to discard altogether unusable recordings, and then quite intensive editing to clear out the various wind and aeroplane disturbances.

The afternoon recordings especially are not just a potentially boring series of guillemot /razorbill bedlams, however. Other birds make their mark, some in the foreground, and make for a beautiful contrast and variety. In particular, occasional herring gulls flying about in the cove area enable you to hear the cove's reverberance, thanks to the cove being bounded by rugged cliffs on all landward sides — and on a few occasions a small flock of oystercatchers does a flyabout spectacular with their loud and bright piping calls.

They give fascinating reverberation changes as they fly around. Then in the foreground linnets are rarely out of earshot for long. They are quietly-voiced birds with voices of the utmost sweetness, musicality and sense of benignity, and serve as a touching foreground counter to the riotous earthy uncouthness of those seabird clowns in the cave where they are making almost all of their grotesque performance.

In all the afternoon recordings, as well as bird sounds there is occasional additional foreground interest from the odd bumblebee that fussily dawdles around the recorder for up to a minute or two.

1. 180518_r4-01+02 — On the heathery slope slightly below the coast path just a little north of the headland top crag, overlooking the mouth of Pentargon Cove from my highest viewpoint of this session — afternoon.

   From here the sea action against the cliffs on the other side of the cove is naturally more distant, and sounds so. However, because the main cave used by the guillemots / razorbills acts like a megaphone, very often the guillemots and to a fair extent the razorbills come across weirdly loud and clear considering one's distance from them. Birds heard include Guillemot, Razorbill, Linnet, Meadow pipit, Carrion crow, Herring gull, Oystercatcher. — 100'

2. 180518_r4-04 — Same position — from mid-evening to dusk(ish). The foreground birds, primarily linnets, are heard much less now and their sounds gradually peter out, along with the guillemot /razorbill bedlams, leaving us with more or less silence from all birds before the end — but actually the sea by then has already become a particular interest in itself because the tide has been rising and gets to the point that all shore that's in earshot is covered and the actually small swell is no longer breaking on anything.

   So instead of the familiar hissy roaring, we hear just a lot of prominent rippling sounds, now with a whole lot of relatively minor booms and whumps from within caves not only in the mouth of the cove but from the continuation of the cliffs towards Boscastle Harbour. They sound particularly interesting because most of them are within particular caves, and so each of those has its own reverberation from its respective cave. Birds heard include Guillemot, Razorbill, Herring gull, Linnet, Carrion crow, Pheasant (the latter on the rather scrubby grassy upper cliff slope on the far side of Pentargon Cove). — 102'

3. 180518_r5-04 — On the cliff-edge prominence just a little down the grassy slope directly seawards from the headland's top crag, late evening, into dusk. A really lovely one, and quite weird. It would have been longer except that from early dusk it was trashed by a katabatic wind starting up. The recorder is facing a bit obliquely out to sea, with the line of cliffs from Pentargon Cove towards Boscastle Harbour on the left, and on the right / below us we hear the echo on a cliff face of gentle sea action in the mouth of a deep cave running underneath us.

   Entertaining guillemot bedlams keep breaking out in the big two-entrance cave to left, over the other side of the mouth of Pentargon Cove, but they are gradually settling down, with their performance almost finished by the last half-hour. Meanwhile, the close sea action to right becomes gradually stronger, balancing better then with the level of the distant sea sound to left.

   The semi-chaotic rhythm of the frequent booms and whumps on the left are in fascinating contrast to the smooth and regular breathing-like sea action on our right / below us. Occasionally a quiet deep boom comes from that cave below, in addition to all those the other side of Pentargon Cove. Birds heard include Guillemot, some Razorbill, and a few quiet twittering calls from foreground Linnets. — 100'

   Go to Freesound page…

   1. 180518_r5-04-last30 — The final 30 minutes of 3. This is almost free from guillemots or other seabirds, so the focus is fully on the almost voluptuous seascape. A great sleep-assist recording.

      Go to Freesound page…

4. 180518_r6-01 and 180518_r6-01pt+02+03 — A fair way down the headland spur's main grassy slope, on a very minor crest that runs down the lower part of that slope — afternoon. Because I suspected this would be the overall best of the recording positions, I kept a recorder there for the whole of the afternoon and evening session — and that proved to be good thinking, for the overall sound balance seemed superior here, and this position got less wind overall.

   I produced a 'Best Of' CD-length compilation from all this, gathering together the guillemot / razorbill, oystercatcher and foreground linnet episodes. This is what I've put on Freesound (180518_for CD).

   Actually I split this long recording to correspond with a point at nearly half-time when I made small change to the direction the recorder was facing — just a little to the left, bringing the main guillemots action more to the centre. Birds heard include Guillemot, Razorbill, Herring gull, Linnet, Oystercatcher, Wren, Meadow pipit, Great black-backed gull (once), Pheasant (on upper rather scrubby grassy cliff slope on far side of Pentargon Cove), Carrion crow. — 95' + 84'

   Go to Freesound page…

5. 180518_r6-04 — Same as 5., but in the evening, from about 8.30 p.m. The guillemot bedlams are gradually becoming quieter and less frequent, having more or less finished for the night by the end. The sea sound we're left with is a fascinating bonus extra, as explained for 2. and 4. Birds heard include Guillemot, Razorbill, Herring gull, Linnet, Carrion crow. — 68'

This looked as though it would be a brilliant repeat of the 26 April great success, but using my other two Davis Blanchard Chimes this time, combined as before with the Music of the Spheres Gypsy Soprano chimes. I'd already established that the trio recording of these would be the most outlandish-sounding (sort-of discordant, but in intriguing and inspiring visionary ways) of any trio combination from my small collection of chimes. Because of disturbances I let each of the recordings run a long time to ensure sufficient duration after editing — 2¼hr for the trio, and 1½hr for each of the pair recordings, the final one extended a bit more because of additional disturbance late on.

However, on examination afterwards I found that the wind appeared to have trashed all four recordings, because the wind this time was WNW rather than the westerly wind I'd had on 26 April.That meant that a certain close-by overgrown very low drystone wall wasn't able to shelter the recorder this time, and made the difference between brilliant success last time and what seemed to be ignominious defeat this time!

However, wishing anyway to extract a little bit of relatively wind-free material from each recording to give public previews of the thrilling sort of sounds we'd have once I managed to redo the session with more favourable wind conditions, I eventually started doing that, and, 'tasting blood', as it were, then proceeded to do what I'd thought impossible or at least certain to be a waste of time — I fully edited the lot!

It was very hard and often frustrating work, but the results considerably exceeded expectations,even though each edited version is still rather a travesty of what I presumably would have got if the wind had been just that little bit more in the right direction, and I hadn't had to cut so much out. The edited version of each recording contains a fair amount of microphone wind noise, but at least I cut out the very many more intrusive bits. Indeed, much of the remaining microphone wind noise simply gives each recording a rather nice 'wild' rough edge, feeling quite in place as the wind is an 'official' part of the recordings anyway. — So, herewith recording details:

By Hunting Gate, at highest point of Hunter's Path, along north side of Teign Gorge — Wind chimes and birds.

1. 180510_r5-01+02 — Davis Blanchard Pluto + Twilight chimes and Music of the Spheres Gypsy Soprano chimes. This is a particularly outlandish and challenging combination, particularly as the musical intervals heard include not only a whole lot of 'scale clashes' because of three different scales, each in just intonation, being juxtaposed, but there is also a delectable tuning mismatch because the Gypsy chimes are tuned to standard Western concert pitch (A=440Hz), while the DB chimes are tuned to a more bright and radiant-sounding A=448Hz. This gives rise to all sorts of musical effects that are thrilling for those who have the mental flexibility to open to these strange sonorities.

   Weirdly, in the first half of this recording is a long episode that is almost a spitting image of one in the first half of the 26 April session's first recording — a spell of increasing and dramatic-sounding wind, leading into a light shower (sounding quite dramatic), which in both cases gives way to a quite long quiescent period with almost no wind, but just enough to get the most exquisite pianissimo sounds from the chimes, which really do sound to be suspended in a great space — before eventually the wind and the chimes wake up and give further spells of activity and quiescence.

   Positioning is Twilight (L.), Gypsy (R. of centre), placed further back, and Pluto (R.). I wanted the Gypsy to be dead centre, but I was limited by the position of a suitable branch to hang it on.

   Birds heard include Blue Tit, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Linnet, Mistle thrush, Blackbird, Carrion Crow, Yellowhammer, Blackcap, Wren, Willow warbler. — 93'

   Go to Freesound page…

   (I've made a half-CD-length half-speed version of part of this recording. It has an outlandish beauty, though the beats in the sound caused by clashes between the Gypsy and Twilight chimes are rather penetrating at this octave-lower pitch and make it too fatiguing a listen for more than half a CD's length. — 39')

   Go to Freesound page…

2. 180510_r5-03 — Pluto + Gypsy Soprano chimes, Gypsy (L.), and Pluto (R.) Now, with just two widely-separated chimes, we get a clearer picture of the intriguing musical interaction between the so-different scales and that aforementioned tuning mismatch, which give us a whole range of shimmering microtonal intervals. Incredibly, intriguingly beautiful!

   Birds heard include Chiffchaff, Carrion Crow, Willow warbler, Blackbird, Mistle thrush, Raven,Linnet, Yellowhammer — and the odd bumblebee adds interest too. — 45'

3. 180510_r5-04 — Twilight + Gypsy Soprano chimes, with Gypsy (L.) and Twilight (R.). To me this is a rather unsatisfactory combination despite some nice sounds at times, and I'm doubtful that I'd use this recording. Basically these two scales just don't seem to 'gel' or interact in any meaningful sort of way, just tussling against each other, with so much shimmering 'beat' in the sound while they are sounding together, that it gets a bit uncomfortable at times to listen to. So, one's ear is drawn to either scale as the wind makes the respective chime active, but the mid-ground is confused rather than inspiring, and I found that my interest wasn't sustained while I was editing this one — something I cannot say at all about the other combinations I've recorded in this or any other chimes session.

   Birds heard include Blackbird, Raven, Chiffchaff, Carrion Crow, Blue Tit, Wren — again also with the odd friendly bumblebee coming around. — 41'

4. 180510_r5-05 — Pluto + Twilight chimes, with Twilight (L.) and Pluto (R.). Another thrilling and intriguing combination, this one having a bright and 'electrifying' quality about its sound,especially as the wind gusts periodically highlight the Pluto sound.

