partch chimes + tuned river is based in sound and structure on field recordings of a set of Woodstock “Harry Partch” wind chimes and a recording of the Farmington River, in Tariffville, CT. I have had an ongoing interest in analogues for the sound of a river’s movement within musical terms: river as single grains of sound coming together, river as white noise generator, the water supply as feedback loop. In developing this piece, I was in search of creating a symbiotic environment in which two recordings produce sonic artifacts and development purely through their coexistence.

The sound of the river is tuned and harmonized by the just-intonation pentatonic scale of the chimes, while the impulses of the chimes are controlled by chance systems spun from fluctuations in timbre and volume that occur within the river recording. The two sounds are also set into a symbiotic amplitude relationship, through the creation and application of a series of sidechain compression/gating modules. These modules attenuate the volume of each control source: the river and chimes, as well as the resulting processed sound, push and pull against one another throughout.

The large structural shifts of the piece are all executed by the individual sound's response to the sidechain circuit: the timbre character of the field recording crashing against the threshold and ADSR curves of the compression. This results in gestures that match the attack of each sound source: at times cutting abruptly, a reflection of the metal contact of the wind chime transient, while at others interweaving gradually in the form of the heaving breath of the river.