Beyond triplets

[frankbiff]

Triplets of eight notes and other subdivisions of 1 beat are fairly common and easy to practice, not so common, but not rare either, are the divisions of multipal beats, such as triplets of quater notes (3 notes in 2 beats), quads of quater notes (4 in 3), triplets of half notes etc.

How do you folks practice them? or should I say count them to initialy get a feel for them.
The best I can come up with is to play in cut time at half the tempo so that a quater note triplet over 2 beats becomes a regular triplet over one. Then once you get the feel go to the regular time and tempo.

Any sugestions?

[David A.]

The way to be able to practice those rhythms is to subdivide them, and tongue the subdivision. If you do that, you get a real feel for what the rhythm is supposed to be like. The 3 notes in 2 beats is basically two eighth triplets for each quarter triplet, so what you do is you tongue eighth note triplets and switch notes after you tongue every two eighth note triplets. With the 4 notes for every 3 beats, you have to play each note the equivalent of 3 16th notes. So, tongue 16th notes, and switch notes after every 3. Kinda hard to explain, but I tried. Let me know if that helped.

[frankbiff]

Your explanation was good. Later, after I posted I came up with your method, but with a way of easing into it. For the 3 over 2 beats use 2 eighth note triplets. Start by playing all 6 notes, then tie the first 2 notes together, then tie the last 2 together, then the middle 2. Listen for the 2nd beat now falling in the middle of the middle note.

I looked through some transcriptions of some jazz solos and found many examples of such multipal beat groupings,(and lots of 5, and 7 notes in 1 beat) however, looking through method books etc, such things are not practiced often.

[David A.]

Yeah. The 5's are probably the toughest because there really is no way to count or subdivide it really. But the 7's, I'm sure that that figure is just a scale. In most scales, there are 8 notes, so you play 7 notes, and the tonic lands on the beat. But I think that the 5's are just a "feel" kind of thing.

[Cameron Wigmore]

yeah - that stuff is pretty hip. I'm of the mind that one should mix up their blowing to include much more that the typical eighth - notes and eighth note triples. 8)

[Harrell]

As a clarinet player (for more than 40 years), I began to play more and more by ear until I almost didn't read music at all. Simple melody lines on lead sheets perhaps, but nothing really difficult. Then two years ago, I became serious about tenor sax and my two boys wanted to play sax as well. To my amazement, I had to learn to read music all over again. It's not like riding a bicycle - you forget it like you do a language if you don't practice it.

I run across this problem a lot. At first, I struggled with simple 6/8 time - I had no trouble playing the music if someone would play it for me the first time. But, I joined an orchestra and was in a position of having to work out my parts for myself. The first year it was hard for me to keep up because rehersal is every week and I had to work up my parts slowly. I often had to mark the score with pencil where the downbeats and upbeats were.

When I encountered multiples (for example, 5 notes in one beat or two), I sang the notes with equal duration for each (five: "da da da da da") and then I would pat the table with my hand as many times as there are beats during the duration of my singing the notes. I taught myself the 'feeling' of the sequence that way.

My kids are working in the Rubank series for saxophone now. My reading has greatly improved but I worked at it particularly hard because I wanted to be a better reader than my kids. I am now, but there was a time when my 12 year old was a better sight reader than I was.

[Jazzophone]

it might sound weird, but when we were learning the various "tuplets" my band director gave us words or phrases to say -- since the fives were the hardest to reason out, he'd sing the words "David Letterman" to the beat of it. Amazingly enough it worked -- now I've got the talk-show host written above all the fives. Go figure. :D

[frankbiff]

Five to a beat is not too bad, at least you know how your doing when the next beat occures. But with three notes over 2 beats its hard to count without an external source (metronome, drums etc), if I tap to it myself I seem to adjust the taping rather than the timing of the notes. Divisions of one beat seem to swing along with the tempo but when you chop up a 4/4 measure into 3 equal notes, a triplet of half notes, you might look at it as playing in 3/4 over the 4/4 beat.

Using the method of triplets and then tieing the notes to make the 3 notes over 2 beats works for me; now just practice so I can do it anytime at any tempo. Then onto 5 notes over 2 beats.