   I've made a half-speed version of this. — 39'

   Birds heard in the full recording include Chiffchaff, Blue tit, Wood pigeon, Raven, Willow warbler, chaffinch (calls) — and again the odd friendly bumblebee coming around. — 60'

1. Nature-Symphony 48 (After the great earthquake the shocked silence shudders, shimmering like heat) — 47'

2. Nature-Symphony 49 (An unexpected planetary configuration telling its own story…) — 52'

3. Nature-Symphony 50 (Processional — Magnificent Galaxy, ever rotating…) — 61'

4. Nature-Symphony 51 (The fundamental pinnacle examining the source of inspiration itself) — 88'

I didn't expect this to work out, because (a) a large-enough swell for booming here wasn't expected, and (b) it was a fine and sunny May Day Bank Holiday, so there would be a lot more people disturbances than usual — and (c) I found that there were far fewer fulmars in the chasm than when I'd recorded there with my previous recorders back in 2014. In the event, although the swell didn't look to be enough to cause any booming in its narrow channel this time, I found that it was making quite frequent seemingly minor booms, so a bit dubiously I set up the recorders in more or less the same positions as previously there.

In both cases the profile of the enclosing lower cliff faces kept the sea in the bottom hidden, and so the only direct sea sound we hear is that just out at sea, around the mouth of the chasm.All the sea sound we hear from within the chasm is echo and reverberation.

Afterwards I found that the recorders, in their rather precarious placements, had picked up remarkably strong booms from the sea action down in the narrow channel in the bottom of the chasm, catching it all sounding deliciously dramatic, with great reverberance — and the probably no more than two or three pairs of roosting / nesting fulmars at times gave excellent performances, so I was greatly pleased.

As well as the hums from various boats, a really unexpected disturbance came from a BMC (British Mountaineering Council) filming party who were recceing for a filming session of some climbing there a bit later in the day. It was thus a particular surprise that I got as much duration as I did for the edited versions of the recordings (I ran both recordings concurrently for over 2hr).

1. 180507_r5-01+02 — Higher position, peering over cliff edge near head of chasm, facing obliquely across and seawards, and so (on left) looking seawards along the chasm. — 67'

2.  180507_r6-01+02 — Lower position, further along the precarious grassy terrace along the chasm's south-east cliff face, facing obliquely across the chasm and landwards, and so (on right) looking up the chasm. In many respects this turned out to be the better placement, and it was much less vulnerable to hum from passing boats, so less had to be cut out.

   Indeed, because of that, I was able to keep in (just) a brief episode when a pair of choughs were flying around in the chasm, uttering their unmistakable scolding calls, which was in a longish section that had to be cut out of the upper recording because of strong throbbing hum from a boat. — 96'

   Go to Freesound page…

I had a rather rueful hope to get a fully successful repeat of the truncated 'Guillemot Paradise' recording of 20 June 2017, but this time the guillemots simply didn't perform, apart from just a rare individual uttering its 'bogeyman howl'. Also, the sea swell was larger than expected or wanted, and would have prevented me anyway from getting an improved recording of the guillemot bedlams even if they had been performing outstandingly.

So I made what best recordings I could of the swell, both at Pentargon Cove and at Beeny's main alcove, where latter the sea was doing its deep rumbles and booms very well indeed. This time the wind didn't get up significantly till well past midnight, but then made it so chilling for me that I had to abandon the session around 2.30 a.m. and miss any dawn goodies, starting a rather difficult hitch-hike back to Exeter.

This was the first time I took out all three of my D100 recorders — i.e., including the one that got damaged last year by falling out of my second-floor bedroom window onto paving stones below. Amazingly, it still works, but the buckling of its casing makes operation a little difficult, and in any damp conditions, as on my night sessions, as a precaution I keep a small polythene bag around all of its body that isn't covered by its furry windshields.

I got six long recordings from this session, but much more recently I decided to delete all but one…

180504_r5-02+180505_r5-01 — A little above the coast path where it goes up and around the top of the alcove, avoiding its edge where the path originally ran, close to the wire fence above the path,overlooking the alcove, whose interior isn't visible from this position, apart from a bit of its north cliff. We thus hear only faint sea noise from there, apart from the deep rumbles and booms, always with a background of the distant Pentargon sea action to the left. Periodically the odd Manx shearwater flies past, and also the odd oystercatcher. Because of its length, I greatly shortened it, keeping all the Manx shearwater encounters. — 78'

A most successful re-do of the 11 April chimes session, because there was really insufficient wind that time, and this time ideal wind conditions were forecast and indeed actually materialized.

In terms of results, then, this isn't a repeat of last time, but a completely new and much more thrilling set of recordings, with an excellent mix of strong(ish) wind gusts and quiet spells, though with the most exciting wind earlier in the session. Indeed, the session was enhanced by the odd light showers — something I generally seek to avoid, but these were light and brief enough to necessitate no more than my briefly going down to the recorder to shelter it with my little umbrella on the odd occasion. The showers add a wonderfully invigorating element to the soundscape.

Because the wind was from the west this time the recorder was more sheltered, even during the wildest gusts, and my now using three rather than two furry windshields caused what microphone wind noise that did occur to sound smooth and gentle, and altogether agreeable — not the sort of thing to cut out of such a recording at all. Also, it no longer being in a school holiday period, the people disturbances were less, and this was one of the days with only a small number of high-altitude jet aircraft flying over that area — I understand that the flight path of most of those is rotated so as to give some respite to people in any one location.

That was just as well, because there was a lot of disturbance to the second and third recordings from repair work on the Fisherman's Path down in the bottom of the valley, with periodic bursts of power saw and some hammering of stakes into the ground. A few of the hammerings I actually left in the respective recordings, because they seemed to work in effectively with the chimes music — suggesting a slow beat in the chimes music that was never expressly sounded.

This session also gave me the opportunity to improve on the less-than-ideal balance between the chimes that I'd settled for last time — and it worked out brilliantly this time.

This session's recordings, however, are all impacted by hiss from the mics, thanks to my starting to use a third furry windshield on the recorder, necessitating a stronger EQ to correct for the additional muffling, which in turn gave further boost to the mic self-noise. This is particularly noticeable in very quiet passages, especially in reduced-speed versions, such as are used in the Nature-Symphonies.

By Hunting Gate, at highest point of Hunter's Path, along north side of Teign Gorge — Wind chimes and birds.

1. 180426_r5-01+02+03 — Davis Blanchard Debussy Bells and The Blues chimes with Music of the Spheres Gypsy Soprano chimes. Just the Blues and Debussy chimes make a really challenging combination, which at first can seem wildly discordant — but as you continue listening, if you have reasonable mental flexibility you would find that this chimes music challenges the very distinction between consonance and dissonance, with a whole range of non-standard intervals, often with microtonal interrelationships between notes. The result is an often shimmering and constantly shifting spectacle of sound colours of other-worldly beauty. Throw in the Gypsy chimes too, and the musical fur really flies — but in the most immensely, thrillingly beautiful manner!

   This recording includes one of the showers, followed by a quite long spellbinding quiet section before the wind wakes up again and sends more strongish gusts chasing through the trees and of course giving the chimes a frisky time. — 116'

   Go to Freesound page…

   180426_r5-01+02+03-halfspeed — half-speed version of part of this recording, and to me it's one of the most outlandishly beautiful of all my half-speed versions of chimes recordings. It includes some of the wild windy episodes together with the shower and ensuing (shortened) rapturous quiet section. — 78'

   Go to Freesound page…

2. 180426_r5-04+05 — Debussy Bells and The Blues, without the Gypsy chimes. Yes, I got the balance between the two chimes right this time. — 109'

   Go to Freesound page…

   180426_r5-04+05-halfspeed — Half-speed version of part — another rapturously beautiful other-worldly experience, with a lot of slowed-down chiffchaff. — 47'

   Go to Freesound page…

3. 180426_r5-06+07 — Debussy Bells and the Gypsy chimes. Seemingly the most dissonant pair combination, but nonetheless exquisitely beautiful once you've adjusted to the strangeness of the sound. — 44'

   Go to Freesound page…

   180426_r5-06+07-halfspeed — Half-speed version of part — yet another rapturously beautiful sound-world. — 44'

   Go to Freesound page…

4. 180426_r5-08+09 — The Blues and the Gypsy chimes. By this time the wind was distinctly gentler, but I was still getting sufficient wind gusts to produce a good variety of chimes activity, even though nothing like as dramatic as in the first recording of the session. This recording includes another shower, which again is a great enhancement. — 57'

Nature symphonies with input from this session:

1. Nature-Symphony 43 (The Inner Fire's sun-like resplendence takes hold…) — 64'

2. Nature-Symphony 44 ("In the weeping land, trees sat down beside me, seeking to work out a solution…") — 42'

3. Nature-Symphony 45 (The inner dynamo ever creating its own source — springtime celebration) — 50'

4. Nature-Symphony 47 (Enchanting dark-forest glade) — 49'

Two beautiful and quite spectacular concurrent recordings, capturing the same soundscape but facing in different directions and so getting different perspectives, made in the bottom (west) end of the landslip.

This was a serendipitous find, because what I was really after was a recording made just a little higher up, with a strong south-east wind roaring around through the trees while blackbirds and others sing through it all — in other words a repeat of what I'd attempted recording there on 8May 2016. At that time I'd had minimal wind protection for the recorder's microphones, and I'd had to discard the main, wild and dramatic, part of that recording, but, now using three furry windshields on each recorder, I reckoned that I was in for a chance of getting something usable from such wild conditions if I got them again there.

In the event the wind wasn't strong enough, and in any case turned out to be from the east, so sheltering much of the landslip from anything more than the odd quite gentle gusts. So, my one aim for that outing was unachievable. However, the waves were actually larger and more clearly separated than on any of my previous recording days there, so I made for the bottom end to get a better recording than previously of the breaking waves on the shingle beach echoing on the cliff towering above. This worked out truly A1, with not only clear echoes on the cliff, but chunky-enough waves to produce significant thundering sound at times, together with a lot of birdsong.

Mother Nature also presented me with a bonus extra, in that much of the blackbird song that I got was really weird — unlike any of that (or indeed any) species that I'd heard before. The voice was clearly blackbird, but the phrases and mode of singing them was anything but! A lot of the time it was just two very simple phrases, each sung in a most atypical deadpan, out-of-tune way, as though bored or taking the Mickey out of something or somebody (presumably me!), and probably depressed and a bit drunk for good measure! Not kidding! Absolutely, absolutely weird.

I got into correspondence with the experienced bird recordist Geoff Sample about this. He had some relevant ideas, though for the time being a particularly open mind is necessary about what's going on there, and why I'd never heard that weird sort of blackbird song before in that location — even just last year.

1. 180418_r5-02+03 — From a very low horizontal tree branch set back slightly from the Coast Path, facing north-east, obliquely towards the towering cliff, with the main direct sea sound coming from hard left / behind the recorder, so all the sea sound coming from any other direction is echoes from the cliff, which latter is thus on the left and centre of the soundstage. — 138'

   Go to Freesound page…

2. 180418_r6-02+03 — Immediately beside the coast path, on a quite low tripod, facing north-north-west, facing obliquely towards the cliff, the latter being in the centre and right of the soundstage. Here the direct sea sound is more spread out on the left side, up to about the 'ten-to' position (i.e., as seen on an analogue clock face). Again, anything that is heard to right of that position is echoes off the cliff. — 102'

1. By River Teign immediately upstream of the Teign Gorge, by the track leading to the Moretonhampstead — Whiddon Down road

   180411_r5-01 — I placed the recorder in virtually the same position as on 13 March, and pointing the same way, so it had a slightly elevated position for obliquely overlooking the River Teign and getting a very spacious panorama ringed by woodland and copses. This time many more birds were singing, spring now being in full fling, and the mistle thrushes were performing more than in any previous recording of mine — though most of that performance was distant, so for the most part they didn't come across as star performers.

