I see what you did there.

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"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

It is a bit of an odd rhythm in that video. They play it in regular 6/8 in the recording I mentioned. Maybe he changed it along the way to go with spórt?

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I pinned down what makes the oddness for me: there is a recurring element of two consecutive triplets, and it is this combination in its particular position in the tune structure that throws off my perception of proper "jig-ness". I ran it through my head a number of ways, and discovered that if there is only the first triplet, or only the second, I don't experience this perceptual hitch as I do when both are together. I note that in the PDF of the dots, Ó Riada has only the first triplet, but it is in the recorded examples that we encounter both together.

Now that I have the tune basically down the effect to me is less strong, but it's still something I would seek to mitigate in my own playing by choosing one triplet or the other, only doing both - if at all - on an occasional basis.

When I hear the tune adorned by Ó Riada's theatrical setting, the "hitch" effect is stronger yet, and this is probably what turned me on my ear, because when I count it out after having gotten my bearings, it's spot-on. Again, I believe the jingling xylophone's rhythm was a firm contributor to this extreme perceptual effect.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Nano, give an ear here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7DnDQ3Dees

Bob

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Nice playing. But I fear you may have missed that at this point, I've been talking about Fiach, not Spórt. Never had any trouble with Spórt; I first heard it on Ó Riada's album, Amidst These Hills. It too was given a theatrical setting - sounds of playing children, again, and quite charming - but that never posed any difficulties for me. It's been a good while, but IIRC it was played on a concertina on that track, and I've remembered the tune ever since.

His artistically-infused setting of Fiach, though - that has been quite another matter. You should check out the link I offered a few posts back to see what I've been talking about; one could say it's rather trippy, actually.

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"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Sorry to quote the whole lot, but it's the whole lot of that that I find confusing. I thought the tune was pretty clear, and a nice, simple, slow jig rhythm, so I just can't hear what's difficult about it.

The thing that really confused me is your comment about the "recurring element of two consecutive triplets". I don't hear any. Well, not apart from the inherent 6/8-ness of the thing ...

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We must be hearing it completely differently. It's kind of hypnotic, right enough, but the tune is foremost, and ... um ... well ... simple. I'm still confused by your confusion.

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Here's the link again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMBHetzgAG0

You'll hear it at 1:12, among others. It's a recurring theme, and regular in its placement in the overall structure.


It's probably a quirk of my brain's wiring. Not infrequently - on TV, particularly - I'll see what are supposed to be surface concavities as convexities (lunar craters will look like bumps, for example), and even knowing better, it's hard to make the perceptual switch. Perhaps these are related phenomena...

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Ah. OK. Sorry. I don't count - or hear - those as triplets. I play triplets in fast jigs, and, whilst the 'triplets' I play are a little bit like two 16th notes (semiquavers to us) followed by an eight note (quaver), they're very distinguishable, and distinct, from that pattern. To me, in the Ó Riada piece, they're not triplets at all, but just two semiquavers and a quaver, as you'd find often in a Baroque jig, for instance, as well as several examples - generally labelled 'old airs' or the like, dotted through the O'Neills books. At least I know what you're talking about now. Still puzzled by the puzzlement ...

I suspect it's not explainable ...

Nice tune, isn't it? Definitely has that element of childhood about it, to me.

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Very much so. That's why I thought the choppers were brilliant, in a dark way. It reminds us of those conditions where children's play and the world's troubles will exist in the same time and space.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Yes. That 'chopper' sound ... what do you think it was made by? I got the impression that it was either electronic or even, by some miracle, a drum. Maybe I was imagining it ...

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I just assumed it was a sound sample of an actual helicopter, inserted into the recording for effect. For the record in case you didn't know, "chopper" is a Stateside term for a helicopter, and a military-grade one in particular. Small helicopters are sometimes called "whirlybirds". The terms can be somewhat interchangeable, but those are the usual applications. I went on the assumption that "chopper" would have been understood to mean "(probably military) helicopter".

I know the sound well, because we have both medical and police helicopters; you hear the medical ones comparatively far more often, but both are for emergency situations. If there's a police 'copter overhead, you know something's up, because it's not common, and they're specifically on a search for something important, and time is of the essence.

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"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

Yep, even us down home Brits know what a 'chopper' is.

On that recording, the sound was perfectly obviously meant to imply a helicopter, but what I meant was that it may not actually have been the sound of a helicopter. It sounded a little too rhythmical to me. But it could have been, of course ...

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Well, that's a relief. I was beginning to fear that this "separated by a common language" thing was bigger than I'd imagined.


Sounded real enough to me, so if it's not a sound sample, that was a darned good job. I can't imagine any drum could approach that level of fidelity, though.

_________________
"Time is the wisest counselor of all." - Pericles

"I remain not entirely convinced of it." - Nano

I've listened carefully again, and I am convinced that I am right on this one - not that it's necessarily a drum - in fact, now that I've listened a few times, I'd say the chances are very strong that it's an electronically produced sound - but I really don't think it's an actual chopper. There are three things that persuade me it isn't, apart from the general sound of the thing not being quite 'right', at least to my ears:

Firstly, as I said before, it's too rhythmical. With a real helicopter, the sound doesn't quite follow a regular beat, and this one does.

Secondly, there's a deep, bass, scrapey, sort of 'parp' sound that a real helicopter makes with each 'beat' of the props. It's absent from this recording.

Thirdly, there is virtually no Doppler effect present at all. The tone changes a bit, in what to me seems an electronic sort of a way, but the pitch hardly changes at all. I've never heard a helicopter where the pitch doesn't change constantly. Either it's manoeuvring, in which case the sound changes fairly dramatically and will rise and fall in pitch, or it's flying in a straight line, in which case there will be a distinct Doppler effect and the sound will drop off in pitch considerably.

Having said all of that, I've never been in a helicopter - I've heard plenty, but never been up in one. I've heard the sound in plenty of films, of course, and the pitch always varies dramatically in them, but maybe that's for dramatic effect. Maybe the pitch is constant if you record the sound in a helicopter, flying at a constant height, at a constant speed, in a straight line and with constant wind speed.

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