"I Robot"

Recently, I was thinking about the synth phrase at the beginning of "I Robot."  I vaguely remembered a comment Alan Parsons had made about the perceived shift in its rhythm, and I eventually tracked this down again in the liner notes in the legacy edition of I Robot:

I played a 7-note sequence which was continuously 'looped' by the synth [the EMS Synthi-A].  I was fascinated by the fact that the sequence could be interpreted in different ways according to where, within the seven notes, the downbeat (or the first beat of a 4 beat bar) was placed.  Most people hear this sequence as having a certain rhythmic pattern when it first starts, but without anything on the sequence actually changing, the entire feel changes when the drums enter and establish a new downbeat.

I figured out how this works.  When the part fades in, the perceived rhythm is:

(This is two iterations of the sequence; I felt that having more than one would be a better illustration.)

Since there's nothing to indicate where the downbeat is and that C note is held the longest, it seems to occur on the first beat.  But actually, that C note is tied across the bar line.  The sequence is really:

"Lucifer"

I learned a part for "Lucifer" to-day, and while it's not listed among the instruments in the credits on the Alan Parsons Project's website, I think it's kantele.  It first appears at ~1:42 and is repeated at ~3:02.  I was writing out the notation as I learned the part, and it reminded me of the kantele part in "I Robot," so I found my notation for that and compared the two.

Here's what I think is a kantele in "Lucifer":

And here's the kantele part in "I Robot" (starting ~4:26):

There's a bit of similarity in the melodies, but only in that there are a fair number of conjunct note groups (more in "Lucifer" than in "I Robot").  The main similarity is rhythm.  In both, almost every other measure consists of a whole note that's tied to a note in the following measure.

Of course, both "Lucifer" and "I Robot" are also instrumental tracks that start their respective albums, so this might be an intentional resemblance.