   There were the odd occasions when one would strike up singing high up in the small copse at the bottom edge of which the recorder was placed, but because the recorder was pointing more or less away from it, in the recording it came out each time sounding a bit remote and beautifully reverberant, in a way that I didn't hear from the path by the Teign.

   The Teign was louder than last time, the river being particularly full after a lot of rain.

   Birds in the recording include Mistle Thrush, Blackbird (distant only), Blackcap (a lot), Great Tit, Coal Tit, Blue Tit, Robin, Carrion Crow, Jackdaw, Chiffchaff, Woodpigeon (distant), (probably) Great Spotted Woodpecker (distant drumming), Green Woodpecker, and a puzzling song from a bird that I didn't see, sounding like a warbler (with some resemblance to reed or sedge warbler), which I suspect just might be one of the more intimate improvisations of a song thrush. — 84'

   Go to Freesound page…

2. By Hunting Gate, at highest point of Hunter's Path, along north side of Teign Gorge — Wind chimes and birds.

   1. 180411_r5-02+03+04 — Davis Blanchard Debussy Bells and The Blues chimes with Music of the Spheres Gypsy Soprano chimes. Just the Blues and Debussy chimes make a really challenging combination, that at first can seem wildly discordant — but as you continue listening, if you have reasonable mental flexibility you would find that this chimes music challenges the very distinction between consonance and dissonance, with a whole range of non-standard intervals, often with microtonal relationships between notes.

      The result is an often shimmering and constantly shifting spectacle of sound colours of other-worldly beauty. Throw in the Gypsy chimes too, and the musical fur really flies — but in the most immensely, thrillingly beautiful manner! — 92'

      I also produced a half-speed version of this.

   2. 180411_r5-05+06+07 — The same, without the Gypsy chimes. This didn't come out as I was aiming for, with the Debussy chimes (tuned to notes on the whole tone scale) not sounding strong enough in the recording. This was a result of both a non-ideal placement with regard to distance from the recorder and the wind tending reach it less than the Blues chimes. However, the edited recording still has its own charm, with generally very gentle chimes activity, mostly of the Blues chimes, with the sense of, say, the menace of passing dark clouds or indeed thundery showers on an otherwise fine and gentle day. — 62'

Nature symphonies with input from this session:

1. Nature-Symphony 42 (A springtime forest's passing cloud shadows) — 58'

180313_r5-01+02 — This time the recorder was just a little up the hill slope, at the bottom edge of the copse there for shelter, and facing obliquely downstream and over the river, getting a great panorama of riverside copse and main Teign Gorge woodland edge (the latter to left).

This recording was one of those serendipitous gems that come my way on certain occasions where my primary aim for the particular recording session hasn't worked out. On this occasion my big aim was to get an extended bird chorus including a good showing of Mistle Thrush. It just happens that mistle thrushes have a way of teasing and playing frustrating games with me, and, my recording session this time was a case in point.

I let the recorder run for some 2h50', hoping to catch a fair amount of mistle thrush song, as these had been singing quite a lot there in the morning, but actually got only a few brief episodes of mistle thrush, and what seemed to me to be mostly very sparse song from other birds. I doubted whether the recording would be worth keeping.

This, then, has turned out to be a wonderful serendipity, particularly as the wind had forced me to choose the aforementioned new spot for the recorder, which gave a breathtakingly spacious panorama, in which distant birds could often be heard in the various notionally quiet periods. The short mistle thrush episodes, including one right at the opening of the recording, seem all the more special for their scarcity.

— N.B. The mistle thrush sounds more like a blackbird than a song thrush, but sounds more hurried and seemingly anxious, with a smaller repertoire of easily recognisable phrases and a hurried rhythmic drive being emphasized by particular short bouncy phrases that keep reappearing.

In addition to mistle thrush, birds include robin (on a few occasions mimicking blackcap), great tit, coal tit, raven, jackdaw, goldcrest, blackbird (song very distant and may not be noticed), blue tit, chaffinch, wood pigeon. The strange dry rattly bird calls that sound occasionally are of mistle thrush. — 90'

Go to Freesound page…

180306_r5-01+02 — An absolutely glorious sound, recorded with particularly great care this time!

This recording, made on 6 March 2018, is a much-superior replacement for an earlier one giving a very close perspective of the weir. I eventually discarded that one because its close, up-front placing gave it a bright and aggressive sound that was fairly stressful to listen to for a long time, and I also detected in it a rather hum-like resonance in the 'boomy' frequency range, which I thought I wouldn't be able to remove effectively. This time, therefore, although in relative terms this is still very much 'close-up' (probably no more than about 20 metres from the middle of the weir), I placed the recorder in such a position that the sound was somewhat moderated in its aggressiveness.

Superficially, many a casual listener would regard this as just an unremarkable bit of continuous pink noise — but actually to more aware and careful listeners it's a whole lot more. That barrage of sound is a massive tumult of individual small rippling and splashing sounds as well as de-frothing hiss, together with low-frequency drumming and rumbling caused by the various 'boiling' movements of areas of this falling and churning mass of water. The sound is also varied along the length of the weir, because of the fish ladder built into its middle section. That fish ladder adds to the total amount of churning and 'boiling' movement, and therefore particularly to the thundering and low-frequency drumming aspect of the sound.

That explains why the soundstage would seem to many audio buffs to have faulty stereo, because one would expect a fairly uniform sound over the length of the weir, and on that basis it would seem that the left and right channels are not properly integrating. In reality the weir sound is somewhat different between right and left, and still more different in the middle, where the fish ladder is! Basically, the fish ladder is less hissy and more thundering than the weir on either side.

Unsurprisingly, to get the full effect of this sound one needs playback equipment that faithfully reproduces very low frequencies down to well below 30Hz at original strength and without boominess. — 74'

I've also produced a version of the recording with somewhat attenuated treble (actually I simply didn't correct for the muffling effect of the two nested furry windshields), which gives the impression of a slightly more distant perspective, and could be more restful to listen to for extended periods.

170718_r4-01+02+170719-01 — As with my previous thunderstorm recordings, this was made from the city centre — and so it was worth my recording at all only because it was at night and midweek, with much reduced city centre noise, making it a practical proposition to edit out the various intrusive disturbances that did occur.

This is actually my first recording of a really substantial and active thunderstorm — indeed the first such storm that I'd experienced in Exeter since about 2000, as thunderstorms are such a rare event in Exeter. Fortunately I was aware that a storm might come over during that night, and set the recorder running on my bedroom window ledge when I went to bed, so it captured everything from the very first faint hints to the very last murmurs that I could detect.

The storm itself was strange to me and others I spoke with, because it had a very long lead-in and build-up, during which for much of the time the lightning appeared to be mostly in-cloud but very bright and often coming right overhead and yet with the associated thunder usually being very quiet and apparently distant. Similarly, this was accompanied only by light and eventually moderate rain.

The louder thunder and eventually a couple of quite close earth strikes came late, with a shortish spell of fairly torrential rain, followed by a much more rapid retreat. However, that retreat was drawn out by further developments in the storm's rear, including a still more torrential rain shower with some renewed though still rather distant thunder.

The storm's sequence actually points to the main cloud's overall shape and structure. Whereas usually (at least here in the UK) most heavy showers or thunderstorms deliver their 'heavy goods' more or less at their leading edge, with any drawing-out of their anvil-shaped tops most commonly being at the rear, on this occasion the upper wind had drawn out the system's anvil top a great distance in front of its active convection towers where all its rain and lightning activity was really based.

So, during the long build-up of the storm as observed from one spot, actually it was the leading anvil top that was overhead, and so the lightning that came overhead then was inevitably still quite distant — up to several miles away (i.e., vertically). With the advance of the storm the anvil top over us became increasingly thick, so the branches of lightning above us became progressively lower and thus closer, and then finally the really loud thunder and the earth strikes and the intense rain were quite closely around the relatively narrow band of heavy cloud base of the storm's main convective towers.

The recording reproduces the considerable spaciousness and 'poetry' of this storm's sound, with even the louder thunder generally seeming more like a musical performance in an unimaginably huge cathedral, rejoicing in exploring every imaginary nook and cranny therein. The two relatively close earth-strikes are not quite close enough to give sudden bangs, and we hear a transient lead-in for each, which prevents them from being actually startling, even though they are very dramatic.

The faint high-pitched squeals frequently heard in quiet periods are begging calls of a fledgling seagull (herring gull), and at times also we hear some adult gulls as they get unsettled by all these flashes and loud noises.

The whole storm from faintest audible beginning to faintest audible end was about 2h 20'. I have produced one full edited version, with full dynamic range, plus two CD versions:

1. Full version, unsuitable for CD but a tremendous listen for people with playback equipment that can properly handle the big dynamic range. Needs a playback level some 15dB above a sensible normal listening level — that's approximately a six-fold increase in level! — 116'

   Go to Freesound page…

2. Ditto, with the largest peaks somewhat reduced, though still needing a volume boost of 9dB. — 116'

   Go to Freesound page…

3. CD version, covering the main part of the storm, with some intricate editing at a very high zoom level to individually reduce each of the strongest peaks to an acceptable level for a CD without producing the usual negative impacts on sound quality or realism. This needs a playback level of 6dB above a reasonable normal level (double the level). — 78'

4. CD version, minus the loudest part of the storm, but including the full lead-in and lead-out, including the final torrential shower, which latter isn't on the other CD. This doesn't need a raised playback level, unless one's normal listening level is low. — 78'

170709_r5-01+02 — Skylarks sing exquisitely over the field adjoining the clifftop coast path, while the gentle sea quietly breaks on rocks down below. Occasionally we hear the odd great black-backed gulls down there briefly uttering their grating calls suggestive of a major attack of laryngitis, and the odd oystercatcher passes by, making its bright piping calls.

The recorder was placed facing obliquely over the field, with the sea on rocks (and great black-backed gulls) on the left. This was a salvage operation, because the coast path there was really too busy for making a recording, and I had to cut out more than half of the original because of people disturbances, not to mention the various aeroplane and boat disturbances too. — 36'

Go to Freesound page…

This was an attempt to repeat the previous week's recordings from here, hopefully with less or no wind disturbance — but again the wind thwarted my full intentions, but at least the hot weather,smaller swell and lack of moonlight helped make for some different things captured this time. However, like the previous time, I had cause to summarily delete one recording and large parts of others because of the wind, which got up to force 7 Bft at the south end of Beeny Cliff for a while during the night — so the final results listed here are salvage operations that don't fully represent what I actually heard there.

