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Topic: Triplets (Read 2605 times) previous topic - next topic

Triplets

What is the difference between three quarter notes and three tripletted dotted quarters in a 3/4 measure?

Re: Triplets

Reply #1 –
Three dots and a triplet designation.

There is no audible difference, but one is definately easier to understand from a performer's perspective.

Re: Triplets

Reply #2 –
It's rather like the difference between the sound of one hand clapping, and the sound of the other hand clapping.

Seriously, a dot increases the length of a note to 150% (fractionally, that would be 3/2). Tripletising reduces the length of the note to 2/3. So triplet-dotted notes equal the unmodified note. (3/2 * 2/3 = 1)

I can't think of a situation offhand where there's a reason to use the tripletised dotted notes... unless it's as a joke, as I suspect the question may have been.

Re: Triplets

Reply #3 –
This very topic came up recently in another thread (!) and it seems to me you could make the argument, tenuous though it might he, that dotted triplets make sense in some circumstances. For example, in 6/8 meter, if you have a melody in even dotted quarters, an interpolated 3/4 measure might be easier to read as a triplet of dotted quarters than as three undotted quarters, because the context already has the performer thinking in dotted quarters. This is mere hypothesis, though, and I haven't tested it.
 

Re: Triplets

Reply #4 –
For some reason, there are a lot of hymns that use 6/8 time, I believe becuase they were based on Irish folk melodies. It may well be that the tripletted-dotted-quarter combination would be easier for a singer to interpret if th rest of the music were in steady dotted-quarters. However, most of the 6/8 hymns I've seen use quarters, or dotted quarters follwed by eighths.