# Triplets and other tuplets



## Aurelian

In some scores written in the past 100 years, I have seen a tuplet number different than the number of notes in the bracket.

If you have Gardner Read's _Music Notation_, look at page 257. There is a group of 4 notes together as a pentatuplet (group of 5) and 4 notes together as a triplet. In another example (Rachmaninoff, but not sure) I saw a triplet inside another triplet.

Can somebody explain how to make sense of these?


----------



## EdwardBast

This musical example contains all of the phenomena you mention. In measure 1 there is a quintuplet group comprising only four notes and a triplet group comprising two. The logic here is that a quintuplet over one beat in common time normally comprises five notes, each getting a fifth of a beat. But the quintuplet can be subdivided several other ways: as a quarter note getting 4/5 of a beat plus a 16th note getting 1/5 of a beat, as two 8ths notes each getting 2/5 of a beat plus a 16th note getting 1/5 of a beat, etc. Here is what I just described in a musical example:









In measure 5 one sees nested tuplets, quarter note triplets (meaning each quarter would get 2/3 of a beat) subdivided so that one of the 8th notes (which would get 1/3 of a beat) is divided so as to contain three 16th notes each getting 1/9 of a beat. In measure 6 there is a quarter note triplet with the second quarter note subdivided into three parts.

The easiest way to make sure it makes sense is to go through the first measure and figure out the value of each sounding note. The first, the B tied over, would get 1 and 2/5 beats. The three 16ths under the quintuplet would each get 1/5. The B on the third beat would get 1 and 2/3 beats because of the tie. The last 8th under the triplet sign gets 1/3. Totalling it up we get 1 + 2/5 + 3/5 + 1 + 2/3 + 1/3, which comes out to four beats.


----------



## Aurelian

Thanks for correcting my incorrect use of the term. Where is your excerpt from? I don't have my own image to post.


----------



## EdwardBast

Aurelian said:


> Thanks for correcting my incorrect use of the term. Where is your excerpt from? I don't have my own image to post.


I hadn't written my explanation when I posted the example, which is just something I made up a couple of minutes ago as an illustration. Tell me if the explanation makes sense, okay?


----------