1. Beeny Cliff's southernmost headland spur and cave:

   1. 170620_r5-01+02-full — Top of the headland spur, by coast path: the evening the guillemots and oystercatchers went crazy! — late evening grandstand panorama (till nearly dark) of sea action on the cliffs on the other side of Pentargon Cove and towards Boscastle Harbour, with periodic outbursts of the raucous 'Punch-and-Judy laughter' of guillemots over on that side, which could be mistaken by superstitious people as coming from evil spirits or witches if the birds are not seen.

      This time the guillemots' insane bedlams of 'bogeyman howls' and stilted 'Punch-and-Judy laughter', mostly from one particular two-entrance cave the other side of Pentargon Cove, were more frequent and loud, frequently setting me off into giggles. They became spectacularly wild and persistent as dusk came on, also with a host of oystercatchers — but of course the wind came on for that, so I had to cut out the really spectacular final half-hour from the recording. However, I managed to sort-of retrieve a fair amount of it in 2023!

      New insight, June 2023
      Following some careful online reading around, I think I now understand why the guillemots went so crazy that particular time, and why I haven't encountered such intense commotion from them before or since. Presumably it would be just one such event per year per colony.

      Apparently the jumping of the guillemot chicks from their nests / ledges into the sea is roughly synchronized within the colony, and occurs 'at night' to minimize predator attacks. This event is accompanied by great excitement among the adults, and it was one of these events that I was recording. There is thus no point in my hoping even in the slightest to record such an event again unless I'm prepared to keep having night sessions there (and probably having them trashed again by that katabatic wind).

      Other birds heard include herring gull, rock pipit, wren, dunnock.

      The sea sound includes occasional booms and thuds from caves and clefts in the cliffs on the other side of Pentargon Cove. — 119'

      For practical reasons, when it came to uploading to Freesound, I chose to split the recording into two parts:

      1. 170620_r5-01+02-pt1 — The main part, before things go really wild

         Go to Freesound page…

      2. 170620_r5-01+02-pt2 — The crazy part, with the katabatic wind coming in and the guillemots and oystercatchers going bananas!

         Go to Freesound page…

   2. 170620_r6-01 — Closely overlooking the 'vestibule' area and entrance of Beeny Cliff's southernmost cave, from the same spot as previous recordings, concurrent with the above recording, and similarly with the potentially most interesting final half-hour cut out because of the wind.Occasionally a hint of the guillemot bedlam sounds can be heard in the background. Because of the smaller swell than last time, much more (reverberant) sea action details can be heard, including some very quiet booming for a while. — 122'

2. Above Beeny Cliff's main alcove, by wire fence above coast path, facing towards the cliffs leading towards Boscastle Harbour, thus with the alcove and its deep cave booming /rumbling on the right and the steep grassy hill slope rising on the left (where most of any birdsong was expected to originate from). This time I'd learnt my lesson and put the recorder not on a fencepost but on a Zipshot Mini tripod (which I regard as 'midi'-size) just on the upper side of the barbed wire plus electric fence; I was able quite easily to place it at one particular spot just by carefully reaching over the fence.

   Again I had to cut out huge amounts because of wind disturbance, so that the edited version of the recording is much shorter than the original, and unsurprisingly a fair number of the best bits were lost in the process.

   Because of the smaller swell this time the rumbles and booms in the cave system below were very much on the quiet side.

   This recording naturally divides into two:

   1. 170620_r6-03+170621_r6-01 — Night (10.30 p.m. to 2.30 a.m.). The unexpected star of the show is Manx shearwaters, which passed by occasionally during the darkest hours (only), making their bizarre and eerie calls. Occasionally the bright piping calls of passing oystercatchers give interest, reverberating in the alcove below as the birds pass by, and very occasionally one hears a faint hint of the odd brief outbreak of 'guillemot bedlam' in Pentargon Cove, adding to a certain eeriness of the experience here. — 126' (a 76' CD-length condensation of this also made)

   2. 170621_r6-02+03 — Pre-dawn, dawn and early morning (2.30 a.m. to 6.30 a.m.). I couldn't usefully call this a dawn chorus recording, because the numbers of birds taking part along this cliff slope hardly warrant the description of 'chorus'. Nonetheless, I did capture a beautiful sequence of the birds there singing to the new day.

      The occasional very quiet background hum is from a fishing boat going about its business.

      This time linnets singing were captured at various times during the recording, though I did have to include some stronger microphone wind noise than usual in order to keep a bit of the early episode of their singing perched on the fence really close to the recorder. Linnets have a particularly beautiful and engaging sound, their acrobatic song having a very sweet musical quality that some people describe as 'wistful'. At times, when the linnets were less close, their song mixed confusingly with those of skylarks and the odd wren. — Er, well, some birdsong sounded like wren, except that it always lacked the characteristic trill or burst of fast clicks, so maybe they're something else.

      Other birds heard include guillemot (just the bogeyman howls; almost no 'laughing'), blackbird (only briefly), meadow pipit, raven, rook, herring gull, oystercatcher — 144'

      For upload to Freesound I split the file into two:

      1. 170621_r6-02+03-pt1

         Go to Freesound page…

      2. 170621_r6-02+03-pt2

         Go to Freesound page…

Actually the main aim here was to get dawn chorus recordings, but the stronger breeze than expected made this largely a failure in that respect. What I have now is the result of a salvage operation, but two recordings were deleted without any salvage attempt as they didn't contain enough wind-free sections to make any salvage attempt worthwhile.

Actually the dawn chorus wasn't really what most people would recognise as a 'chorus' along the cliff slope here anyway, but at least some birds did sing considerably more readily than during the main part of the day and made for a wonderful soundscape the like of which I couldn't capture on my usual fully daytime outings.

1. Beeny Cliff's southernmost headland spur and cave:

   1. 170613_r6-03 — Top of the headland spur, by coast path — late evening grandstand panorama of sea action on the cliffs on the other side of Pentargon Cove and towards Boscastle Harbour, with periodic outbursts of the raucous 'Punch-and-Judy laughter' of guillemots over on that side, which could be mistaken by superstitious people as coming from evil spirits if the birds are not seen.Only a few of the more prominent guillemot outbursts survived my editing to remove major wind disturbance. — 51'

   2. 170614_r6-01+02+03 — Closely overlooking the 'vestibule' area and entrance of Beeny Cliff's southernmost cave, from the same spot as some previous recordings, but this time the length of recording enabled the period of optimal tide for booming to be fully captured. Overnight (10.10p.m. to 3.15 a.m.) recording, considerably reduced in the editing, My CD selection from this is the later part of the recording, and covers the whole period of significant deep booming and rumbling,much of which is mostly very deep and relatively quiet, so that one needs really good playback equipment to hear much of it. — 157'

2. 170614_r5-01+02+03 — Above Beeny Cliff's main alcove, on fencepost above coast path, facing towards the cliffs leading towards Boscastle Harbour, thus with the alcove and its deep cave booming / rumbling on the right and the steep grassy hill slope rising on the left (where most of any birdsong was expected to originate from). This is the product of an intensive salvage operation on the original recording, which latter ran from 10.30 p.m. to 6.30 a.m., and is all that remains after my editing out all the significant wind disturbance plus a few disturbances caused by birds perching on the barbed wire, and the sound from that transmitting along the wire and through the fencepost to the recorder (a bit of learning for me there, not to perch a recorders on a post of a wire fence, unless I'd actually welcome strange twangy sounds in that recording!).

   Birds heard include herring gull (very distant), oystercatcher, a rather unusual-sounding blackbird, meadow pipit, skylark (briefly), and linnet. In the case of the latter, only their contact calls are heard in this edited version, but actually for a period a group of them was singing beautifully, perched on the barbed wire fence quite close to the recorder — but it was too windy then, and probably I'd have had to cut them out anyway because of their perching on the fence, which would have put unwanted twangy directly-transmitted sounds into the recorder . — 72'

   1. 170614_r5-01+02+03-new — A complete remastering (in 2023) from the archived original. This version has the microphone wind noise strongly tamed, using dynamic EQ. This has enabled me to retain the bird sounds I had to cut out because of the strong wind disturbance in the original version. The down-side (of course!) is that almost all the many cave booms heard in the latter version have 'gone with the wind', so to speak, and are noticeable only in sections where there was little or no wind disturbance, and thus where I'd not used the dynamic EQ.

      A real plus point here is that this version contains virtually all the linnets' song, which was all cut out from the original version. To me, linnets are in the top rank for beauty of their song, so it's a joy to have been able to reinstate them here. The section where they do sustained singing close to the recorder does still suffer from fairly strong mic wind noise, but, being emasculated here, it's much lighter in tone and doesn't get in the way too much, and indeed adds an element of authenticity of a real-life experience.

      Also, this time I retained the odd strange twangy sounds caused by birds (I think just linnets) perching on the fence. Actually in this particular context they're not out of place at all as I'd originally thought, and in those few brief occurrences, sound really nice — at least, to this weirdo recordist — and in fact I could have done with a few more occurrences of that! — 75'

      Go to Freesound page…

During my overnight sessions in the Landslip last year there was one recording that I particularly wanted to make but could never do so because the particular spot to place the recorder was a clifftop prominence and always caught the wind too much. From that spot, close to the bottom of the steps from the Coast Path, leading up to the one seat in the whole Landslip, high up almost at the top at the east end, I had an imposing panoramic view over the whole Landslip, and thus at times, and especially during dawn chorus, I was hearing an enormous number of distant birds all proclaiming their little territories. During the main blackbirds phase of the dawn chorus the sound really was a wonder to behold, and yet I couldn't capture that fully from any lower position.

So, this time I grabbed a night that was forecast to have the breeze drop to force 1 (very light indeed), at least in time for dawn chorus. It turned out to be quite a frustrating session initially, for the wind was much stronger than expected during the afternoon / evening, and I couldn't usefully record at that high position at all then.

But sometime between 9.30 and 10.0 p.m., cloud forms indicating the passage of a very weak and sluggish front came over, and the wind dropped to almost nothing. Round about 10.30 p.m. I decided to set up both recorders to run all night and right through to morning packing-up time, so incorporating the dawn chorus. Afterwards I split the night's plain sea part of the recordings off from the dawn chorus part.

1. Uppermost position (top priority), on clifftop prominence close to the seat, with the most imposing panoramic view. Even this had to be a compromise, because it was necessary to shield the recorder from the direct sea sound close by but far below, and the only way I could do that without having the recorder's tripod actually on the coast path (a complete no-no) was to use a shorter tripod than I really wanted to use (a Zipshot Mini), so the panorama was a just a little restricted vertically at the bottom. If the sea had been consistently very quiet I'd have used the full-length Zipshot tripod and would have got a somewhat fuller panorama.

