This is particularly so with slow air notation. Some people play them whoosh!
John wrote a well-articulated (pun noted, but not intended) post/response that was really on the mark here, and so far he’s been pretty well ignored.. Shame, that.
All this over-analysis of precisely what a particular player does or doesn’t do in any particular spot is really missing the point behind ornamentations and Irish playing in general, which is all about rhythm and drive and swing - whatever you want to call it.. These threads start to sound surprisingly more like classical music theory classes than ITM discourses, except for those odd bits where diddly-dums are being argued in complete seriousness – that’s just surreal.
I remember asking Jack Coen what he does, exactly, when I would hear this little rhythmic warble that he does that fit where an off-beat roll might otherwise be placed – his response was that “I sorta jiggle my finger a bit there.” Huh, says I, but damned if it doesn’t work pretty well…
So now I kinda understand a bit more what may be meant by the term “short roll” as opposed to “long roll” - always seemed a bit arcane to me! However, in the kind of figure under discussion, I wouldn’t do the short roll as described by Brad et al because it sounds weak to me, lacking in rhythmic clarity and on-beat attack - as I said previously, I play the EA quavers slurred, then very lightly tongue the crotchet (or quaver pair or “triplet” or two semi-quavers plus quaver if you prefer) and do a full roll on it within its alloted time, thus EA (tongue)A(cut)A(tap)A. And then the same on the Gs in the case of Maid of Mount Kisco (to give it its correct title, I believe). Obviously these rolls-in-the-time-of-a-crotchet are faster/shorter than rolls-in-the-time-of-a-dotted-crotchet and have a different rhythmic effect in terms of the “swing” of a tune.
here are examples of what i mean about ea~a2 and e~a3:
Could you explain what we’re supposed to be getting from these examples, rama? The only difference I can hear is that sometimes you’re glottal stopping (or perhaps tonguing) between the e and the a, and other times you aren’t.
is there a difference or does it all just sound the same to you?
i believe you are interpreting what is being played wrong, because there is no glottal stop or tongue between the ‘e’ and ‘a’. that note-to-note transition is the same for all examples i played. listen again for any actual differences. slow it down if you have to. hey ‘i’m just wigglin’ my fingers’…
Other than what I said, no I don’t hear any differences. Sorry, I don’t have the capability to slow it down. Basically, except for the occasional break before the a (and if you say there’s not a tongue or glottal there, I believe you; perhaps it’s just a breath pulse, but I do hear a break sometimes) it all sounds the same to me. Which says to me that for all practical purposes, for the listener there’s no difference between ea~a2 and e~a3. If whatever differences there are are only detectable when the clip is slowed down, then IMHO the player is wasting their effort if they’re trying to play two different things there, because it’s all coming out the same.
That’s my experience as a listener. Other listeners, YMMV.
john,
what you are hearing is indeed a glottal stop, but it does not seperate ‘e’ from ‘a’. like i said, the ‘ea’ transition remains the same each time it is played. the glottal stop is actually at a different place. it seperates ‘a’ and ‘a2’ in the ea~a2 example.
Maybe so, but as I said it doesn’t come through as that when I hear it.
So, what exactly are you doing? Is it
ea~a2 = e a (glottal) (cut) a (tap) a and
e~a3 = e a (cut) a (tap) a ?
Or something else? Because, as I said, this is what I hear:
e a (cut) a (tap) a or
e (glottal or other pulse) a (cut) a (tap) a .
Perhaps you could record each one slowly a couple times, then at speed a couple times, and maybe that would make whatever differences you’re trying to put in there more apparent.
yupper that looks good.
and as you know, there are places in many reels, like maids of mt. kissaho, or the one sbfluter mentioned, that little distinctions can pop up. if i were to notate, that is how i would identify such things. or if to be more generic about it , i could just notate ‘eaaa’ although that would not be quite as accurate about what is actually played. so implicit in ea~a2 is all of what you described above.