As an American, cricket seems to be one of those games, you must grow up with to understand. It seems like a confusing corruption Of baseball. On the other hand rugby is a game I can get behind.
I tried watching a couple of cricket games years ago, figuring that I'd soon be able to follow what was happening. Bzzt - wrongo. Seemed like nonsense gameplay, nonsense rules. But now we live in the times of YouTube explainer videos. I watched a 15-minute overview of the sport a few weeks back and I think I'd probably be able to enjoy a game now.
On our first date, I took my Chinese-born now-wife to an American baseball game. She politely seemed to enjoy it, but I later learned she didn't understand a damned thing about it, and has never bothered to learn. I truly believe one must grow up with and around it. American football on the other hand, she loves and understands it and the jargon as well as I.
Headline of the Day from The Babylon Bee: Cleveland Browns Thankful To No Longer Be Largest Disaster In Ohio
It feels like cricket is a prank and they're not even trying to hide it. I mean there's a position called silly point.
Plus I mean—it's an insect. Imagine this in a Monty Python voice: "Oh, hello Mortimer, would you care for a few rounds of flea perhaps?"
Even the commentators find it funny... I don't think you can enjoy cricket at a distance. You need to be sleeping off a ploughman's lunch in the sunshine by a village green with a nice cold pint at your side...
This might not interest anyone but me, but apparently most Celtic/Irish folk music is written in the key of D because ancient Celtic instruments were modal instead of tonal, and fit most naturally into the Dorian mode, which later evolved--for the most part--into the key of D when the modern key system was developed. I only noticed this because I was listening to some Irish folk the other day, and every damn song seemed to hit the same notes in the same places. A quick google search... and boom! Guess I wasn't the only one to notice that.
I'm not sure... it was playing in the background at work. It was an American group in an Irish style, but I kept hearing it coming home to what sounded like a D9 chord (D, F#, A, C#, E), which got my wheels spinning. Not that I have perfect pitch or anything, but I thanks to Stevie Ray and James Brown, I know a 9 chord when I hear it. And the singer seemed to be operating in the same tonal shape. Enough that I had to look up what keys Irish/Celtic is typically written in--like E minor for metal, G for American folk, B minor for Blues--and that whole thing came up. They will use a bit of G (mixolydian) too, but D is the dominant. I thought it was a style thing and would never have considered how ancient instruments with limited range would have had to slot into a common key to sound musical. Fucking rabbit hole... I've been digging into diatonics and modals for like an hour now. Every time I think I have my hands wrapped around the music theory monster, the bastard changes its shape!
I used to listen to a bit of the Chieftans and Loreena McKennit back in the 90's. Plus a few CDs of Celtic, but I'd have to check the CDs to figure out the names of the groups. Sometimes that music just hits the spot. I used to really like the Cranberries too (not that it's Celtic music exactly, but it definitely has the Irish flavor to it). Mostly some of the non-hit songs on live bootlegs. Ridiculous Thoughts, Yeat's Grave (Dammit, I wrote Keats at first, decided I'd better check! ) , Daffodil Lament...
Now you've got me thinking back, to the last time great new music was being played on the radio and MTV (my opinion of course). At the same time as the Cranberries I was deeply into the Counting Crows too.
My two cents: Rap/Hip Hop to me was the last genre of original music to be realized, so by the time the 20th Century ended, just about everything that could be done, had been done. And we're not talking about a few decades of film evolution here, or a few centuries of modern literature, but several thousand years of music experimentation that kind of came to an end with Hip Hop... the last truly new form of music. Sure you can fusion this and post-modernize that, but there's really nothing left to do. We don't have new musical instruments. We don't have new notes to play. We don't have an expanded hearing range to add sounds above or below what we're used to. We don't have heightened powers of cognition to make increased or decreased tempo discernible. And really, you can kind of see how when Hip Hop entered its postmodern period, like Classical, Jazz, Blues, and Rock before it, that was sort of the end of the evolution. I'm speaking in generalities here. I'm not saying there's no original-ish music or good music left to be made, but there really can't be anything "new." And, shit, once I heard Death Metal fused with Bluegrass--which is awesome by the way--I'm not sure you can even blend the genres into something new anymore. And even electronic music has kind of run out of new sounds to produce. There's just... nothing left to do. There's no new matter available and no empty space for it to fill.
Bluegrass is pretty amazing all by itself! All lead, played incredibly fast. That's that Roy Clark banjo stuff! Watch any car chase scene, turn the sound down, and switch on some bluegrass—it makes it way better.
^ That makes me remember, Bluegrass has its roots in Celtic music, since the people who settled the mountainous regions (Appalachians mostly I think?) were immigrants from Ireland and thereabouts. Highlanders looking for a place that reminded them of home I guess. It's why their dancing even resembles the Riverdance stuff, where you do all the fancy footwork and let your arms hang by your sides.
Bluegrass has only been a thing since the 40s but yeah a lot of the traditional music in the Ozarks and the Appalachians comes out of the British Isles. There's a well-preserved ballad tradition and lots of fiddle tunes and so forth. Here are a couple ballad examples. English apparently. "Handsome Molly" is a popular bluegrass/old time song, but it's kind of a distant variant of a song also found in the British Isles under various names. Redhaired Boy is a fiddle tune played on both sides of the Atlantic Here's a traditional song from the Ozarks; I'm guessing it came over from England or somewhere at some point but I haven't been able to find any examples (on the internet) outside of Missouri. https://youtu.be/J-DbMC28dHs Farmers Daughter - The Max Hunter Folk Song Collection - Missouri State University
Yes, Freddy, but did you know that F Dorian is the same key as D#? Which is the same key as C minor? I suppose you're right. They're already identical, so there's nothing really to equate. Other than 1 = 1, but we can see that immediately if we look at the notes that comprise the three scales: C Minor: C D D# F G G# A# D# Major: D# F G G# A# C D F Dorian: F G G# A# C D D# Each scale is absolutely identical in every way. The only difference between them is which TONIC NOTE starts and stops the scale and centers the melody. The Major starts on D#, the first note of the scale. The Dorian starts on the F, the second note of the scale (hence the term F Dorian), and the Minor starts on the C, the sixth note of the scale. But no matter what guitar fret or piano key you start on, all the notes around it are identical, ascending and descending. C'mon... that's at least a little helpful, right, Freddy? Haha. (and keys are modes too! The major is Ionian and the minor Aeolian)
That Courting is a Pleasure song, the very beginning of it, sounds a lot like Cat Stevens' Peace Train. Must be using the same chord, or key or whatever (beyond the scope of my knowledge).
well, I just meant that "D" and "dorian" are only the same thing if you're in the key of C. I'm a big fan of modes and keys and scales or whatever.