   1. 170530_r5-01+170531_r5-01 — Sea wave patterns at night (higher) — a beautiful 'hypnotic' peacefulness, with a constant interplay between the wave rhythms down below on the left and those of the distant sea beyond the far (west) end of the landslip. Because of the acoustics of the landslip and its cliffs, this is a really immersive sound, and would make a great sleep-assist CD. — 186'

   2. 170531_r5-02b+03 — The highest grandstand panorama dawn chorus — got it at last! Actually the breeze had backed to south-west and increased a bit sometime before start of the dawn chorus, but at least had died down to only a modest disturbance by the time I wanted to start the dawn chorus section of the whole recording. So, there is some wind disturbance, nearly all near the beginning and a little near the end — but it was very gentle and not intrusive enough to persuade me to cut any bits out.

      Breathtaking! So many singing birds spread out in that great panorama below us! The main blackbirds phase in particular is 'pure gold'! — 127'

      Go to Freesound page…

2. Lower position (more sheltered alternative) — a little way almost directly below the top position, beside the Coast Path, where its sharp zigzag from the top position turns west on descent, with a narrow rather exposed unofficial track branching off to east from that bend, at the foot of a small bare cliff. This spot too had strongly invited me previously, and indeed when I recorded the 'grandstand panorama' dawn chorus there last year, that had been a fall-back from my real wish to record from this slightly higher position with better panorama.

   The trouble about this spot was the over-prominent sea sound from right below (on sharp left for recorder facing west over the landslip), and the lack of choice about tripod position; for the panorama it had to be the full-length Zipshot tripod, and there was only one possible placement of its legs without it falling over. But in that position a shorter tripod was needed to shield the recorder from the direct sea sound below to left, especially as the sea was still fairly noisy on that night!

   I therefore decided just to record anyway, with over-loud sea sound down below to left, and most likely discard all that afterwards as sounding too unbalanced.

   1. 170530_r4-01, 170531_r4-01+02a — Sea wave patterns at night (lower) — a beautiful 'hypnotic' peacefulness, with a constant interplay between the wave rhythms down below on the left and those of the distant sea beyond the far (west) end of the landslip. Because of the acoustics of the landslip and its cliffs, this is a really immersive sound, and in my view, no matter how beautiful it is, it's unsuitable for normal listening because of its strong soporific effect.

      Although quite similar, this recording has the sea down below on the left more prominently audible. Surprisingly, this actually made a really nice effect in its own right, with more immediate impression of differentiation between that and the more distant sea sound. — 117 ', 172'

      Go to Freesound page…

   2. 170531_r4-02b+03 — Grandstand panorama dawn chorus, with more prominent nearby sea sound — got this less high one at last — and almost without significant wind disturbance! Although it's basically the same panorama and dawn chorus sequence as in the higher recording, here the perspective is that little bit closer, so you feel to be a bit more among the birds, and the quite prominent sea sound down beside us on the left gives its own special character to the overall soundscape, giving more a sense of this being a sea recording with dawn chorus running through it.

      It's therefore a fairly different experience as compared with the higher recording. Because of the acoustics of the landslip and its cliffs, this is a really immersive sound, and would make a great sleep-assist CD. — 118'

      Go to Freesound page…

170514_r4-01+02 — I made a 3+ hours recording in the fairly low-down edge-of-woods position that I had also used previously for evening and dawn chorus recordings. It was a quite windy afternoon, with a 'strong'(force 6 Bft) wind blowing up through the landslip. Notionally this was a very poor wind direction for having the recorder sufficiently sheltered, but in practice the lie of the land made this still a relatively sheltered spot, with wind gusts constantly coming around and making a commotion in the surrounding trees and thickets. However, because the trees had now got their fresh foliage, the wind sound in them was softened, so taming the roaring sort of sound that I'd have preferred here.

Fortunately my new windshield arrangement, of two 'nested' custom Windcut furry windshields,provided excellent protection considering the basic extreme wind sensitivity of the Sony PCM-D100 recorder's microphones, so that I needed to cut out only a small number of very transient mic noise peaks, and even those were only mildly intrusive and not overwhelming as I'd expected.

The wind sound is constant, albeit with fluctuations and the superimposed sound of individual gusts moving about in the trees around us — though actually part of what seems to be the wind background sound is actually the sea (left of centre), which has got relatively noisy. That would be making nice echoes and reverberations on the towering cliff, but the nearer wind noise is masking all that. The birds sing well, with a lot of prominent song thrush performance, and presently extended ensembles of blackbirds, on this occasion mostly more or less distant. Blackcap, robin, chiffchaff, robin and wren join in at times. — 178' (the first 90' are on Freesound)

Go to Freesound page…

Another unique and thrilling musical / aesthetic experience, this time with the DB Twilight and The Blues chimes, together with the bamboo chimes. After the really quite awesome musical spectacles afforded by the various clashes and microtonal interactions between other pairings of DB chimes, this pairing comes as a real surprise, for its overall sound is sweet and harmonious, with only the odd teasing hints of the odd wayward note or interval.

Also, the tuning of this pair matches particularly well the bamboo chimes, so that instead of sounding to be a wayward contrasting element, their contrast is only in timbre and not much in the pitches being sounded, which key in together remarkably harmoniously.

The birds were singing even more for these recordings this time, so, together with the mostly gentle wind and thus mostly gentle chimes sound, we have a great pair of recordings of a beautiful overall balance of birds and chimes.

Birds heard in the recordings (not quite all in both of them) include Willow Warbler (by far the most persistent), Blackbird, Chiffchaff, Mistle Thrush (almost all very distant), Robin, Blackcap (very distant), Skylark (briefly), Raven, Carrion Crow, Buzzard (briefly, distant), Chaffinch, Blue Tit, Wren, Tawny Owl (briefly, distant), Wood pigeon, Whitethroat, Linnet (contact calls, not song), Pheasant.

1. 170510_r4-01+02 — Twilight + The Blues + bamboo — 129'

   Go to Freesound page…

   1. I also made a half-speed extract of this. The half-speed birdsong is every bit as beautiful and intriguing as the sound of the chimes at this speed. — 59'

      Go to Freesound page…

2. 170510_r4-03 — Twilight + The Blues — 44'

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session:

1. Nature-Symphony 41 (Forest springtime — the enigmatic waiting…) — 63'

An amazing serendipity, for the day was a failure for my original objective and indeed also for my Plan B! In the morning I set up wind chimes by Hunting Gate again, high up on the Hunter's Path,but the wind failed me for that. The birds were singing particularly well, but my Plan B pair of long recordings there just for the birds were trashed by the huge amount and variety of disturbances, especially the almost constant succession of seemingly malevolent aeroplanes that gatecrashed on the proceedings whenever the birds were giving a really good performance.

However, during my early morning walk-in I'd noticed a particularly impressive blackbird chorus just before entering the Teign Gorge woods, so returned to there for an afternoon 'Plan C'.

The concurrent pair of 3+-hour recordings I obtained there captured by far the most extended and at times seemingly rapturous blackbird choruses I can remember hearing, and indeed the recordings have little time at all without blackbirds somewhere in the soundscape, apart, perhaps, one several-minute section when a foreground song thrush holds the stage instead.

The real star performance of the whole recording, however, starting at about 1h35'44, was apparently triggered by a very slow-moving small patch of cloud shading the scene for probably about 15 minutes. As soon as the sun went in, the blackbirds became relatively silent for a short while, and then distant mistle thrushes started up.

They sound like blackbirds, but their voice is overall slightly higher and more anxious sounding, and their delivery is more hurried, the phrases generally shorter and more frequent, with a definite 6/8 rhythm typically running through the whole song (i.e., through all the phrases and pauses). So, at once the chorus took on a hypnotic dancing character. Soon confusion began to reign, for nearer birds join in, but surely they were blackbirds, or were they too mistle thrushes pretending to be blackbirds?

I assume that at least most of the nearer ones were actually blackbirds influenced by the mistle thrushes and doing a partially successful job of mimicking the mistle thrushes; their voices were generally of blackbird pitch and they still sounded more joyful (rather than anxious) and laid-back in their delivery, yet somehow the slower rhythmic bounce in their phrases keys in with the quicker beat of the mistle thrushes. Blackbirds or not, it seemed that the whole ensemble and chorus was dancing, with bouncing phrases passed back and forth and from side to side in this 180-degrees-plus panorama.

There were actually two other mistle thrush driven dancing choruses captured in the recording,but particular disturbances caused me to have to cut out almost all of those, so that their remnants don't stand out as particularly significant after the requisite editing.

Other birds adding to the wonderful jamboree at different times are blackcap / garden warbler (I think I was hearing both of these similar-sounding species at different times), great tit, wood pigeon, robin, chiffchaff, wren (rarely), jackdaw, and buzzard — and all this is against the gentle rushing and slight babbling sound of the River Teign close by. Late in both recordings, particularly the more upstream one, some cattle can be heard grazing close by in the field (no mooing — just chomping, breathing, and sometimes their heavy footsteps).

1. 170502_r4-01+02 — On a fencepost of the electric wire fence bounding the field adjoining the riverside track, facing north-east, directly into the field (up its hill slope), with back to the river. This taught me not to place a recorder on a fence post — particularly of a wire fence — because I had to cut out a significant amount from this recording because somewhere probably some100 to 200 metres further upstream the electric wires had been intermittently 'singing' in the wind. Although I didn't hear that 'in the flesh', the vibrations had transmitted along the wires and up the fencepost, into this recorder.

   Despite that and direct wind gusts and various people, dog and aeroplane disturbances, all of which had to be cut out, the edited version is still a great and rather thrilling 'Blackbird Wonderland' extravaganza, but its additional disturbances forced me to cut out much of the one mistle thrush chorus that I managed to keep in the other recording. — 124'

   1. 170502_r4-01+02-full — A more recent remastering of this recording, keeping in as much as possible of the electric wire fence 'singing'!!

      I eventually came to recognise that those 'singing' sounds (an aeolian harp effect) actually were in their own way a Good Thing, and could be experienced as a real bonus extra — quite difference from, say, passing traffic or people yacking. And of course keeping that in means more birdsong kept in too! — 176'

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2. 170502_r5-01+02 — Just some 25–50 metres further upstream (away from the Teign Gorge woods), facing obliquely downstream and away from the river, towards the Teign Gorge woods, so capturing notionally roughly the same sequence, but placed on a tripod almost against but not touching the electric fence, so it didn't pick up any 'singing fence' sound, and so I had significantly less to edit out of it.

   Also, the background of river sound is a little louder than in 1., and that masked a fair amount of intermittent disturbance from distant noisy people in the Teign Gorge woods for much of the last ¾ hour, which I'd had to cut out of 1, but had the downside of also masking the most distant blackbirds that 1. had been able to capture.

   A particular star feature of this recording is the aforementioned dancing chorus seemingly driven by mistle thrushes.

   The recorder's oblique orientation has resulted in the river sound being brighter and more hissy on the right than on the left, where latter the river was behind the recorder and partially shielded from it by a small bank.

