Triplets

[KYCTbI]

hi guys i have recently begun to listen to meshuggah and am trying to understand polyrhythms clearly. from what i have read, a triplet is 3 8th notes over 1 beat of 4/4 time, or 3 8ths over 2 8ths. i can feel triplets but i dont understand how the notes are 8th notes. i mean they count faster than actual 8th notes, thats why you can fit 3 of them over 2...i mean of course somehow this is wrong but i am not sure. please can someone clarify this for me what am i thinking wrong or right. thanx a lot to whoever replys and to all who post throughout the forum

[Rob_Wolfe]

3 notes attacked evenly in the space of 1 quarter note is an 8th note triplet. that's just the way it is.

but a triplet is not limited to "fitting into the space of one quarter note."

a triplet is created any time you play "3 evenly-spaced-notes" in the space of any even number of beats (2, 4, 8, 16 of ANYTHING [it could be 3 in the space of two 32nd notes or it could be 3 in the space of 16 whole notes {ok, that's absurd}]).

it's pretty simple: the number value preceeding the word "triplet" let's you know how fast or slow the triplet will sound against the tempo of the music.

3 even hits within the space of 1 eighth note = 16th note triplet

3:1 = 8th note triplet

3 within 2 beats = quarter note triplet

3 over 3 beats = plain old quarter notes, not a triplet, obviously

3 over 4 beats = half note triplets

etc.

if you catch yourself counting "(1-2-3)(1-2-3)(1-2)" it's not a quarter note triplet. i've made that mistake way too many times because, well, to be honest, i'm retarded.

repeating groups of 3 sixteenth notes is an easy way to create a false tempo though. drummers do it all the time.

you can create similarly-deceiving rhythms by using groups of 4 triplets (continuously playing triplets but accenting them in groups of 4) this is a bit harder. there's a pefect example of this on Sol Niger Within. check out the drumming right at 4:00 in the song Missing Time.

[grandpascorpion]

[edit: I missed Rob's post when posting this]

Well, it's really just 3 notes in time of a qtr. It's just a convention to call them triplet 8th notes. (The alternative would be to call them 12th notes which is kinda weird).

Here's a list from 2 to 8 in a beat.

# of notes in a beat / #notation/how they're referred to
2 / 8th
3 / triplet 8ths
4 / 16th
5 / quintuplet 16ths
6 / sextuplet 16ths
7 / septuplet 16ths
8 / 32nd

You round down to the nearest power of 2. So, 3 rounds down to 2 (so 3 in a beat is written as triplet 8th notes). 5 rounds down to 4 (so 5 in a beat are written as quintuplet 16th notes). Etc.