JIG

[ecadre]

... or maybe he was just playing a jig slowly which naturally exposes all of the above.

I'm a little surprised that people don't hear/feel that. It's the essence of a jig isn't it, the interrelationships of 6 over 8?

Maybe I spent too much time Morris dancing

[david_h]

I don't hear it as markedly jig-like.

After a couple of listens I found something else was going round in my head and when I looked for that on Youtube I found a not altogether different visual treatment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZOp_LNY5As

[Nanohedron]

Anyhow about the Fiach what I'm hearing is a straight 1234 rhythm. Yes in some bars there are triplets on the 1 and the 2.

(Assuming you meant the YouTube impressionistic art piece with the slideshow) Well, it's a comfort to know that I wasn't the only one. The prospect of getting my head examined just meant one more thing I'd rather put off...

I don't get it. How anyone can hear anything other than a simple, slightly slow, jig rhythm is beyond me. Where on earth is the 1234???

I don't have the theory training to be concise about it, but there is a rational explanation for this subjective effect, so brace yourself, and bear with me: First, let me point out that there's the jig on one hand, and on the other, there's the piece. I'm hearing the artistic piece as a unified whole (I assume others who also get this odd effect are doing the same), whereas the jig by itself is quite another matter. Part of the effect I've reported is definitely contributed to by accident of the the jig's somewhat idiosyncratic melodic contour, but the real force is in the accompaniment that supports it. It's an effect of the whole put together, and this is key, because the jig's pretty much incidental to what follows, and not the determining factor, although it has its part to play. Now, the hitch of perception is only available to me in Ó Riada's impressionistic track, and no other; in another track where I heard the jig Fiach played as-is, free of any artistic encrustations, its 6/8 character is solid and unmistakable, and the tune coherent. Same with going by the dots: no 1234 going on anywhere, and all is as it should be. In the artsome track, however - which was the first exposure I ever had to the tune - for some reason I couldn't hear the melody as anything resembling a jig at all; to my ear there was only a disjointed series of phrases set to duple meter, and it had had little coherence. I knew beforehand that it was supposed to be a jig, so naturally I was confounded by what I heard instead. It was only after reading the dots and hearing the jig played without Ó Riada's conceptual treatment that I could finally make it out, and I realized that there was something particular about the art track that was making me hear things askew. Thus armed, when going back to the concept track I'm now able to hear it right, but even so I find I can still get that hitch which makes both the tune, and me, rudderless all over again. So what's up with that? Answer: Interestingly, the accompaniment's dense rhythm has the neat trick of being able to accommodate either a triple or duple meter! The fact that I'm able to hear a very viable 2/4 beat in it is evidence of this, and there's our culprit in the mystery. It took me a while to pin down, too, even though it was staring me right in the face. The commanding nature of the accompaniment gives it the potential to take over and induce a flip of perception which makes me hear an overall meter of 2/4. Of course this result doesn't track with a 6/8 structure, so the difference imposes a shift of emphasis that elicits a weird change of perceived phrasing order in the melody line; in other words, it breaks up the poor, defenseless jig into something else entirely. So I'm not hearing 1234 within a 6/8 tune at all; that's a metric impossibility, at least in this dimension. Instead, due to the dense arrangement, I'm hearing the count outside of the tune, and that in turn alters my perception of the tune's structure. In short, the experience is an auditory illusion, a trompe-l'oreille. If the accompaniment had been simpler and more standard, I couldn't experience this effect. Desperate for a way to explain it better, I've been doing a search, and there's a term that I just came across, "shift of meter", that sort of speaks to to what I'm talking about, although I'm not sure it's 100% applicable. But it's close enough to convey the general idea.

It may be that not everyone will be able to experience this effect in Ó Riada's art piece. But many of us have heard someone playing a tune, usually unfamiliar, where at first you're scratching your head because you're not really sure where it begins or even what time signature it's in, and then at a particular key moment, everything rights itself. It's much like that.

I hope that helps.

To be honest, I actually like the the disorienting effect of the mis-hearing in the art version of Fiach; there's something rather magical and risky about it, as if you find yourself inside a fairy-mound where things are very different indeed. I like to hope the potential for hearing it that way was by crafty intent.