   On balance, I preferred this recording despite its rather louder-than-ideal river sound, because I was able to save more of the main blackbird choruses, but since I produced the 'singing fence' version of the other recording, in some ways I prefer that one. — 148'

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Unique and thrilling musical / aesthetic experience, this time often with less wind and therefore less chimes activity than I was aiming for, but at least a good amount of bird sound, albeit mostly more or less distant. The chimes were another outlandish ensemble: DB Pluto, The Blues, and the bamboo chimes (large and small).

Again, the pairing of DB chimes can sound initially discordant, but then that sense of discord rapidly dissipates as a cornucopia of wonderful musical interactions between the chimes unfolds. There is something in the haunting overall sound that seems to be telling a story of some urgency.

Because of the scarcity of sufficient wind, and the huge amount of disturbance from aeroplanes and to a lesser extent from people, I chose to let just the one recording run for the whole 6-hour session so that I stood the best chance of salvaging at least a full CD's worth of really useful material.

In the event, the editing reduced it to over four hours, and I didn't want to make a multi-CD set of it. So, as well as keeping the full edited recording I made two condensed-to-CD-length versions. In line with my strict policy of authenticity, these are just condensates and not mixes.

One really lovely thing in the recorded sequence was that during the last hour or two some very light wintry showers (rain and soft hail) were forming, and just enough came over to give a few very light sprinklings (no umbrella needed), which can be heard in the full recording — the main one coming just before the end, at which time distant blackbirds were getting going. During that shower a new distant blackbird eventually joins in, just left of centre — and then if you know your birds at all you would realize that it sounds a bit different and is actually not a blackbird at all but a mistle thrush (sounds much more like a blackbird than a song thrush).

1. 170426_r4-01+02+03 — The full edited recording (split into 2 parts), with many substantial periods of chimes quiescence (but rarely full silence, as they were usually moving slightly even during apparently calm periods), and the chimes really 'showing their teeth' in stronger gusts only a few times in the whole recording, though there is a modest number of more gently animated episodes that succeed in bringing a quieter sense of musical drama. In the original there were more of the stronger dramatic episodes, but aeroplanes and some people disturbances forced me to cut nearly all of them out. — 248'

   1. 170426_r4-01+02+03-forchimes — CD-length condensate, highlighting the chimes. This doesn't include the final shower, as there was almost no chimes activity then, but it does finish in a beautiful, musical fashion, with very much a sense of some solemn procession passing by and receding into the distance — indeed, into a sunset (it's that sort of tone colour)! — 78'

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      1. 170426_r4-01+02+03-forchimes-halfspeed — Half-speed extract from a. Immensely beautiful, the slowed-down birdsong having a touching melancholy or wistful sound that keys in with the chimes in a most musical manner. — 62'

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   2.  170426_r4-01+02+03-forbirds — CD-length condensate, highlighting the birds. This finishes with the shower and the final quiet 'coda', in which the chimes have the last very quiet word. Although this CD version does highlight the birds, and I tamed the odd few louder chimes episodes that I kept in this selection, this has worked out in an exquisite musical way, in which birds and sometimes passing flies or, in one case, a bumblebee, add to the ensemble in musically telling ways.

      The birds heard include chaffinch, blackbird, chiffchaff, willow warbler (frequently),yellowhammer, wren, blue tit, wood pigeon, carrion crow, raven, and, towards the end, mistle thrush and dunnock. As already noted, most of the birds are more or less distant, but they are part of a wide panorama, so, with a good stereo separation of your listening system, the effect is breathtaking. — 78'

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So, although, yes, I'd eventually become really excited by the fruits of this day's recording session despite this not having achieved really what I was originally after, I do still intend to re-record this particular chimes ensemble, with more wind. That would be more dramatic and varied in chimes sound. One could say that the overall sound then would be more overtly 'symphonic-dramatic' rather than primarily gentle and lyrical as this day's recording tends to feel.

Success! I had another long recording session at the same spot as on 10 April — the one usable tree branch part-way up the little track up to the 'cave' (adit) high up on the towering cliff face — from a bit past midday to 7.0 p.m. This time, although there was still a lot of human and aeroplane interference, not only did I get much longer undisturbed periods, but the birds were performing much more consistently, so my lengthy editing session (taking me more than 2 days), instead of cutting out almost all of the various best bits, this time actually salvaged most of the best, and there was a lot of it! I also made a 'second string' concurrent recording…

1. ?170419_r4-01+02+03+04 — Part-way up the 'cave' track — grandstand panorama, from tree branch, facing SSE, obliquely up and across the landslip — a quite outstanding grandstand panorama of birdsong,again with the most direct sea sound to hard-right / behind and its reverberation / echoes on the cliff to left and behind.

   Wonderful ensembles from time to time, of blackbirds, robins, blackcap, also incorporating chiffchaff, with a number of rather spectacular display / courtship flight calls of ravens, which often made quite odd sounds. The abundance of blackbird and, to a lesser extent blackcap song give this whole soundscape a particularly warm and joyful feel. — 248'

2. ?170419_r5-01+02+03+04+ — In the rough little woodland clearing beside the coast path nearby, where I made a very long recording before on 24 April 2016. This is a significant improvement upon that overall, though this one misses out on the peregrine falcon episodes that the earlier recording captured, but then has more of the raven 'spectaculars' than before.

   However, I have done a 'cheating' compromise to rectify the peregrine deficiency by mixing the four peregrine episodes from the earlier recording into this recording, together with a strange-sounding tawny owl call. I wouldn't normally do this, as I have a general policy of full authenticity, with no mixes. — 217'

Thundering breakers, then writhing sea with rumbles, booms and blowhole whoomphs (from the triple-vented blowhole system on the tip of the headland). Both recordings made at points down the narrow track obliquely descending the very steep cliff slope below the coast path, which follows the line of a sewage pipe. Thrilling and invigorating recordings.

1. 170315_r4-01 — By bottom inspection cover. Well down on the cliff slope and close to the actual clifftops of this very rugged cliff system, and thus close to the sea action. — 70'

2. 170315_r5-01 — By upper inspection cover. This position got easily the most satisfying balance between all the different sea dramatics within a reasonable range, so I'll use this also for future recordings with different sea conditions. — 76'

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A quite modest but relatively 'clean' swell (i.e., with superficial waves not very pronounced),so the basic sound of the swell 'action' isn't obscured too much by the usual continuous commotion caused by the many smaller waves.

170311_r4-01+02 — Closely overlooking the decidedly reverberant 'vestibule' of Beeny Cliff's southernmost cave, with the cave entrance to right. The swell isn't large enough to give big dramatics, but what we do get is a beautiful play of minor dramatics in this lovely reverberant acoustic, as the relatively small waves make impacts and sudden splashes at various spots in this vestibule area and the cave entrance. Quite frequently we hear generally quiet deep rumbles and booms from deep within the cave, but equally interesting is the boomy reverberations within the cave that are created by the various impacts within the vestibule area.

This is a very similar recording to certain others I've made at this spot, but with a significant difference. Following a fair amount of recent rainy weather a little streamlet of run-off water is coming down off the spur of the hill and tumbling over many little natural steps and terraces on the slaty rocks here, and then over the clifftop right here immediately in front of the recorder.

This makes a fascinating combination, with the bright, sharply focused foreground sound contrasting beautifully with the darker, much more spacious and reverberant sea sound beyond and below — suggestive of a concerto with forwardly-placed solo instrument and large orchestra. — 129'

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Unique and thrilling musical / aesthetic experiences, this time often with rather a lot of wind and some wild and dramatic chimes activity, but very little bird sound.

As in the previous two chimes recording sessions here, I had considerable difficulty in finding suitable tree branches on which to hang the chimes so that they would each be the right distance from the recorder and from each other, to provide the optimal balance between each of the chimes in the overall ensemble and also between the ensemble and the overall surrounding natural soundscape. I really wanted the chimes a little further from the recorder, but was limited not only by available hanging points but also the need for the recorder to be placed in as sheltered a position as possible; this was less of an issue when I was recording here in 2014 with the (much less wind-sensitive) PCM-M10 recorder.

The placement limitations should be less during future chimes recording sessions because at long last I have ordered some really long hooks and also some hooks with a very broad curvature at one end, so in future I'd be able to hang chimes on somewhat higher branches that I couldn't reach before, and also somewhat thicker ones.

1. ?170302_r4-01 — Pluto + Debussy Bells — an extraordinary-sounding and thrilling combination, with a certain discordance between the two chimes when both are sounding loudly together, yet with an intriguing musical effect that much more than compensates for that. Each of these chimes presents its own nagging tension effect, but the other one adds notes that resolve that tension.So, according to how the wind blows on the individual chimes, one hears a constant emergence of a variety of tension points that then resolve — just as in a composed work of music. I can guarantee,however, that some people would absolutely detest such a challenging and invigorating sound! — 62'

2. 170302_r4-02+04 — Pluto + Debussy Bells + bamboo (large + small), with really a bit too much wind at times, though still a wild and thrilling experience — even more so than recording 1. — 93'

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   1. 170302_r4-02+04-halfspeed — Half-speed extract from the latter — 61'

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3. 170302_r4-05 — Debussy Bells + bamboo (large + small) — a beautiful combination, with the bamboo chimes quite forward. — 59'

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   1. 170302_r4-05-halfspeed — Half-speed extract from the latter — 35'

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4.  170302_r4-03 — The natural soundscape (no chimes) — gusts of wind rushing through the trees and passing through low down in the valley — the wind mostly very modest. Recording made earlier in the session. — 53'

5.  170302_r4-06 — The natural soundscape (no chimes) — gusts of wind rushing through the trees and passing through low down in the valley. A repeat at the end of the session, this time with rather more of the stronger gusts. — 50'

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session:

1. Nature-Symphony 38 (Preliminary Report on the unclimbed Mountain of Ten Thousand Ecstasies) — 61'

2. Nature-Symphony 39 (Progress on the unclimbed Mountain of Ten Thousand Ecstasies) — 61'

3. Nature-Symphony 40 (Mother Nature's great celebration — by moonlight) — 37'

4. Nature-Symphony 61 (Steely-wiry sunrise echoes in a dark and rocky mountain forest) — 63'

5. Nature-Symphony 63 (Chaos – Anti-Chaos — The inner fire in wonder at what it's creating) — 107'

6. Nature-Symphony 65 (The inner fire seeking to understand cosmic black holes) — 107'

1. 170224_r4-01 — Twilight chimes. A rather wistful-sounding minor-scale-related motif with a mildly dissonant touch, incorporating an augmented triad, which latter periodically deliciously exposes itself. — 67'

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2. 170224_r4-02 — Debussy Bells chimes — tuned to the whole-tone scale, over two octaves. A mysterious, menacing or 'acid' sort of sound. In its element here out in the wilds! — 52'

