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Triplets The ratio indicates the length of time the note should consume, compared to its non-tuplet duration. For instance, 2 eighth notes are equal to 1 quarter note. A ratio of 3:2 over a group of 3 eighth notes indicates that these 3 eighth notes should consume the same time as 2 normal eighth notes would. Thus, you get 3 equal length notes that sum to the same amount of time as a quarter note, which is 1 beat in 4/4 time. Often the group of notes is all the same type and consumes the entire beat. For instance (in 4/4), you'll see a 3:2 tuplet of 3 eighth notes, or a 6:4 tuplet of sixteenth notes, or a 12:8 tuplet of thirty second notes. In these cases, you often only see the numerator of the ratio marked. We assume the denominator is however many of that note normally make up a single beat. In 4/4, 2 eighth notes, 4 sixteenth notes, and 8 thirty second notes all equal 1 beat. It's rare, but there are cases where the ratio must be specified because the rhythm would otherwise be ambiguous. For example, you may have a single eighth note marked with a 6:5 tuplet, then 3 quarter notes marked with a 8:7 tuplet, then 1 quarter note marked with a 24:23 tuplet. Believe it or not, this actually adds up to a perfect 4 beats of time. I'll prove it. * 5 8th notes = 2.5 beats. The 1 6:5 eighth note = 1/6 of 2.5 beats = 15/36ths of one beat* 7 quarter notes = 7 beats. The 3 8:7 quarter notes = 3/8 of 7 beats = 21/8ths of one beat, or 2 and 5/8 beats.* 15/36ths + 21/8ths = 120/288ths + 756/288 = 876/288 = 438/144 = 219/72 = 73/24* to get 4 full beats, we need (4 * 24)/24 = 96/24ths. We already have 73/24ths, leaving us needing 23/24ths.* We invert this to get our tuplet for the last quarter note - 24:23. It equals 1/24 of 23 beats, or 23/24ths of 1 beat. Most of the time, such crazy math isn't necessary or really even useful. It's usually clear what the composer or transcriber wanted you to play when you look at the notation. Simple triplets can be a bit difficult to understand and even more difficult to execute at first. But once you can consistently play triplets, a rabbit hole of rhythmic possibilities. But this takes us back to what we first learned in the [[Basic Music Theory]] lesson. The whole concept of rhythm - using time signatures, tempos, beats, and measures - is designed to provide us a framework to organize musical ideas temporally. Writing and playing rhythms that deviate so wildly from the chosen framework is perhaps a bit counter-productive, unless the desired effect is to re-encompass the randomness and chaos that would ensue if we totally removed our rhythmic framework. Using random note durations may not line up phrases with measures and down beats, but they would still line up with the beats. Using random tuplets on the other hand would certainly cause notes to line up randomly off timed with all the beats. : "My God, when is he going to get to it?" ''-Everybody'' Now as far as strumming rhythm goes, triplets or other tuplets that contain an odd division of a beat (such as 3rds, 5ths, or 7ths) are going to throw us off a bit. We play them the same as above by speeding up and playing on each stroke. The problem is we end up reversing our up and down strokes, due to the odd division. If the pattern has two triplets, then we don't need to worry about it because they will cancel out. If not, we need to find some space to try to get back on beat. Or we just have to recognize that we've reversed down and up strokes and keep chugging along.
→Tuplets/Triplets
== Tuplets/Triplets ==
''Tuplets'' are rhythmic structures that subdivide a beat into a number of equally long sub-beats that isn't a multiple of 2. They consist of a beam marker that connects the notes, with a number or ratio of numbers written above.
1 |2 n 2 |3 tr lt |3 u n u|4 q |e e e |e e e e |s s s s|q | |---3---| | C |/ / Am |/ / Dm / C|/ / / /|/
The "---3---" above the strums indicates a triplet - here we have a quarter note on the first beat, 2 notes for the 2nd beat, 3 on the 3rd, and 4 on the 4th. We count this as "1 2 and 2 3 trip-let 3 4 uh and 4uh". I included the note names: q - quarter, e - eighth, s - sixteenth.
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1 n 2 tr lt 3 4 n