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3. 170224_r4-03 — Twilight + Debussy Bells. This is actually an outlandishly discordant combination, suggestive of some of the conflicting brass bands in works of Charles Ives. However,in this context, with the beauty of the chimes sound and the chimes being at either side of the soundstage, the resulting interplay is beautiful and invigorating for those who are open to aesthetic and intellectual challenge. — 60'

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4. 170224_r4-04 — Twilight + Debussy Bells + bamboo (large + small). The bamboo chimes are placed in the middle, as though they were referees in the discordant interactions between the metal chimes. Again, a beautiful and invigorating experience for those with the right sort of mental capacity! — 81'

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   1. 170224_r4-04-halfspeed — A half-speed extract from the above. — Magical, ethereal, and at times majestic! — 62'

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5. 170224_r4-05 — Ditto. I repeated this combination because at the time I had cause to think that in 4. the recorder had been exposed to too much wind (actually it hadn't), so I moved it to what looked likely to be a somewhat more sheltered position and re-recorded. — 46'

Nature-Symphonies with input from this session:

1. Transformed wind chimes: Nature-Symphony 35 — 65'

2. Nature-Symphony 36 (Surreal landscape of contradictory impressions!) —59'

3. Nature-Symphony Prelude 2 (Song of anguish — memorial to Alexei Navalny) — 12'

4. Nature-Symphony 61 (Steely-wiry sunrise echoes in a dark and rocky mountain forest) — 63'

1. 170218_r4-01 — Chapel Porth — thundering surf, the recording made from unofficial relatively low exposed contouring clifftop track just round to the south-west of Chapel Porth. Recorder was facing out to sea, with the waves coming towards it. Initially the waves are crashing down close to the cliff bottom, but the tide is going out, so the breakers become increasingly distant, their individual sound getting part-submerged in the general roar of the wave run-out. Requires +6dB playing volume. — 71'

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2.  Just to SW of Shag Rock headland — periodic thundering breakers, with much booming and thudding as the waves hit the bottom of the cliff out-of-sight below.

   1. 170218_r4-02 — From my usual spot on a very low drystone wall running down the precariously steep slope below the Coast Path, facing out to sea. Requires +9dB playing volume. — 63'

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   2. 170218_r5-01 — From by the lowest inspection cover, down a narrow track following the line of a buried sewage pipe, so being much nearer the sea 'action', though further from the Shag Rock headland (to right),but hearing some heavy impacts to left, and the resultant big splashdowns, lengthy because of the clifftop-height spray plumes caused by those impacts. Requires +9dB playing volume. — 74'

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The Davis Blanchard (DB) chimes have a distinctive very 'sheeny' metallic timbre, rich in overtones, thanks to the tubes being made of galvanized steel instead of the usual aluminium.

1. 170216_r4-01pt+02 — Pluto chimes. These are nothing to do with the previously recorded Woodstock Chimes of Pluto (pentatonic tuning). This eight-note chime is tuned to the minor major seventh chord in two octaves, rather suggestive of a moment just before the choir entry in Neptune the Mystic, the final movement of Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets. It is teasingly dissonant and mysterious in effect. — 72'

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2. 170216_r4-03 — The Blues. This chime uses a blues motif, whose 'blue' note adds a spicy gently dissonant touch. — 51'

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3. 170216_r4-03170216_r4-05 — Pluto + bamboo (large + small). The earthy, rustic sound of the bamboo chimes tends to have a really interesting effect upon one's perception of the Pluto chimes. — 66'

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Nature-Symphonies with input from this session

1. Nature-Symphony 20 (Monolith — The unknowable)  — 44'

2. Nature-Symphony 21 (Deep ocean floor examining its own volcanics) — 53'

3. Nature-Symphony 22 (Solar rays — The Sun's 'Poem of Ecstasy') — 46'

4. Nature-Symphony 24 (Secret Forest — Bringer of joyful dreams)  — 54'

5. Nature-Symphony 34 (Exploration of a joyful planet yet to be devised) — 62'

6. Nature-Symphony 62 (Shifting colours of the deep forest trail, with lurking bears) — 45'

7. Nature-Symphony 75 (Autumn colour and shadows, with rutting stags) — 47'

8. Nature-Symphony 76 (Beauty of Mother Nature's ever-running dynamo) — 46'

1. Just to SW of Shag Rock headland
   Around and after high tide, so for the most part the waves are hitting the cliffs without breaking first, though on one occasion in particular a group of particularly large waves does break just before hitting the cliffs, creating temporary pandemonium.

   1. 170208_r4-01 — Higher position, on very low vegetated drystone wall that runs down the precariously steep slope below the coast path, with the Shag Rock headland right-of-centre, and capturing the wonderful thundering and booming in the alcove formed between the main line of cliff and the headland. The blowhole on the headland tip is sometimes heard, though on this occasion it's not all that loud. — 68'

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   2. 170208_r5-01 — Lower position, down precarious narrow track on that same slope, which follows a buried sewage pipe — the recording made beside the lowest inspection cover and thus significantly nearer the sea, with many spray plumes shooting up to clifftop height here. This is further away from the headland, so the dramatics there, including the blowhole whoomphs, are more clearly off to the right, and much quieter, but there is much booming and rumbling from down below, with distant sea dramatics off to the left as well. From this lower perspective the sea sound has a particularly lovely constant writhing quality. — 51'

2. Just SSW of Droskyn Point

   1. 170208_r4-02+03 — Pandemonium in the cliff alcove. On little clifftop prominence, facing obliquely across mouth of the alcove and out to sea, with Droskyn Point itself just right of centre, and so the body of the alcove filling the right half of the soundstage. Chunky, often crashing and thundering, waves are coming in obliquely from left and towards us; further away the breakers are running out into Perran Bay.

      Within the alcove there is frequent mostly not very strong booming from one or more of the caves there, and occasionally we can hear the excitable clucking / cackling of fulmars on cliff ledges on the opposite side of the alcove. The overall sound is mostly pretty loud and often something of a pandemonium, but it's a most invigorating sound. Requires +3dB volume. — 82'

   2. 170208_r5-02 — Writhing sea with periodic dramatic breakers. Just a little further along the clifftop to left, away from Droskyn Point, facing straight out to sea. From here we don't hear much of the alcove pandemonium, though at times we can faintly hear the fulmars there. The sound is often relatively quiet and sort-of peaceful, though with a beautiful writhing quality, but then periodically a group of larger waves comes in, breaking as they come near, crashing and thundering as they do so. Requires +3dB volume. — 69'

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A pair of dramatic and invigorating recordings, the D100 recorder capturing the vividness of the original soundscape.

1. 170122_r4-01 — Chapel Porth — thrilling sound of close breakers crashing and thundering, the recording made from unofficial relatively low exposed contouring clifftop track just round to the south-west of Chapel Porth. Recorder was facing out to sea, with the waves coming towards it. Requires +6dB volume. — 47'

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2. 170122_r4-02 — Droskyn Point — pandemonium and deep cave booms in narrow alcove in cliff just to SSW of Droskyn Point. Recorder was facing across mouth of alcove, with waves coming in obliquely from behind-right and the alcove pandemonium extending from centre round to the right. Requires +3dB volume. — 27'

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Wind conditions were the most favourable at this spot this year, so I took recordings that could replace certain earlier ones.

1. 161029_r4-01+02 — Wave action and some deep reverberant booms in the mouth of Beeny Cliff's southernmost cave, just round the headland from Pentargon Cove. — 155'

2. 161029_r4-03+04 — On fencepost above the coast path, above south end of the main alcove. This recording has the best balance I've yet achieved, giving near enough the same perspective that you'd get from the coast path close to the recorder. A quiet and peaceful panorama, with the sound of distant sea dramatics on the cliffs towards Penally Hill and Boscastle Harbour (on the left), and the foreground cliff alcove's sea sounds and mutterings, grumbles, rumbles and booms from the sea action deep within the cave system underneath us (on the right side).

   This soundscape is quite similar to the alcove clifftop ones, but has emphasis on the whole wide panorama, with the cave sounds relegated more to 'atmospheric background'. The sea sound is twofold — the sea action in the alcove immediately below (mostly right of centre), and the sea action on the more distant cliffs the other side of Pentargon Cove, receding towards Penally Hill by Boscastle Harbour (all heard on the left side). — 167'

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3. 161029_r5-05 — Main alcove clifftop, at south end of alcove. At last I got what I consider an ideal balance of the different sound elements from the alcove-top. Like the fencepost recording,this gives a really interesting panorama, with sea dramatics on distant cliffs on the left side, and foreground sea action and cave rumbles and booms in the right half.

   We're sufficiently shielded from the alcove sea sound for it never to be overwhelming, while it still remains distinct — and the fluctuations in the level of foreground and background sea sound bring about an ongoing shifting-around of the main centre of attention between foreground (more or less right) and background (left), making this a particularly engaging and interesting 'listen'. The earlier part of the recording has mostly 'direct-hit' booms rather than rumbles, and then the rising tide causes those to give way to only small booms and rumbles, these in turn to leading into more concerted mutterings, rumblings and rumble-booms. — 105'

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For once the wind was mostly light to very light, and this enabled me to capture a few things really well that I'd been wanting to for some time.

1. 161002_r4-01+02+03 — Beeny Cliff, near Boscastle — closely overlooking entrance of Beeny Cliff's southernmost cave, beside Pentargon Cove. Reverberant sound of modest sea dramatics, with some relatively quiet deep reverberant booms. — 202'

2. Seaward aspect of Boscastle blowhole. As the first recording below demonstrates, there isn't the expected discrete single 'back end' opening to the blowhole, even though apparently most people who think about it at all assume that there is. Rather, the blowhole is just one of many openings into a complex cave system within that area of the ridge from Penally Point to Penally Hill. Depending on the swell activity and state of the tide, different cave openings within that complex will perform their respective dramatics.

   1. 161002_r4-04 —About halfway along the narrow exposed track contouring Penally Hill from the 'neck' of Penally Point north-eastwards to a cave alcove. I chose this point carefully, to get a good balance between the loud sea dramatics immediately behind the harbour blowhole (to left) and the various normally quieter dramatics along the cliff here to the north-east.

      We hear the loud back-of-blowhole dramatics well to the left (some 100m away), with quieter dramatics from a cave opening directly below us, and it becomes evident that the latter performances are synchronized with the heavy booming whoomphs, and so this and most likely other cave openings along here are all part of the main blowhole's complex cave system.

      Then, as the tide continues to go out, the loud activity to the left eases down, only to transfer to immediately below us, where deep subterranean booms and wallops each are accompanied by a jet of spray, whose splashdown we hear clearly. In other words, it looks as though this is operating as a blowhole, albeit not as spectacular as the one ejecting into the harbour.

      This is a quite thrilling recording, with all its detail and interplay of activity on either side and indeed right in front of and actually underneath us. — 103'

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   2. 161002_r5-03 — Just west of the notional back end of the harbour blowhole, on a precarious low and exposed rock ledge (often used by anglers), getting a fascinating play of surrounding sea activity, with frequent loud punctuations from the heavy boomy whoomphs from the notional back end of the blowhole. That loud activity eventually dies down, leaving the later part of the recording peaceful with just the occasional sotto voce muttering or grunt (okay, fart, then!) from the blowhole back-end. — 103'

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This captures a lot of 'direct-hit' booms, with an excellent balance between sea sound in the alcove, distant sea sound on the cliffs towards Penally Hill, and the cave booms and rumbles, despite, yet again, a certain superficial choppiness of the sea, superimposed upon the modestly substantial swell.

This was actually a salvage job from a recording session that I aborted because the wind got up too much, and from the south, leaving all otherwise worthwhile recording spots in that area insufficiently sheltered. Initially I actually deleted this recording, but later recovered it and did an intensive editing job to get rid of all significant wind disturbances, so reducing it from some 54' to the current length. — 24'

My attempt in this session to record nightjar choruses at dusk was a fiasco because of minimal performance by said birds, but at least they added themselves in some measure to the dawn chorus recordings. These recordings were intended to be superior-quality replacements for the excellent pair of dawn chorus recordings I made from these two locations on 19 June 2014, and similarly the River-Teign-at-night recordings were intended to replace the equivalent recording of that date.

1. 160623_r5-01 — River Teign, from Sharp Tor, by the Hunter's Path, (near Castle Drogo), starting about 1.20 a.m. BST. I intended this to be a superior replacement for the sleep-assist album that I recorded in the small hours of 19 June 2014, this time with as much exposure as possible from this spot to the direct sound of the river's rapids way down below, so that the sound is more detailed. — 78'

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2. 160623_r5-02 — River Teign — As 1., but shielded from the direct sound of the weir, as in the 2014 recording. This was actually split off from the prematurely-started (2.45 a.m. BST start) dawn chorus recording that I made here. — 75'

3. 160623_r4-01+02 — Dawn chorus, from near the highest point on the Hunter's Path, running near the top of the south slope of the deep, steep-sided valley — the exact position being by the path, a little to the east of Hunter's Gate, with recorder on a tripod perched on a bit of gorse to raise it sufficiently above the bracken level, and clear of all trees and scrub that would obscure parts of the panorama.This is therefore very much a grandstand soundscape, in which virtually all the bird sounds are more or less distant, and it's therefore a very quiet one. The background sound of the River Teign is therefore also very quiet. The nightjar performance during the initial pre-chorus lead-in is minimal. — 136'

   Part 1

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4. 160623_r5-02+03 — Dawn chorus, from Sharp Tor, by the Hunter's Path, much lower down, about 1km to the west. The lower altitude meant a much less quiet River Teign background sound. The lead-in section contains a fair amount of nightjar churring, which stops, however, before the other dawn choristers start their own performance. — 144'

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My attempt this time to record the 'Manxies' was tolerably successful, though their activity wasn't as much as I'd really wanted, and similarly, the sea was still mostly not as quiet as I was aiming for — and I still had to edit out a lot of microphone wind noise caused by only a very gentle breeze. Most of the 'action' is distant and indeed mostly on the verge of audibility, with periodic nearer incursions and just the occasional more or less close encounter. However, actually that is the best way for a long recording of these birds to be, for surely no-one of healthy mental disposition would be really seeking to listen to these weird, tormented-sounding calls 'full frontal' all the time for a really extended period!

1. 160609_r4-01+02 — Just round the corner on the coast path, having come out of the Cot Valley on the south side, the recorder being rather set back from the sea to shield it somewhat from the direct sea sound and so improve audibility of the shearwaters when at all distant. However, the tide going out meant that the direct sea sound was picked up increasingly during the recording, though at the same time the swell was decreasing and so becoming rather less noisy. — 77'

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2. 160609_r5-01+02 — Further south-east along the coast path, towards the craggy spur from Carn Leskys, set back a little from the sea but evidently not enough, for the breaking of waves is heard directly even at the start — though that becomes less of an issue as the swell decreases later on. The sea sound is particularly lovely and soothing, especially as the swell decreases. One particular 'Manxie' fly-over is hair-raisingly close and might give you a momentary urge to duck! — 75'

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My attempts at recording the Manx shearwaters in the darkest hours of this particular night were trashed by a combination of shipping noise and wind, but at least I got two wonderful dawn chorus recordings from the south side of the valley. Indeed the higher one too was partially trashed by microphone wind noise, but with some detailed editing, and cutting off the (less important) later part of it, which was completely trashed, I ended up with a very respectably 'clean' full CD's worth for that.

1. 160604_r5-02+03 — Retake of a recording I made in 2015, from beside the highest track on the south side of the valley, still fairly high up but where it's sloping down inland towards some houses. This includes a particularly wonderful full half-hour of distant blackbirds in all directions — very likely a hundred or more of them! — 130'

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2. 160604_r4-02 — Concurrent recording made beside the same track, a little way seaward and so rather higher up, and indeed the recorder perched on a fence post on top of an overgrown drystone wall to give it a particularly high and commanding view, not just over the valley, but taking in the expanse of high ground all around, basically to maximize the blackbird count in the chorus! In this case for some time we have the odd blackbird rather closer, albeit not in full foreground, as a foil to the distant multitudes. — 77'

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   We do get a foreground singer, though — a wren. Because a slight increase in the wind trashed this recording from quite an early point, I included a longer pre-chorus lead-in with sea sound and the odd faint anticipatory twitters, which gives a nice sense of anticipation. — 78'

Another all-night session, for an attempt at doing a bit of unfinished business left over from the previous session. This time I had only one recorder.

1. 160528_r4-01+02 — Evening birdsong from the spot used in the dawn chorus recording of 25 May. This time I took care to ensure that the stinging nettles there were well-trampled, and that the tripod legs were all fully clear of any standing nettle plants, so it was a clean recording apart from the usual people / aeroplane disturbances that I have to edit out of my recordings. At one point one can distinctly hear a song thrush smashing a snail's shell on the path in order to get at the soft parts. — 117'

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2. 160529_r4-01+02 — Sea sound from near top of the landslip in the small hours (by the one and only public seat on the whole landslip). Because of this spot's being more inclined to pick up some wind, I let the recording run for 2½ hours. The sea sound from here has a particular interest, in the interplay between the rhythm of the waves nearby (directly below) and far away to the west(towards Branscombe Mouth). Some distant tawny owl calls at times. — 74'

3. 160529_r4-03-part — Sea sound from the dawn chorus recording position (see 4. below); it was actually split off from that recording, which I'd started at 3.0 a.m. Being from a lower viewpoint than 2. above, the sea sound is particularly subdued and has a gently dreamy, even 'woosy', and often somewhat 'writhing' quality caused by the interplay of the wave rhythms of nearby and far away. Some distant tawny owl calls, and towards the end we hear the first faint distant bird sounds as dawn chorus time approaches. — 70'

4. 160529_r4-03+04 — Dawn chorus from a little higher up the coast path steps than last time, to get more of a grandstand view of a very wide panorama of the landslip; for placement I improvised by perching one of my full-size light tripods in a blackthorn thicket (none of the legs touching the ground). Again, this recording has a nice long pre-chorus lead-in period. — 143'

160508_r4x-01+02 — I made a 3+ hours recording in the fairly low-down edge-of-woods position that I also used for an evening and dawn chorus recording. The wind was a generally strong south-easterly (force 6 Bft),though backing to north-easterly later on, and this spot quite well down in the landslip was sheltered to a large extent, though with a fair number of gusts of lesser strength coming around from time to time.

However, as the wind backed, it became more sheltered down here and mostly nearly calm, though still with a mostly distant background sound of the wind in the more exposed thickets and trees, which masked the very quiet sea sound that you would otherwise hear from here.

The recording, after a huge editing task, was thrilling, but extreme wind sensitivity of the recorder, combined with an actual fault that caused nearly all the microphone wind noise to be coming from the right, proved tiresome, and so eventually I chose to discard most of the recording and salvage just the serene final third (finishing at about 7.0 p.m.), editing out a relatively small number of further intrusions of microphone wind noise. Even this much more sheltered period still had an exhilarating background sound of the constant wind in distant trees and thickets all around.

What we were then left with was a laid-back sequence of birdsong, with a lot of space for the songs to 'breathe'. I issued that as an excellent 70-minute Download — but in 2019 I came across a dynamic EQ VST plugin program called TDR Nova GE, which enabled me to go back to the original unedited version of the recording and greatly reduce the bass frequencies of the microphone wind noise. This then still required a huge editing task (a plethora of people disturbances to cut out as well as plenty of still-too-intrusive mic wind noise), but it was still worth it, I now having salvaged a fair amount of the really windy conditions and some of the particularly strong and evocative close-by blackbird singing right in the midst of the windy pandemonium, resulting in my having gained an approximate doubling of the overall edited recording length.

Blackbirds are the overall star performer, giving us some beautiful close solos, but also attires with other blackbirds at varying distances all joining in. From here, most of the louder birds become more reverberant with increasing distance, so giving us a great sense of space, depth,and general perspective. Other birds that make themselves apparent include blackcap, chiffchaff, wren, goldfinch, chaffinch and blue tit, the first two putting on a wonderfully strong performance at times. — 123'

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160424_r4x-01, parts 1–3 — From close to the coast path very near where the cave track comes out — from about 10.15 a.m. to 6.0 p.m., but a huge amount of people and aeroplane disturbance necessitated my editing that down greatly.

A gorgeous engaging medley of bird sounds — the birds of any particular species often answering each other between different parts of the landslip, all with a beautiful reverberance, thanks in particular to the cliff towering above, upon which we can hear the echo of each wave of the sea spread from left to right, and sometimes move right around to the left-hand side, where it's coming off the part of the cliff that fell away to create this whole landslip area. A real star turn is provided, mainly in the final hour, by a peregrine falcon having a flyabout and sounding decidedly menacing. — 208'

Please note that this recording is now superseded by the much superior equivalent one made on 19April 2017 — though I've mixed the peregrine falcon episodes and a strange-sounding tawny owl call from this recording into the newer one.

The primary reason for recording here yet again was to give a meaningful first test run for anew recorder — the Sony PCM-D100. This was in particular to test the recorder's up-to-100dB signal / noise ratio function in a rather brutal way that wouldn't demonstrate the s/n ratio but would show if that function enabled the recorder to handle strong peaks loaded with very low frequencies (many indeed completely inaudible, with energy peaks in the 10–12Hz range!).

Part-way down south side of cliff alcove, facing obliquely into cave entrances, placed so as to be partly shielded from the vigorous direct sea sound. This was made with the D100recorder, set at a normal recording level, not at the much lower level that my old recorders would have to be set to in order to avoid distorted booms. It came out perfectly, without a hint of distortion and not requiring any level adjustment — though it did require a significant boost of the very low frequencies, unlike the PCM-M10, which regularly requires a cut of lower bass. — 45' (my first 'proper' recording with the PCM-D100)